2 (jaylor) ethereal daylight and golden epiphanies

chapter thirty.

Taylor and Joe spent three days after the trial in New York, before flying all the way back to New Zealand.

The sun had shined all the way there, and Taylor felt like she was a new person. She felt as if she could breathe after five years of suffocating. Five years of waiting for the next blow, the next bruise. The next time he'd hurt her, the next time the darkness would swallow her. It had been a constant waiting game. The next time she'd have to cover her face with layers of makeup, cover the tears with a smile. The next time she was so consumed within the moment that she couldn't possibly think about a brighter future. Five years of believing that she wasn't enough. Five years of believing that no one would ever believe her story. Five years. Those five years that had held the most intense suffering but the most beautiful love that she'd ever felt.
She'd been so relieved to hold Thea in her arms again, to see her smile.

She'd done it. She'd made it out. Alive. For the longest time, Taylor had thought that the only way to escape it all would be to hurt herself past the point of recovery. She had believed that the only way to find peace would be to make it all end. She'd thought that was the only way to escape the nightmare that was her life.
But then she'd met Joe, gotten lost in his eyes, been held by that smile... and she'd found daylight. She'd found a life, a person who had taught her that it was worth living. A life that she loved, a life that was a dream. A life that had taught her how to love, how to feel again and a life that had taught her about about how much there truly was to live for.

She remembered, how many times Joe had asked her to list the things she'd done and never thought she could do, of all the things that made her happy. She thought about how hard it had been to come up with a list of those things when she'd first met him. Now she was sure she could talk about all of those things for a long time.

She could list so many things now. So many things that made her happy, so many things she'd done and never thought she could do.

One of them was the fact that she was actually so proud of herself. Proud of herself for surviving, for getting through. For not succumbing to the darkness. For finding daylight in the darkest place she could imagine. For finding love and happiness in that starless night.

Adam had pushed her from the precipice, but Joe had been there to catch her as she fell, to break her fall. He'd been there to mend her broken parts, to hold her barbed wire bones in the palm of his hands, to remind her to be kind to herself. He'd been there, with her through that darkness. He hadn't tried to pull her out of it before she was ready, hadn't rushed her to move past it. She'd been stuck in that time in her life where she was bruised and he hadn't told her that it was time to move on, hadn't told her she was overreacting. He'd given her the time she needed to heal. He'd held her as she'd disintegrated, held those fractured pieces until she was ready to put them back together again.

She'd found the most rare and beautiful love - it proved to her that some of the most wonderful things occur by chance or serendipity. She could have decided not to get a coffee that December day three years ago. She could have never left the apartment that day. And she never would have met Joe Alwyn. She never would have seen him up close, never would have heard the way his voice goes high when he talks about the things he loves, never would have seen him kiss their daughter Goodnight, never would have seen the way his fingers glide across the piano as they write songs together by candlelight.

She could have ended it all and missed out on the best years of her entire life.

The darkest times produce the brightest stars. The blazing Aurora's and the glistening of the moonlight on the lakes. She'd realised, that her darkest times produced a love that was as rare as the glimmer of a comet in the sky.