Against All Odds

Chapter 33

STELLA

Hitting that send button had never felt better.

I sat back with a grin, my eyes straining at the glare of the laptop screen, and I let out a sigh that originated from the very pits of my soul. The rows of messages from my personal inbox, some read, some unread, stared back at me, their subject lines blurring and becoming meaningless the longer I sat.

It had taken most of the day to punch out the six thousand words needed for the entirety of the Mongolia piece, as well as removing myself from the house away from the others, but I had done it and I had sent a text to Zahra informing her that she was moments away from receiving the email that contained the written documentation of my travels. Currently, my coffee mug was empty and I signalled the passing server for a refill, taking a quick glance around at my surroundings to get my bearings.

Sometimes I became so consumed with what I was conjuring onto the page on the screen I lost all focus on everything else around me. I doubted I would have known if a tsunami hit- a perk of the trade considering the eye contact I made with a nose-picking toddler who was no doubt at their peak of their loudness for the day.

I stuck my tongue out at the brat.

Judging by the dip of the sun, it was late afternoon. The ocean glistened with golden streaks of sunlight that crested its rippling mass and a salty breeze drifted over me as I sat on the restaurant's wooden deck peering over the waters.

This would be my final day in Port Alfred, and my final day among my oldest friends.

My final evening in the same house with Killian.

As usual, thoughts of him swamped me with a desolateness that filled and iced my core, threatening to frost over until I was nothing more than a hollow shell of a person who wanted nothing more than to crawl under a duvet and hug my knees, rocking back and forth in the foetal position until all this blew over.

But I was made of stronger stuff than that and just looking at the correspondence laid out before me was proof. Even if I pined over a guy I could never have, I had done something awesome today.

That's right. I, Stella Huxley, didn't need no man!

Look at me go, accomplishing shit. Conquering mountains.

Well, word counts.

But still.

Eradicating the distraction of Killian, taking him out of the picture, lighting a fire under my own ass and focusing on an end goal, got me grinding harder than I had ever done before.

Nope, I conceded, I definitely didn't need a man.

And it looked like I would never get one.

I rubbed my aching eyes, pushing my glasses up into my hair, trying not to let the pesky thoughts of how close I was to thirty with very little future prospects of happily ever after on the horizon intrude. It shouldn't matter to me- my happily ever after would just look different to a lot of other people's.

My phone vibrated jarringly against the wood of the table, dragging me from my inner ruminations. Thank God. I'd happily have a conversation with Mia about all the things she had planned for the next quarter of her life just to avoid my own thoughts.

Spotting the caller ID before I tapped the answer icon and shoved the device to my ear, I said, "Huxley's Taxidermy, at your service. Today's roadkill, tomorrow's quirky unwanted family heirloom."

Zahra sighed. "Is there something wrong with you that you can't just answer the phone like a normal person?"

"Mebbe. Never had any scans done, so..." A fresh cup of java was set before me and I threw the server an appreciative look.