Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 24

He groaned. “Betts.”

“She’s taming you,” I teased, laughing. “Like a dog. Giving you treats to earn your loyalty.”

“She’s just being friendly.”

“She’s being strategically friendly.”

He laughed again, one hand gripping the steering wheel, the other rubbing the back of his neck like he was flustered but pretending not to be. “I’m not ready for something like that.”

I nodded, resting my chin on the window edge as we passed by a blur of trees. “I know, Dad. But… Mom would want you to be happy, too. To fall in love again. To have someone beside you.”

He didn’t answer right away. But I saw it---the way his jaw relaxed just a little, the way his shoulders dropped like a tension had been unlocked.

Then he smiled. Not a fake one. Not the tight-lipped, “I’m fine” kind. But one that held both guilt and hope. If that’s even possible. And somehow, I understood it.

Because isn’t that what being human is?

Holding two feelings that shouldn’t exist together, and yet… they do. Guilt and hope. Grief and laughter. Love and fear.
Missing someone and letting someone else in. Wishing things stayed the same while finally accepting that they won’t.
Wanting to protect someone, even when you’re the one that needs saving. We have only one heart, and yet somehow, it manages to hold all of it. The whole tangled mess. The ache and the joy and the uncertainty.

All at once.

And maybe that’s the most miraculous thing about humans, we break and we bleed, but we also carry. We carry people. We carry memories. We carry possibilities. My dad didn’t say anything else for the rest of the drive. He didn’t need to. I think, for the first time in a long while, we both knew what the other meant without having to explain it.

When he pulled up in front of the school, I leaned over and gave his arm a squeeze. “Thanks for driving me,” I said.

“Always, kid” he replied.

And when I stepped out into the school grounds, I wasn’t the same girl I was the day before. I wasn’t whole. But I was healing.

As I stepped through the school gates, it felt like everything had been… turned up. The light, the sounds, the colors. The same hallway I’d walked through a hundred times now seemed to breathe differently, less like a tunnel, more like a garden path.

Alive. Soft. Hopeful.

I glanced at my wrist beneath my sleeve. It tingled faintly--- the sting of healing. Of something torn slowly weaving itself back together.

Then---

A soft and warm hand covered my eyes from behind. It felt like…

Home.

"Guess who?" a familiar voice teased behind me.

"Mojo Jojo?" I said without missing a beat, already laughing.

His hands slipped away and before I could turn fully, James pulled me in for a kiss--- quick, barely more than a second---but it nearly lifted me into the sky. His scent--- clean laundry, faint citrus, something warm like sunlit wood. The taste of him, mint, maybe coffee, and something distinctly him. His warmth, anchoring and tender. His touch, steady, like I could fall apart and he’d still catch every piece. It felt like a cloud diffuser was chasing the storm away from inside me. For a moment, I closed my eyes and looked inward--- at the jar I kept sealed deep within. It sat cracked and slightly ajar now. My emotions spilled out like toxic waste leaking from a rusty drum left in some forgotten dump. But I didn’t flinch at the mess this time. Because someone stood beside me now. Someone who saw the mess and didn’t turn away. Someone who believed in me. Who kissed the hand I once used to hurt myself and held it like it was precious.