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"It’s private Soht think I’m crazy"
"I already think you’re crazy," he jokes, lowering his arms onto his lap He slides across the bed toward ht in front ofhis sexy voice on hing, I fan through the pages until I coet out of my head and into coherent sentences "This is the story I’ve been working on I’m not very far into it and I’m not even sure if it makes sense yet"
He takes the journal from my unsteady hands It’s the first ti I’ve written and it feels like I’ it in his hands, he clears his throat and begins to read aloud
"Where the Leaves Go" He glances up at me and smiles
"Nice title"
I shakeat the cracks in the ceiling and trying to still the te me nervous"
He chuckles underneath his breath and then starts to read "I re fascinated by the leaves They were always changing: green pink, orange, yellow, brown And then eventually, when the air changed and chilled, they turned into nothing They’d fall from the branches of the trees and either cruround or bloay in the wind They never really had any power over their o with the weather and wherever the ould take them, helpless, weak, incapable of control
I re day and the raindrops were splattering fiercely against the earth and the as howling I was sitting at et carried aith the rage of the water They were all a flourishing green, in the pri, yet the rain and as destroying them
But there were these two leaves stuck to e They reh the windstor so heavily I couldn’t see through the glass
I kept staring at the leaves, unable to take my eyes off them, fascinated by their determination, even when the sky darkened and the led so violently it shook the glass of theI kept thinking about how strong they were and how they were only leaves Pieces of a tree, a plant, these little things that couldn’t think,of their free will, yet they wouldn’t give in to the wind and rain and leave that dae way, I envied theive in and let so else take them to the end of their life
At the end of the storm, I fell asleep in my bed When I woke up, the sun was out and the land was drying The leaves that stayed attached to the tree branches were green and dewy To one from theand it made me kind of sad and I felt hopeless The idea that they could survive against the stor me a sense of comfort
However, when I look back at it noonder where they went Maybe they didn’t give up and let the wind and rain take them away Maybe they somehow found their way back to the trees Maybe they reconnected therow and flourish even after their teh to take control of their lives again, revive the death, force the and looks up at me with an undecipherable look
I take ainst hts But it’s all I can come up with at the moment"
He nods and doesn’t say a word He drapes an arm around my shoulder and steers me with him as he lies down on ainst his chest, breathing in the scent of hi my notebook I listen to his heart in his chest and shut my eyes and inhale and exhale with the sound of it
"Callie," he says after a long stretch of silence has gone by
I inch my face closer to him and place a kiss on his chest
"Yeah"
"I think the leaves ue
Three Weeks Later…
Kayden
Virginia is a pretty nice place, green, with lots of trees and wildlife roa At least from what I can tell I’ve only been here for about an hour and most of the tih Callie wanted to come with me As much as I wanted her to, I didn’t need to disrupt her life and her progress "I’ht be so I need to do alone" She seeo without any e, soot in his midsize SUV and headed out to the freeway He looks a lot likehair and fewer scars on his face He’s dressed in slacks and a polo shirt and the inside of his car sht for about the first tenabout school and his family, and then suddenly I have to know
"Why didn’t you ever call?" I ask, holding onto the handle of the door for support
He looks at reen eyes as ed the nuet it, they would never answer and if they did they would hang up I wanted to get ahold of you after you ot in the way" He pauses and his hands grip the steering wheel and he forces a lu, staring out at the warehouse lining the side of the freeway "I don’t know"