Page 40 of Journey to Cheshire Bay
He nuzzled into my back, and his words were as far off as if he’d yelled them from the other side of the ship. “There’s so much I want to tell you, and there’s so much I can’t. This is killing me.”
I inhaled a lungful of the ocean air, desperately tried to keep my unstable emotions in check, but the start of a crack surfaced in my words. “Me too.”
There was no comforting embrace or friendly expression. No words of encouragement. Our time was ticking down, and maybe like me, he didn’t know how to move forward from that.
With each painful step towards the bow, I deepened the crevasse growing between us. I approached a railing and leaned away, staring blindly into the depths of the blue-grey waters lapping against the hull.
Voices milled all around, a mixture of excitement and incoming boredom, but most jockeyed for a position to watch the ship leave the dock. It was getting crowded, and a suffocating claustrophobia started to hover.
A loud air horn sounded, and I nearly jumped the railing to the car deck below, but Holden had the foresight to grab hold of me a second before.
“Should’ve warned you. Sorry.”
My knuckles turned white from the death grip I gave the ice-cold railing.
“Here we go.” He boxed me in and kissed my shoulder when the boat shuddered and rocked as it cast off from the terminal.
“What about your grandparents?” Suddenly chilled to the bones from the breeze, I huddled deeper into my jacket and pulled my hands into the sleeves.
“Right.” He pulled out his phone and made a quick call.
The conversation went by again without a mention of me, or of him having travelled with anyone, but rather than start a fight and end on a low note, I let it slide. Instead, I texted Amber and waited for her response.
Holden ended the call with a whisp of excitement. “Less than two hours, and I’ll be home. Finally. Made it in the nick of time. Tonight, I’ll be out observing, and tomorrow—”
“You’ll be able to start your new career.” My voice collapsed under the weight of the future.
It was hard to believe how much had happened over the course of a couple of days, even less than that, really. The past thirty-three hours had felt like a week or more.
“Yeah,” his voice solemn and weak. “My new life awaits me. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted, right?”
It was a rhetorical question, as his gaze flew off me and went as far away as possible. The light was gone in his eyes, and his shoulders rolled forward from an imaginary weight bringing him down. I was sure by this point he’d be thrilled about the new beginnings. He’d worked so hard to achieve all his goals, they were within his grasp. Why the sudden change of heart?
He cleared his throat, and quickly turned to me. “What about you? What are you going to do when you get to your cousin’s home?”
I shrugged, my gaze focusing on anything but the sadness in his dull green eyes; the sparkle diminished with each passing minute. “All I’d thought about was getting away from Toronto. I’d never really pictured what I’d be doing if I finally succeeded.”
Thirty-six hours ago,thathad been my only goal. To escape all the hurt, pain, and loneliness I’d shouldered and endured. For a few hours, I’d been free of it all. Never figured being this far away from it, it would somehow find me again.
“You’re across the country, so I’d say you succeeded.” There was a hint of pride in his voice, but it was the distanced look in his eyes haunting me more, and I tore myself away.
There was a gentle swaying motion to the boat, and over the speakers, music played.
Holden reached for my hand, and I placed it in his. He wrapped his hand around my waist and pulled me closer, moving in time to the beat.
“Here?” I asked. We weren’t really going to dance here, in front of people. This wasn’t a bar.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not, I don’t know, proper?”
“So what? Let’s live for this moment. Let me memorize everything about you. Like you are doing.”
Which was true. I was trying to take as many mental pictures as possible. I huddled against him, pulling his hand in close to my chest as he held me tight. We swayed and shuffled our feet, and I inhaled ever moment. The firm way his arm wrapped around me, and the gentle position of his hand on my lower back. The softness of the sweater my cheek was leaning on, thick enough to absorb the tears I couldn’t hold back. The way his jaw pressed against my forehead, like we’d been a couple forever, and not just a few hours.
It killed part of my soul to realize how happy I’d been with Holden, and how perfectly at peace I’d been. I had been who I was, and not what someone needed me to be, and he’d been completely accepting of that.
In less than two hours, we’d be going our separate ways. Despite being relatively close distance wise, an island still stretched between us; me on the west side, him on the east. A five-hour drive at least. Hardly easy for a weekend hookup, especially with his work hours at the observatory.