Chapter 159: The soft armor of ordinary
The sky was a porcelain gray—so pale and so soft, and clouds moved slowly by as though they had no pressing business to attend to either.
I woke up slowly, as if my body had finally let out the breath it had been holding for so long. The blankets were warm against me, crumpled where Caspian had only recently been. He was not a surprise come and gone, but to wake up and see that the kettle was already boiling.
The house was quiet, broken only by the relentless pounding of rain against the windows and the calming hum of something classical quietly piping through the speakers in the living room.
I wrapped his shirt around my body, running my fingers over the threadbare, silky material. It still smelled of him—of rain and cedar and something underneath words. I made my way down the hall naked, running my fingertips along the wall like I do when my head is spinning.
Caspian was in the kitchen, turned back towards me, rolled-up sleeves, relaxed stance. He did not turn right away, but I could see when he did. His shoulders faced the other way, his head cocked to the side, and then his face turned towards me.
There was something in his eye—tenderness and ordinariness—that irritated my heart slightly. As if he glanced at me. Not the portion of me that lived here, but the gentler portion that I was trying to conceal. The portion still clinging to old shadows.
"Hey," he said, softly.
"Hey." I leaned back against the doorframe again.
"I made coffee. Yours is on the right."
"Did you put cream in it?"
"Of course I did."
I entered the kitchen and took the mug that he was offering. My palms wrapped around it in a matter of seconds. The warmth radiated through my skin, grounding me.
He came back to the window table, where the rain had started to distort the world outside. A book was open on the edge of the table next to his phone—face down, screen intact. I hardly saw the edge of Nathaniel's last text, still resonating across the screen in silence.
I did not ask if Caspian had opened it. He had not. I could tell by the placement of his fingers above the phone but not on it. By where his eyes were focused on me, not on it.
We simply sat there in silence for a minute or two, the kind that didn't need words. The leaves of the trees outside rustled gently to the wind, dark and glistening with the rain from earlier that morning.
"I like mornings like this," I said finally. "Where the world seems it's whispering."
He nodded. "Time all slows down."
"I wish sometimes it would."
"I know." His hand curled around mine, filling the distance between us. His fingers brushed against mine for an instant before intertwining. It had been a soft motion, but it was more than a promise.
"Okay?"
"I will be." I hesitated. "It's strange. I thought hearing from Nathaniel would tear something in half. But it didn't. It just. drained the life out of me."
"You don't owe him another one of your energies."
"I know." I glared into my coffee. "It's impossible not to feel like he has something on you still. Not something tangible, but. memory."
Caspian's hold on my hand grew stronger. "You're not the same person he was accustomed to."
"I know. And sometimes, in the quiet times—when I'm flossing or ripping on socks—I don't know if there's still some of me holding my breath waiting for the other shoe to fall."
His thumb caressed the skin of my wrist gently. "Perhaps that's trauma. Perhaps it's just being human."
I caught a glimpse of him then, actually saw—and something warm pressed against my ribs, solid and full. He was studying me with that fierce attention that never falters, even when I show him the filthiest regions of my heart.
I didn't require him to make it all right. He didn't try. He just stayed with me as the storm blew.
"I want to go," I declared brusquely. "Some place quiet."
"Even when it's raining?"
I shrugged. "It's just drizzling."
He smiled. "Okay. I know where."
We dressed in clothes—him one of his large, heavy coats, me his blue windbreaker—and set out into the gray morning. The air was heavy with wet asphalt and wet earth odors. There was a stillness to everything, a quiet that hung from the trees and roofs like a soft blanket.
Caspian took us along the coast, down winding back roads lined with mossy oaks and misty fields. There wasn't much said between us in the car, but the quiet wasn't oppressive. It was breathing-holding.
He stopped at a small overlook, where the road went down to a secluded, silent beach. It was deserted except for a pair of seagulls and the gentle lapping of waves.
We made our way down the slope, sloshing in wet sand in our boots. I wrote sea and salt and some kind of clarity.
It was low tide, the sky a pale canvas over the gray-blue. I took off my boots and waded out to the water's edge, cold surf crawled over my toes.
Caspian followed behind, hands buried deep in his coat, eyes on me the whole time.
"It's beautiful," I'd said.
"It's you," he whispered, his voice barely audible so that I could barely hear him.
I stared at him.
There it was again, the look. Feral. Indelible. Like he could not possibly look anywhere else if he could.
"Repeat that," I breathed.
"You," he whispered, advancing, "are. Beautiful."
The kiss had not been desperate. 'D hadn't been desperate like the other nights. It was calm, and deep, and confident. His fingers framed my face as if I was delicate and powerful at the same time. As if I was a storm that he'd resolved to stand before, rather than run away from.
As he stepped back, I hovered there for a minute, brow against his, the sea booming in back of us like a second heart.
"Thank you, I whispered.
"For what?"
"For not making me feel little in this."
"You're anything but little, Lily."
We walked another minute, hand in hand, across the wet beach, gathering sea glass and smooth rocks like kids. We didn't talk about the message. We didn't talk about next. We just were, hand in hand, under the warm blanket of the ordinary.
And I didn't feel hunted for the first time in a while.