Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 130275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 651(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130275 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 651(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Poppy had taught him that. To view the world as one big adventure. She was fearless, and embraced life with her arms wide open. Rune had honored that by taking picture after picture of the world’s wonders in tribute to the girl who’d left him too soon.
My arms stayed trapped around my waist. And I realized now that that did not serve me at all. I hadn’t even tried to live. I’d just allowed myself to be taken down into a back void of sadness and stripped of all hope. What would happen if I just tried to embrace life? Just for a while?
What if I allowed in love?
I opened my eyes and saw the twinkling, colored string lights that adorned the square shimmer in my periphery. I tipped my forehead to the windowpane, then looked down … Suddenly, I sat up straighter and held my breath when I saw a solitary figure walking up to the now-empty ice rink, a few scattered streetlights the only source of light.
But it was enough for me to see everything.
To see Cael stop at the entrance of the rink, his boots a centimeter from the edge of ice. Every inch of his body was taut, and his hands fisted at his side. Breath held, I watched, enraptured as he knelt down and removed his gloves. Tucking them in his pocket, he warred with himself for minutes and minutes, before placing his hands palms down on the ice.
And then he stayed that way. Stayed that way so long that my mind wandered, and I heard Poppy’s voice in my head whisper, “Keep your heart open and let love in when it should present itself …”
This boy … this boy had captured something inside of me. And seeing him right now, alone at the rink that was once his place of solace, was my undoing.
Letting my heart lead me, I jumped off the window seat. I ignored the curfew set by Mia and Leo, took hold of my coat, and fled from the room. I let my courage steer me out of the hotel doors, unseen by Leo and Mia and out onto the sleepy square. Only a few people milled around at this late hour. But I didn’t pay them any mind. Instead, I made my way to the boy on his knees, broken and alone, and joined him on the ground.
His head whipped to the side when I knelt beside him. Tears washed his face with pent-up pain, and, without thought, and needing to embrace the person I had opened my heart to, I wrapped my arms around him. At first, he stilled, and I worried he was mad at me for approaching him. That maybe I’d been too presumptuous and that he didn’t want company in this heart-aching moment.
But I sighed in relief when Cael quickly gave in and wrapped his arms around me too … and held on like he would never let go.
His shuddering sobs were like bullets to my soul, each one penetrating farther and farther, until he had shredded me where we sat. “Sav,” he murmured against the side of my neck. His tears fled down the skin of my collarbone and underneath my coat. Tears I knew he had kept trapped for too many months to count, eating away at him, day by day.
His hands were freezing from where he had been touching the ice. But I embraced the cold. If it helped Cael in this moment, helped him release himself from the heavy shackles of grief, I would plunge myself into the arctic sea just to help him heal.
I ran my hands through his hair, taking his beanie off and placing it on the ground beside us. I didn’t say anything. There were no words of comfort that would help right now. Silence was soothing. And I knew what this emotional exorcism felt like. It was a torrent, a flash flood of grief so strong it destroyed anything in its path.
Cael’s fingers raked at my back, like he was trying to find a way to be closer. He was raw and vulnerable, flayed open and emotionally exposed. Cael never mentioned any friends or family from home. At least I had Ida and my parents. I had Aunt DeeDee and Rune.
Who did he have to fall on in times of need? Had he pushed them away like he’d tried to keep us all at a distance?
I ran my hands soothingly through his messy waves; he continued breaking apart. He broke and broke, his salty tears endless. It felt like we were completely alone as we stayed kneeling on the cold ground, Norway continuing to exist around us.
Several minutes passed, and Cael’s body began to calm. My sweatshirt and coat were drenched from his tears, but those tears seemed to be slowing too. Still, I held him. I held him until those tears had run dry and his erratic breathing had shifted to labored, heavy breaths.