Chapter 35: Deep Pressure
"We'd best stay put for now," Jamie murmured.
The fog would burn off once the sun had risen. But the coldest hours of the night were always the wee hours before dawn. The early morning chill pierced through the fabric of the oversized hoodie he had thrown on before he left the bungalow with nothing underneath.
Jamie let go of Cora long enough to unzip it and shrug it off his shoulders. "Here. Put this on."
"No." She put her hands up to refuse it. "Don't."
"Go on," he insisted.
"You'll freeze to death."
"You're halfway there already."
"No."
No, she wouldn't let him be a gentleman, try as he might to act the part. Jamie gritted his teeth, but he held his temper. He thrust his arms back through the arm holes, and then gathered her close against his chest again. The fabric strained to the point of ripping, but he managed to get the zipper up with the both of them bound together inside it.
"There. Is that too tight?"
Inside the garment's confines, he felt her hands slide around his waist.
"Yes," she said, "but in a good way. Deep pressure is..." She let her voice trail off, the last word swallowed by a sigh.
Jamie smiled into her hair, thinking of her weighted blanket and the impersonation he'd provided. "Don't tell me, you have some medieval torture device at home for this, too?"
"I used to when I was a kid. It's good for vertigo."
"Are you dizzy?"
"Better now."
Jamie swiveled his head, taking in the landmarks in their immediate vicinity. A low rock beckoned, but he could see no way to sit down with Cora pressed against him. He settled for leaning, resting his weight against a mossy ledge behind him, with his legs splayed wide so she could stand in between. The hoodie pulled her with him as he moved. In this position, their heights were nearly equal, and their eyes level with one another.
Jamie liked deep pressure too, although he hadn't known it until now. He could feel her heart beat against his chest, and the thought occurred to him that he might live out his whole life and never get this close to another beating heart again.
Jamie felt a wave of some emotion that didn't have a name. It took all his self-control to keep it off his face. His knees weakened for a moment, and he was glad for the boulder's support.
"What were you doing out here?" he asked, making conversation to distract himself.
"I went looking for you!"
"I was walking on the beach. All the way in the other direction." He gestured with an arm. "Why would I come up here? In the dark no less! Don't you know how dangerous that was?"
"I tried to call you. You didn't answer."
"I didn't hear."
Jamie felt her heart rate quicken. She looked away, her expression clouded. "I thought something must have happened to you." She closed her eyes as if to blot out an unpleasant thought. "Whatever. The point is, I went looking for you because we can't leave that conversation unfinished."
Jamie's chest rose and fell. It must have squeezed her tighter because she gave a little whimper. He wrapped his arms around her back, looking down. Both their feet were blanketed in fog, but he could see the cherry red nail polish on her toes, curling inward.
It brought an image to his mind of the night it all began. He'd walked in on her in the bathroom and invited her to play a naughty game. She'd stood like that with her weight on the edges of her feet, her toes curling inward against the white tile floor.
"Cora," he whispered. "About what I said earlier..." He'd had a whole speech prepared, ready to backpedal with all his might, but the words eluded him now. "I have to tell you something," he began instead.
"I have to tell you something, too."
"No. Me first."
"You didn't let me answer you before," she protested. "You didn't give me a chance."
"Look at me." Her head lolled on his shoulder. He lifted it, holding her cheeks between his hands until she met his eyes. "I'm going to tell you something now, and I need you to believe me."
Something in the intensity of his look confused her. She paused and studied him a moment before she spoke. "Of course I'll believe you."
He laid his forehead against hers. "No, you won't. You never do when I'm telling you the truth."
"Like when?" Her eyes narrowed.
"Like right now. I'm going to tell you something, and you're going to think I'm lying. You'll see."
She frowned. "Go on. What? What is it?"
Jamie pulled in a deep breath to steady himself and plowed on before he lost his nerve. "There's no PhD from Oxford. I should have told you right away. I don't know who invented that story, but it's a fiction. It's a lie."
Cora stared at him for a moment. Then she tipped up her chin and laughed. "Is that all? You scared me. I figured that part wasn't true."
Jamie blinked. "You did?"
"Oxford." Her tinkling laughter tickled his cheek. "I'm the one who made that detail up. Where's your PhD really from, then?"
"No, you don't understand. I don't—" He broke off. Every instinct screamed within him to run away from this conversation. Let it go. Let her believe what she wanted to believe. It didn't matter anyway, did it? PhD or otherwise, there was only one fact that mattered.
She didn't love him.
But then, no one ever had.
Jamie closed his eyes. He had to stop pretending. He had to get it out. All at once. Before he lost his way in the waist-deep fog that was quickly stealing her entire legs from view. "No, I don't have a PhD from anywhere. Don't you see? I was scouted by a modeling agency when I was 15 years old. I never went to college. Cora, I never even finished secondary school."
No. He saw her mouth form the word involuntarily. "No, that can't b—"
Jamie tilted his head sideways. You see? he said with his eyes. "I tried to tell you earlier, in my cowardly way. You didn't believe me then either."
She clamped her lips shut and swallowed the end of her sentence. "How?" she said instead. "How can that be true?"
Jamie shrugged, and the seams of the sweatshirt groaned in protest. "I imagine the producers were having a bit of fun with us. You must have mentioned at some point that your type on paper was a man with a doctoral degree."
He turned his eyes away. The sun's edge had broken over the horizon, and Jamie felt exposed beneath her gaze, his face no longer covered from view by the dark. "I'm just a model, Cora. That's all I've ever been."
"But your parents? They let you drop out of school?"
He gave his head a little shake, waiting for her to remember the rest of the character he had sketched out for her earlier that night.
If he didn't have any parents though?... What if he had no family, and no one ever bothered to look at him beyond the surface?...
"Like Heathcliff," she whispered as the light dawned in her eyes. "In Wuthering Heights?"
Jamie nodded. "Heathcliff, Pip, Jane Eyre... take your pick. No shortage of orphans when it comes to British novels."
Her face softened for a moment. He hadn't seen her look quite that way before. With the dawn light reflecting off her wild, wind blown hair, it struck him that she might be the most beautiful thing he'd ever laid eyes on in his life.
He felt a pull of longing then, so strong it almost tore a cry from somewhere deep inside his chest. He had to turn his head and clear his throat to cover it.
The light shifted again, thankfully, and the feeling ebbed for now.
He could see her running back their earlier conversation in her head now. "And the rest of it?" she asked. "All those questions you were asking about... eidetic memory? C.S. Lewis?"
"Was that part fact or fake?" Jamie murmured. "Your guess is as good as mine."
"Jamie." Her voice had grown stern again. She stared at him intently, waiting until he found the nerve to meet her eyes.
A sad smile crept across Jamie's lips. "No, I'm no Heathcliff and no C.S. Lewis either. Nothing but a pretty face. No substance whatsoever."
"Tell me. For real."
"I genuinely don't know!" He let out his frustration with a huff. "Don't you see? I have no idea what I really am."
She rolled her eyes. "Now you're lying."
"I'm not, actually."
"Lying to yourself then," she scolded in her best schoolteacher voice. "Nothing but a pretty face. You know very well that isn't true."
"How should I?"
"All this time I spent with you without so much as a night-light to see by." She shook her head, her irritation clear. "How could I have fallen in love with you in the total darkness if you're nothing but a pretty face?"
Jamie froze. They both did. She bit her lip as she realized what she had just admitted out loud.
He wanted to ask her to repeat it, but he couldn't quite remember what words were anymore. Cora collected herself first. She turned her head and whispered in his ear. "Jamie, no one could spend this much time with you and not be hopelessly in love with you by the end."
The words vibrated inside him. Jamie thought he might break apart. He turned to see if the look on her face matched the words that she had uttered. But the rising sun glared in his eyes. He couldn't see a thing. He could only feel her arms inside the hoodie, squeezing tight around his ribs. And before he could think of an answer, her lips were against his, stealing his words away.
Cora kissed him properly for the second time since they had met. The first kiss had been under false pretenses, soured by the knowledge of his lie. And all these nights had passed before he tasted her lips again. Perhaps the rarity of the thing was what did him in. Perhaps the element of surprise. Jamie had kissed a thousand lips before after all, but this one... this kiss...
He took her face between his hands and kissed her harder. She met him with perfect symmetry, slanting her mouth against his, kissing him on and on. He sank into the sensation, savoring its taste. Liquid heat, sweet and fiery at once. He could have drunk it for a lifetime and never had enough.
Something inside him shifted. Jamie vowed to himself, then and there, he would hold on to this moment forever. He would never let her go. He would keep her here, trapped inside this sweatshirt if he had to. The end of the reality show be damned. It wouldn't be the end of their story, no matter what she said. He wouldn't allow her to slip through his fingers the way everyone always had.
The sun had risen fully by the time she pulled her lips away. The color had seeped back into her eyes now, and they changed from grey to brown to gold-flecked green with the shifting light. Hazel eyes, he thought. The girl I love has hazel eyes. And he smiled with the breaking dawn, unable to endure the force of his happiness.
Cora didn't see his smile though. She looked over his shoulder and past the rock he leaned against. He heard the rumble in the distance behind him and turned his head, but the rock prevented a clear view of the sound's source.
"The crew is coming," Cora said, squinting. She pressed her arms outward, straining against the fabric of the hoodie. "Will you let me out of this thing?"
Jamie complied, although it filled him with a strange feeling of loss. He undid the zipper, and Cora arched her back and stretched her arms. She took a step in the direction of the sound, but Jamie took her hand and pulled her back to him.
"I'm in love with you," he whispered.
"You think you might be," she corrected.
"No," his voice dipped low, dragged down by the churning feeling in his center. "No, I know. That kiss just sealed it."
She should have looked happy then, but for some reason she looked sad. Later, thinking back, he would replay that image of her face imprinted in his memory. He would search and search for clues but still not understand.
"Will you do something for me?" she whispered.
"Anything," he said.
And then she told him what she needed him to do.
Dear Readers:
Please let me know what you thought of this chapter with your COMMENTS and VOTES. Thank you! ❤️