Chapter 147: Silence between the waves
The sand was icy on my skin when we finally reached the beach. The sun was already beginning its lazy fall, and all was bathed in that golden light that softened, muted the world. Caspian had found the spot—some secluded, untrod spot where sea met sky unbroken and wind carried no sounds of traffic or time.
He hadn't said much when he'd requested that we get out of the city for a few hours. He simply stared at me the way he occasionally did—like I was the answer to some unspoken problem he hadn't formed in words yet—and told me, "Come with me."
So I went.
Then we walked side by side along the beach, the waves lapping at our ankles. The tide was out, the beach all but empty except for a few gulls high, high overhead. Caspian's hand brushed against mine with each step until, finally, he took it.
It was such a little thing, but it wounded something deep inside me. Not with pain—never with him, never ever—but with the sense of how peace came to you. With how beautiful it was to be desired and regarded without first having to get it for yourself.
"You come here a lot, huh?" I goaded, pushed into him.
"Not as much as I would like I do," he answered. "It's hard to find room for silence when you've trained yourself to be in turmoil."
"And yet you brought me here."
He gazed down at me, his smile soft, his eyes full of some unspoken feeling. "Because you calm the turmoil."
I didn't have an answer for that, so I held his hand closer instead.
And then we just stood there and sat on a piece of driftwood in the sand like a makeshift chair. Caspian shrugged his coat off and put it around my shoulders quietly. The wind wasn't chilly, but he did it anyway. That was how he was—he sensed things, always. Even when he said nothing.
We sat for what seemed an impossibly long amount of time, not uttering a word, just watching the waves crest and fall. There was something about it, there was a rhythm to it, like breathing. Like a reminder that the world would go on, regardless of whether we merely were.
"I hated still thinking," I confessed to myself, not looking at him. "I think if I wasn't doing something—working, repairing, proving—I would just vanish."
Caspian didn't respond immediately. He bent and picked up a flat stone, and he skipped it out onto the waves. It skipped twice before the water closed over it.
"I know that fear," he said. "It lingered with me a long time."
I looked at him. "Does it still?"
He looked back at me, and the tension eased from him. "No. Not anymore."
The wind whipped through my hair. He leaned in and pushed the hair away from my ear. His fingers lingered there long enough to remind me how to not breathe.
"Do you ever think," I breathed, "about how we ended up here? After all of that?
"Every time." His thumb swept along the rim of my jaw. "But I gave up trying to get any sense out of it. I just want to hold it."
That expression he gave me—it rooted me. Anchored me. Not the fiery kind, but the seeping kind. That encircles my ribs and says you're home now.
I leaned into his touch. "Thanks for bringing me here."
"You needed it."
"And you?"
He shrugged, slightly, but his eyes betrayed him. "I needed it more than I realized."
The silence that followed wasn't one of nothingness. It was one of things we weren't saying aloud. Things we didn't need to. Silence among two people who knew one another past the surface.
The sun wandered down, casting an orange tint to ripple across the lake. I leaned against Caspian, my head on his shoulder. His arm engulfed me, holding me, holding me near, holding me against him.
I shut my eyes.
"I never want to leave here," I breathed.
He didn't answer, but I could feel the rise and fall of his chest against my side, steady and warm.
Several minutes. Or possibly more. Time wasn't important here.
"Tell me something you've never told anyone else," I stuttered, not even sure why. Maybe because the air was too full of trust to puncture this moment.
Caspian didn't respond for a very long time. I feared that I'd asked too much.
And then he did.
"When I was seventeen," he said, "I skipped out for two days. No one knew.". I lied and told my parents that I was on a business seminar that my dad had sent me for, but really I wasn't. I took a train out to the beach and slept over in this awful motel and just sat on the beach all night. Just staring out at the ocean. I had been thinking that if I sat there long enough, the rest of the world would simply just fade away without me.
I had started to turn to him, to look up. "What happened?"
"I went back," he said harshly. "And I never did it again. But I think some part of me… stayed there. Waiting."
"And now?"
He looked down at me, his eyes shining in the sunlight. "Now I know what I was waiting for."
My breath caught.
The gentleness in his voice, the hurt behind the truth—it was everything I ever wanted and didn't dare to want. And it was here. With him.
I kissed him.
Not desperate. Not urgent.
A kiss that said I see you.
A kiss that said I'm not going anywhere.
When I drew him back, he pressed his brow to mine. "I used to believe love was something you won. Fought for. Suffered through."
"And now?"
"Now I believe it can be gentle," he breathed. "And that the gentleness doesn't weaken it. Makes it worth it."
I shut my eyes. Let his words wash over me like the tide washed over the shore.
It wasn't flawless. It wasn't deafening. It wasn't the tale the world had been waiting to hear.
But it was ours.
And in the stillness between the waves, I finally knew what it was to remain.