Chapter 16: You once asked me who I loved most in this world
The photo was a physical ache in her hand. Tessa stared at the shimmer of the lake, the blurry shape of them tangled together in the water, until her vision blurred. She placed it face down on the grass, its glossy back a silent void.
The wind picked up, lifting the corners of the handwritten pages in her lap. She took a sharp, steadying breath that did nothing to calm the tremor in her hands.
She forced her eyes to focus on the first line, her heart a frantic, trapped thing against her ribs.
I’ve read hundreds of novels in my life, most of them calming that love was the centre of the universe.
She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand. The words blurred, then cleared.
That it would heal any damage inside of us, that it is what we need to survive. From Darcy to Heathcliff I thought they were fools.
She could hear his voice, the rough cadence of his doubt. A leaf skittered across the page; she brushed it away, her fingers cold.
That love was something fictional, only found in the worn pages of a book but that has all changed since I met my Elizabeth Bennett.
A sudden, sharpness tore through her chest. She pressed her hand to her chest.
I never thought I would find myself completely and utterly consumed by another until her.
The confession was stark, unadorned. It didn’t feel like manipulation. It felt like a bone laid bare. She kept reading, the wind a whisper through the oak branches above.
she took my hand and led me out of the darkness and showed me that whatever our souls are made of, hers and mine are the same.
“Wuthering Heights,” she whispered to the empty air. He was quoting their book back at her, weaponizing the very story that had first connected them.
I’m sorry, please forgive me.
The simplicity of it undid her. Not an excuse, not a justification for the bet, the video, the snapped fingers. Just a plea.
You once asked who I loved most in this world.
Her eyes dropped to the final line, alone in the center of the page.
It’s you.
The world narrowed to those two words, all the noise in her head—the hurt, the betrayal, the humiliation—hushed into a ringing, impossible silence.
She stared at the page until the ink seemed to swim. Then she gathered the photo and the pages, her movements slow and precise, and stood on legs that felt unfamiliar.
She walked. She didn’t think about where. Her feet carried her past the library, its stone facade looming, and down the path that wound behind the athletic fields. The air grew colder, damper, smelling of pine and wet earth. She could hear the lake before she saw it, a gentle, lapping whisper against the shore.
The old wooden bridge was ahead, its planks gray and weathered. Her heart hammered a brutal, irregular rhythm against her sternum. She stepped onto it, the wood creaking under her weight, and walked to the middle.
She sat down on the rough edge, her jeans scraping the timber. She unlaced her shoes, pulling them off with stiff fingers, then her socks. She rolled her jeans up to her knees. The water was shockingly cold, a sharp gasp climbing her throat as she lowered her feet in. The chill bit, then numbed.
She looked out into the water, at the dark, reflected canopy of trees. She held the photo in her lap, facing up. Them. In the water.
The memory didn’t arrive gently. It slammed into her, vivid and merciless.
The lake water was cool, not cold, a silken shock against her sun-warmed skin. He was already in, his hair dark and plastered to his forehead.
When she stood at the edge, he was right there. His hands found her waist, steadying her, his thumbs pressing into the dip above her hip bones.
They tread water, facing each other, noses almost touching. Droplets clung to his lashes, magnifying the blue of his eyes. The world was reduced to this: the slurred sound of their movement in the water, the clean mineral scent of the lake, the solid heat of him so close in the chill.
They leaned in his lips cold from the water but his mouth unbearably warm. The kiss tasted like summer and depth and something perilously like hope.
When they broke apart, breathless, he just looked at her. He didn’t smile. His expression was severe, almost pained, as if seeing her clearly for the first time was a physical blow.
He just kept looking, his eyes searching hers with a terrifying intensity, as if memorizing the exact shade of blue, the pattern of droplets on her skin.
She stared at the spot where the memory played, but only the dark, indifferent surface stared back. Her feet, submerged, were completely numb.
The cold had climbed to her shins, a deep, biting ache that felt more real than the turmoil in her chest. She stared at the colors of the sky—the impossible blue of the sky, the green of the trees—seemed to bleed.