Chapter 103: Weighing the heart
The nightstand clock threw a faint red glow on the figures, the numbers inching forward in a near-tantalizing glacial motion. 12:03 a.m. I gazed out into the darkness, the suffocating quiet pressing down upon me like a muffled fist. Sleep tonight was an unattainable dream—like peace, like clarity.
The sheets clung to my legs, burning and suffocating. I knocked them away, sat up and massaged my throbbing face. Moonlight poured in through the wide balcony doors, silvering the edges of the room and casting all in a dulled sort of shadows.
I wrapped my arms around my knees, looking out across the open sky. The stars blazed down upon me, uninterested witnesses to the storm seething deep within me.
Nathaniel. Caspian.
Two names, two halves of my life. Two pieces of me that I could never hope to join back together.
I shut my eyes, hoping that shutting them would shut off the memories flooding into the forefront of my brain.
Nathaniel's warm, whole laugh echoed in my mind. I remembered Sunday mornings stretched out across his sheets, the aroma of coffee drifting in from the kitchen, the manner in which he'd drag me back into bed with a smile that held guarantees of hours spent doing nothing other than kissing and breathed promises.
It had been expected. Comfortable. Safe.
But then I remembered the slow wear down too—the manner in which his words would slice sometimes, excused as a joke. The arguments we never quite had out, but pushed under a mat. The creeping feeling, subdued but gathering, that I was shrinking to fit into a version of myself he loved more.
I swallowed past the knot in my throat.
And then Caspian.
The instant I looked into his eyes for the first time, I was standing on the edge of a cliff—daring, thrilling, terrifying. His love was not safe. It was not neat and neat. It stole everything from me. It tore me wide open and stripped me bare.
It felt like every kiss, every fight, every burning slide of his hand against mine had been a battle cry: Live. Feel. Choose.
It wasn't. God, it was never easy. Those last few days had made me more aware of that than anything else.
But, beneath all the chaos, there was something that refused to give way. A thread of something real and uncooked that bound us together regardless of how desperately the world—and we—would attempt to shred it.
I got up from the bed on wobbly legs, bare feet thudding on cold wooden floor. The villa was still, its walls closed in with the weight of our argument. I drifted down the hallway like a specter, letting my fingers brush against the walls to hold myself steady.
I huddled in the plush, padded window seat of the living room, a blanket around my shoulders. Outside was silver and limitless, the garden radiating, the sea in the distance whispering like a half-forgotten lullaby.
My breath fogged the windowpane as I rested my forehead against it.
With whom was I actually happy?
The question rankled me, persistent and nagging.
Nathaniel had been my safe haven, my snicker in the corner of the room, my "what if we just skip school tonight?" He had liked the me that could be reduced to his presence—a girl who questioned less, who reached for less.
Caspian. Caspian loved the broken, burning, messy parts of me. He challenged me, even when it hurt. He didn’t just want the parts of me that were easy to love—he wanted all of it. The shadows and the fire. The fears and the stubbornness.
But loving him meant risking everything. It meant not knowing if we’d weather every storm.
It was choosing him every day, even when it was hard.
Even when my heart ached.
Even when fear would whisper softly that maybe, maybe he was meant for someone less broken, less damaged.
Tears ran down my face, and I let them run shamelessly.
I recalled the night he proposed to me under the stars—how his hand trembled infinitesimally as he opened the case containing the ring, the nakedness in his voice when he said my name at a breath barely louder than air.
Not an ultimatum. Not a solution.
A prayer. A hope.
My ambivalence had not been the fault of his love. it had been the fault of my fear.
The truth was so simple it frightened me.
I loved him.
I adored Caspian Thorne with an all-consuming passion that ate up all the pain, all the skepticism Nathaniel had seeded within me. I adored him so much that I fought him, hurt him, hurt myself, for somewhere within me, I knew it was the truth.
The image of Caspian's eyes—stormy, dark, agonized—came flooding back through me.
I hugged the blanket closer around me, as if it could keep me together.
How blind was I? How could I ever look into the eyes of that man and for even a moment's time think that he loved me not enough?
I felt like I had to make things right.
I had to go back to him.
Not because he needed me.
Not because I could lose him.
Because I couldn't stand to live a life where I didn't wake up to his gruff, sleepy voice, where I didn't pulse with the fire of his eyes searing me, where I didn't have the awareness that despite all that we were broken and shattered, we chose each other.
Again and again.
It was a soft sound that broke the silence—a gentle sigh.
I looked back over my shoulder and saw the shadow move in the hallway.
Caspian.
He had his feet bare, his hair disheveled, with nothing on but a pair of loose sweat pants and a black shirt. His arms were relaxed by his sides, his entire body stretched tight like a coiled spring.
We just stood there in silence.
The moonlight sliced across the floor between us, a bright river we didn't dare cross.
His gaze met mine.
Raw. Raw. Pain.
I tried to speak, but nothing was there.
I longed to tell him about all the things that were careening around in me—the love, the guilt, the fear. I longed to fling myself into his arms and beg his pardon for not recognizing sooner what was so glaringly obvious now.
But I was paralyzed, trapped in the power of his gaze.
Caspian edged closer. And then again.
The floor creaked beneath his feet.
My heart ached horribly in my chest.
When he eventually stopped a couple of feet in front of me, he did not seize me. He simply stared at me with those tear-torn eyes and whispered, "Couldn't sleep either?"
I nodded my head, a tear falling.
He caught it falling, something snap across his features that stabbed my chest.
"About him?" he whispered, not accusatorially—just smashingly curious.
I shook my head again, harder this time. "No," I said softly.
He remained where he was, waited.
"I was thinking about. you. About us."
A glimmer of something—hope, or perhaps fear—passed his eyes.
I stood up slowly, the blanket piling at my ankles.
Slowly, I walked across the floor to him, until I could discern the faint shadow of stubble on the line of his jaw, the slight shake in his hands.
I curved my hand around the line of his face, tracing the shape of the scar above his eyebrow—the one he despised, the one I loved.
"I'm sorry," I said.
He closed his eyes, his body surrendering to my touch as if he'd been hungry.
When he opened them the second time, they shone.