Their trip to the lakes was nearly halfway through - they had five days left. They never wanted it to end. Taylor finally felt like she was herself. Finally felt like there weren't eyes watching her and every move she made. She still felt the guilt hang heavy over her head from last night, she could barely sleep. Taylor couldn't believe that she hadn't been able to do it. Because she really wanted to. She wanted to do it with him, and she knew that he wasn't Adam. She knew that. But she just... couldn't. She felt so embarrassed about herself, felt like she was a failure.
"Good morning," Joe turned to face her in bed, kissing her forehead. "How did you sleep?"
"I didn't... I couldn't sleep." Taylor admitted to him softly. She nestled into his chest, as he pulled the blankets back up over them. "I just feel so bad that I didn't..." She fretted. "I should have. I'm sorry."
Joe responded by leaning in and kissing her. "You have nothing to apologise for. And you shouldn't have. I would have felt awful if you'd done it when you weren't ready, love. I wouldn't have forgiven myself. It's honestly okay that you couldn't. I'm just so happy that you told me you couldn't do it. You don't have to feel bad, Taylor. I don't want you to feel bad." He breathed. "I'll wait as long as necessary for you to feel like you can. I don't mind, please trust me."
"I just feel like I should have been able to." She bit her lip. "I feel so embarrassed." She pulled the cover up over her head, hiding away from those Atlantis blue eyes.
She smiled when she saw Joe's head peak in underneath the blankets. She laughed as he pulled the covers over his head too.
"You don't need to hide - there's nothing to be embarrassed about. I'm not even thinking about it." He assured her. Joe laced his fingers through hers, bringing her hand up to his lips. "I love you, Taylor. I don't care about what did or didn't happen last night. I just want you to be happy. You're allowed to say no, and you're allowed to not feel comfortable with something."
She smiled at him. "Maybe we could just hide here, at the lakes forever."
"I would love to hide here with you. Imagine - waking up to this every morning, and living like this." He sighed, pulling her into his chest. "I don't care where I am, as long as it's with you."
Taylor kissed him. She was the luckiest woman in the entire world.
Before lunch, they'd had a tour of Beatrix Potter's house, and Taylor was in love. She'd always loved the tales of Peter Rabbit and all of her other stories. Her mom used to read them to her before she went to bed - and if Taylor was lucky, she'd get to read two of them. Even in winter, this place was spectacular. Taylor had already concluded that they were going to have to come back here, that they would have to come back in summer. She was already planning what they'd do next time they came. Before they'd left, Joe had told his parents that he was in the United Kingdom, that he'd be coming to stay with them. With his girlfriend, Taylor heard him say. She'd heard the warmth on his lips as he had told them that he was coming, heard the happiness. She was happy too, seeing him like this. She'd never get tired of seeing that glimmer in his eyes.
Now, they were on their way to do a horse trek around the Windermere peaks.
"I suppose that now would be a bad time to say that I am terrified of horses?" Joe said as they pulled up to the stables. Taylor couldn't help herself and burst out laughing.
"Why?"
"I had... a bad experience as a child and it's scarred me for life." A smile found its way onto his lips.
"What happened?"
"I fell off one time - and broke my arm in three places. I was in the hospital for a month." Joe told her. "They couldn't get the cast right," He shook his head.
"I'll help you." Taylor took his arm as they walked inside. "You won't fall off this time. If you don't want to do this that's okay too, there's a nice walking track a few miles from here."
"No, I'll give it a go. But you'd better wait in the hospital with me when a horse squashes me." He cautioned as they walked over.
"They're not going to hurt you." Taylor leaned up and kissed his cheek. She'd arranged this with the lady who owned the cottage they were staying in. It was an older man who had absolutely no clue who they were.
Taylor had plenty of horse riding experience and led both horses over to Joe. She was so excited.
"It's going to be fine." She smiled as Joe's eyebrows knitted together. "They're nice and gentle. I made sure that he gave you an older horse with a quiet personality." She handed Joe a helmet, and he reluctantly put it on his head.
"This is fine..." He said quietly.
"We can turn back at any time. Look, she's lovely." Taylor stroked the horse, and looked over at Joe. He'd taken a couple of steps towards her. She was proud of him. "Her name is Edda." The horse whinnied at the sound of her name, and Joe looked over at Taylor with his eyes wide. "We don't have to do this," she assured him.
"No, I want to. I'm going to." Joe proceeded to get onto the horse. He seems surprised that Edda didn't throw him off of her the moment he touched her.
"Good job!" Taylor exclaimed, putting on her own helmet. "See, you did it!" She was so happy that he was giving this a go.
"Are you sure that doing that isn't going to make her mad..." Joe said as Taylor tried to convince him to get her to trot faster.
"She isn't going to throw you off." Taylor assured him. "But if you don't want to we don't have to!"
Joe was giving everything a go, and Taylor was so proud that he was actually doing it. She smiled as they rode together.
"That was terrifying," Joe said as he got off the horse, "but I will admit that it was fun, too." They'd had such a lovely time together. Joe actually did very well, and Taylor wrapped her arms around him. They'd taken several photos on their way back - mostly so that Joe could show his brothers that he'd been on a horse. Taylor was so happy that they'd been doing so many firsts together. She hoped that there'd be a lot more together in the future.
When they got back into the car, Joe turned to look over at her.
"You know, I wouldn't have done that with anyone else. I don't think that there would be another person on this earth that could somehow convince me to go horse riding." He admitted with a smile. He took her hand, and squeezed it. It was a cold day, but his hands were so warm. His eyes were summer, an oasis that she wanted all to herself.
They had a long drive home, and they were blasting songs in the car. They'd put together a playlist of all of their favourite songs for them to play while driving. Taylor was driving them home, she felt bad because Joe had been driving her everywhere and she wanted to give him the chance to take in the sights from the passenger seat.
Yellow by Coldplay started playing. This was one of Joe's all time favourites, and when he heard it, he turned to her with a smile.
"You know what?" He asked her softly.
"What?" Taylor glanced at him quickly with a smile.
"You're my yellow."
She felt her heart flutter. She felt it explode into a thousand different fireflies. If they weren't driving, she would have flung her arms around his neck and kissed him.
"I love you so much," Taylor told him, her voice shaking. "You're my yellow, too. It's kind of funny... when you think of the connection between yellow, and gold, and daylight." She couldn't believe that it was even possible to feel this in love with a person. She didn't realise that this is what love was supposed to feel like. It set her on fire. She'd burn for him. She'd set herself ablaze for him. She'd hold a candle for him until her arm ached if it meant that he'd never see darkness again.
The night slipped away, and they had planned to make homemade pizza together. Taylor was getting changed in the bedroom, and Joe was pouring the wine. Taylor looked at her body in the mirror, the way that her ribs didn't stick out so much, the way that she'd gained curves in places where she hadn't had them before. She couldn't tell whether she liked it. She knew that she should. But she was looking better now. She was healthier. She had this glow about her that she'd never had before. She liked that glow. She studied her body, the way that the bruises on her stomach had almost completely faded, the way that the bruise on her neck had dissolved into nothing. Soon there wouldn't be a trace of Adam on her. Her arm was looking good too. Some of the scars had turned white, fading slightly. She knew that they'd never really leave, but Taylor hoped that they'd heal to the point where she was able to forget they are there.
She chucked on a matching lounge wear set that she had cramped at the bottom of her suitcase. It was a gorgeous sea foam green and had little white cats dotted all over it. She missed Olivia and Meredith so much, but she was glad that she knew her mom was looking after them. She would have hated the stress of looking after them in such a foreign place.
She crept out into the kitchen, where Joe was humming to himself again. She loved hearing him hum like that, she didn't even know if they were really songs or whether they were little melodies that he'd come up with himself.
She was just about to open her mouth, when her phone beeped in her pocket. She felt herself deflate. Joe turned around to look at her. She looked and saw that it was Tree. Who she'd asked not to call her unless it was an emergency. She closed her eyes, took a big gulp of wine, before answering. She mouthed sorry to Joe, but as always, he didn't seem to mind.
"What's wrong?" Taylor asked as she went into the bathroom. "What has happened?"
"I thought that you were with Joe this month?" Tree asked her and Taylor's face distorted.
"I'm with Joe in Windermere right as we speak." Taylor didn't know where this was coming from. "I told you that we were going and asked to only be called in an emergency."
"If you're with Joe," Tree said slowly, "Then why has Adam just posted a photo of the two of you together in L.A.?"
"You have got to be kidding me." Taylor groaned. She stormed out to the dining table and pulled her iPad out of her handbag. "When did he post it?"
"Half an hour ago - I assume that you can bring it up?" Tree asked. Taylor felt sick. Because there, on Adam's Instagram, was a photo of the two of them. It was a photo that they'd taken ages ago - about five or six months ago. It was a photo of the two of them sitting having dinner together. They'd taken a selfie that night because Adam insisted she post about it. She'd never gotten around to it. But she couldn't believe that he was trying to fool everyone that she was still with him. What was he trying to achieve with that? And it was his caption that made her feel so sick.
Sitting in L.A right now and Taylor just said how lucky she was to have me; I told her that it goes both ways. Love you babe.
"Taylor? Are you there?" Tree asked her. "We can get Instagram to take it down, but so many people have seen it already - there's already nearly half a million comments."
"He just doesn't stop," Taylor murmured. She felt defeated. How could he keep doing this? Would he continue to haunt her forever?
"No... no he doesn't. But maybe there is a way that you can... prove him wrong. Maybe if you and Joe posted something from your trip... people could see that Adam is lying."
Her heart sunk. She didn't want to post a photo of her and Joe together. She didn't want them to know how intimate they were with one another.
"Okay, Tree. I'll look through and see what we can do." Taylor sighed. She was never meant to have a holiday. "I'll call you back later." She was so tired of having to deal with this drama. She couldn't be bothered with it anymore. She just wanted it all to stop.
She hung up the phone.
"What happened?" Joe asked her as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders.
"Adam is now pretending that we're still together." Taylor let out a shaky breath. "He's posted a photo that we took months and months ago pretending that it is us now. So Tree thinks I need to post something to show that I'm not there... until she can get in touch with Instagram to remove the photo." Her words hung in the air.
"I've got an idea," Joe said as he pulled his phone out from his pocket. "I know that we want to keep this on the down low, and maybe we can still do that. It will be subtle, but I guess if your fans are good detectives, then they'll find out." He swiped through the photos from today, and found one of Taylor, standing with her back to the Windermere peaks and the glittering water behind her. There was almost an identical one, only with Joe staring out at the glistening water. "We both post these. People who see one without the other will just think one of us is just at a forest somewhere. People who see the photos together will know that we are together. It's subtle, it doesn't show any of our relationship and means that we can still be private." Joe's mind was genius. She nodded. It was a great idea. It really was. It did everything that it needed to without giving any details of their relationship away. It was perfect. It meant everything to her that Joe respected her desire for privacy - that he'd think of this. That he'd give her the ideas she needed to ensure she didn't have to expose themselves.
She phoned Tree back, telling her about their idea. Tree said that it sounded perfect, and that instagram were responding soon. Taylor and Joe both posted their photos at the same time, even down to the same tree and sparkle emoji. She couldn't believe that once again, Adam had ruined it.
She just started to find her feet again, and then he turned around and did this. When would it ever stop?
Taylor felt so nervous. What would people say when they found the connection between their posts? When her fans realised what was going on? From the comments under Adam's post, she knew that they'd all said they were disappointed that she'd gone back to him after he hurt her. But they didn't know that she was not back there, that she was in the arms of another. They didn't know that she'd quite frankly, rather die than go back to him. She looked down at her phone, at the lovey photo of her and Joe that she'd saved as her lock screen and smiled. He'd told her last night that this pain wouldn't last forever, that it would end. She knew that. She turned to face Joe.
"What are you going to put on your pizza?" She was not going to let Adam ruin her holiday, and she was not going to let him put a divide between her and Joe. She refused to let her walls come back up. She wouldn't do that.
Joe kissed her forehead. "We'll see what we can find."
For the first time since she'd met Joe, it was easy to forget Adam. She was so angry and frustrated with him, and yet she wouldn't think of him. She wouldn't give him that satisfaction. They were sitting in front of the fire playing scrabble. She didn't even let Adam enter her head. Because this was her time. She couldn't control what Adam decided to do, but she could control whether she let it affect her. And she decided that it wasn't going to. Not this time.
"I'm getting better," Joe smiled. "I might beat you tonight."
Taylor laughed. "We'll see about that!" She was not going to let Adam control her anymore. He would not ruin her happiness anymore. She was going to let this go.
She'd posted the photo, which had blown up already with fans trying to decide where she was. They'd already made the connection between her and Joe's post, and she smiled at the comments on both of them. She couldn't help but look at the comments under Adam's post too. Now, they were all about how he was lying about it all. That was satisfying. Because he was trying to keep up a facade that was falling.
"It's my most liked photo now," Joe told her as she climbed into bed. "I can't believe how viral it's gone."
"I'm not surprised," Taylor leaned over and kissed his cheek. "You're gorgeous. I'd be liking your posts a billion times if I could. It was such a good idea. Thank you for understanding what I said ages ago about wanting to keep us private."
Joe took her hand. "You're welcome." He draped an arm across her waist. "You make me so proud, Taylor. I love you so much. I've had such a lovely day with you today."
A voice in her head told her that she'd ruined the day with the Adam drama, but another voice told her that she didn't need to apologise because it was something she couldn't control. She realised that she hadn't been able to control any of what she'd been through.
"I love you, Joe." Taylor snuggled in closer to him. "Even if your feet feel as cold as ice." She gave a tired laugh. "I'm serious. I love you."
Joe kissed her forehead again, moving down until he reached her lips. "I'll never get tired of falling asleep beside you every night."
The golden string was still there, still entwined within their souls and holding them together. It might be harder to see some days than others, but it is a constant. Taylor dreamt of dark, forbidden hands wandering over her body, even when she cried out for help, even when no one came to her rescue. But when she woke up screaming from the fear of it all, golden arms were there, gathering all of her fallen stars and helping them shine bright again.