They were here, together, right now. And that was all that mattered.
Carmen sighed deeply, interrupting Asa’s stream of thoughts. “I’m not like you,” she muttered suddenly.
He turned away from staring at the water and furrowed his brows, looking at her quizzically. “What?”
Her eyes landed on his, and something in his stomach twisted painfully. God, he’d missed speaking to her. Or even just having her within touching distance.
“When you’re upset, you want to let someone in,” she explained, her fingers curling around the pendant of her chain tighter. “You want to talk to someone. You prefer opening up. But I… I push people away. I choose to isolate myself. Suffer in silence, that sort of thing.”
Asa sighed and unfolded his arms, reaching out a hand and taking one of her palms in his.
“Wow, your hand’s pretty cold,” she remarked in surprise.
“Because of the water,” he said nonchalantly. “But, listen, you don’t have to ex—”
“No, you will listen,” Carmen said firmly, frowning at him. “You were pushed away when all you were trying to do was help, and you are owed an apology for that. So stop trying to shrug it off and let me apologise to you. You deserve that much at the very least.”
Asa’s breathing faltered, and he felt warmth flood his insides, because even when he didn’t need her to explain her sudden change of heart last week, here she was anyway, telling him he deserved to know. Because even when Asa didn’t know how to put himself first, Carmen always knew. And she never failed to do so.
And if Asa wasn’t careful, he could fall in lo—
No, he decided. To hell with caution.
Asa was already in love with her. Hook, line and sinker. And there was not a single bone in his body, not a single fibre of his being that was going to even consider denying this fact.
I love her, I love her, I love her. He was so goddamn in love with her, and there was no other revelation that could’ve shaken Asa’s world more.
But the storm was only momentary, lasting for a mere heartbeat, before the calm came back and took a hold of his senses. Carmen may have a mind that was made of chaos, but she brought Asa nothing but peace. And admitting to himself that he was in love with her made him feel at peace. It didn’t necessarily make sense to him, not completely, anyway. But logic didn’t matter to him right now.
Right now, all he wanted was to lose himself in that sense of calm and pure bliss.
“It’s just…” Carmen was speaking again, completely clueless and unaware about Asa’s realisation. “…seeing Hunter there, it… it took me by surprise. My extended family aren’t exactly on good terms with my dad and me, especially mum’s side of the family.”
“Carmen.” Asa held up a hand, knowing that she was speaking about something important but unable to really pay attention to anything other than the fact that his heart was about to explode out of his chest any minute now. “Um, I just—I need for you to just stop for a little while, okay?”
She blinked, completely taken aback and uncertainty flickered across her face. “Is something wrong?”
He laughed weakly, not meeting her eyes. “No no, nothing’s wrong. Quite the opposite, actually. Oh God, out of all the times I could’ve admitted this to myself, it just had to be today and right at this moment—”
“Asa.” Carmen’s voice sounded slightly disappointed now, “I’m trying to tell you something important here.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, wanting to throttle himself. “I know,” he muttered. “And I am honestly so sorry, but I can’t really focus on anything right now.”
“Oh…” The dejected tone in her voice twisted Asa’s heart painfully, and that was enough to make him push the realisation that he was in love with her to a corner of his mind for now. “It’s just that it, you know, takes too much out of me to speak about her,” she mumbled, her shoulders falling as if the world just dumped all its burdens on her back. “About Mum, I mean.”
Pushing everything else away and cursing himself mentally, he angled his body towards her and forced himself to focus on what Carmen was saying. “Why?” he asked softly, his thumb drawing circles on the back of her palm that was resting safely in his hand.
“Because she’s not with us anymore,” she said carefully, as if she was putting much thought into her choice of words.
The cloud of comfort that’d wrapped around Asa slowly began drifting away as the heaviness began settling in its place.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, but then cleared his throat, wanting to elaborate. “Sorry as in, I wish you didn’t have to go through that. God knows I’d go insane without Ma in my life.”
She cracked a smile then, the one that reminded Asa of a crack in the glass of a window. The smile that reminded him something broken had the power to illuminate, if allowed.
And he didn’t truly realise how much strength Carmen West carried in her evergreen soul until that very moment when she was speaking about a bone-crushing loss but wore a smile that lit up the world in all those crushed places.
And maybe Asa just fell more in love with her for it.
40.
Because I Love You
Carmen tried not to stare too hard while Asa walked towards the bleachers to grab his towel, while she followed right behind.
But for the love of all that’s holy, she didn’t expect his shoulders to look that much broader now that it wasn’t covered by a shirt.
