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“I’m sorry, Kie.”
The history they had together began spinning through his mind, and every word he’d never said tried to come spilling out at once at the sight of her. That he found her somehow, he found her .
His hands holding onto her shoulders, the edges of her lips shifted upward, nodding her head. “I love you,” she said again.
The words from the anniversary party he’d rolled off. The words he’d tried to run away from, hide away from her ever since they got back home the first time. He couldn’t hear that time; he couldn't hear anything, then.
But the thing was, it wasn’t a matter of whether or not he loved her, that had never been the matter. Worthlessness seeped into his brain and took root in the walls of it, constantly telling him who was. Not feeling worthy of her love, that had always been the matter.
But hearing it repeated again, the adrenaline pumping through him of finding her, her running to him down from the top bunk, and the déjà vu of the first time it happened when they were reunited after Singh, the reins he wound tight so hard his knuckles bleed… it’s almost as if they began to unravel themselves.
In the mess that had been their past few years, in their chase for the next treasure, it was still them. They were still just the same two kids who’d paddled out to the dock on the other side of the marsh where they would lay their bare backs pressed to the wood. He’d always push her in.
His eyes softened; her words making their way through the wall that had built in his brain.
Actions, actions were always the way he understood things, he was never one for words. But suddenly he understood the three words she'd told him. She loved him no matter what his brain would try to distort, her voice would be there by his side. It would remind him every day if he needed it to.
“I love you too,” he breathed out.
Someone in the world loved him in the way he did, and it wasn’t just someone; it was his best friend, the only person who he’d ever felt truly understood all of him and hadn’t run from it.
He didn’t know who leaned in first as he let it fall, but it felt subconscious. It no longer mattered that they were standing in a dorm in Kitty Hawk or that the rest of the Pogues just took off without them to South America, all of it seemed to drift out the open cabin window.
It wasn't true anymore. It wasn’t, because suddenly what had always been there became crystal clear. Maybe they were running from it then, but they weren’t running from it anymore. They were running into it, headstrong, even if .
In the darkness, her hands found their way onto his face like it was second nature—only it wasn’t, but at the same time it felt inevitable as if they were magnets being pulled together by a force they couldn't hold back—and his arms found their way around her.
Her parents sent her here to keep her away from him but the one thing they didn’t realize in their perfectly schemed plan was that it would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. The straw that overflowed a cup that had been spilling over the edges.
It only showed them that there was no way he was ever going to let her go anywhere, not without him by her side, her exasperated face as he mentioned his next crazy scheme. He’d break any lock of any door to find her and she’d always come running as she did down that dock.
All the desperation he had ever felt in his life—the stolen glances, the watching from afar, the longing he’d felt ever since he’d known her—faded away into a murmur he could no longer hear. Somewhere in the blur, the screams that had erupted from the rest of the girls cut in and they had seconds before the real world would come crashing in. They had their whole life to keep doing that now. They broke apart, eyes boring into each other’s. It was everything at once, it was the realization of what had always been there. It was deciding to break out of the things that held them back and screw the things that would try to divide them. It was to love each other despite everything that happened before it and would happen after it.
“Woah, woah, keep it down, guys,” JJ hissed.
Kiara ran toward her bunk and grabbed her bag as he waited for her, grabbing her hand like he’d thought about doing every day since they started running from police and dodging danger left and right. A hand, warm and steady clutched in his, fingers tightly intertwined reminding them neither would ever be as alone or unsafe as they felt inside.
And so they ran out the unlocked door, hands locked in each other’s, the rest of the world fading.
Off to South America…
But it carried no weight now, they could be going anywhere.
Spain, South America, South Africa, one of the South places, and maybe Micronesia.
One thing was for sure and would always be:
This time they were going there with each other.