Kaden | ✓

part sixteen ♚ obsolete

Amazingly, the girls were given a day off on Friday. I asked Emmaline to come to my room so that we could spend some time together, and she agreed. As I was getting dressed, I knew that she was snooping around my room. I didn't really care.

She knocked on the door as I was shaving, my tie loose and untied around my neck and the top few buttons of my shirt undone. I opened it for her and then continued, glancing away from the mirror for a second to look at her. She had a stack of paper in her hands, tied with a black ribbon.

She stared down at them in amazement. "You kept them?"

"Your letters?" I asked. "Of course. Why wouldn't I?" I paused, waiting for some reply. When she said nothing, I continued, tipping my head back to get my neck. "They didn't mean nothing to me, you know. They're important. Sometimes I go back and reread them." I finished and cleaned off the razor. I dried my face off and worked on the buttons of my shirt.

She looked up at me, a look of complete awe on her face. "I-I didn't know they meant a lot to you."

I smiled. "They mean more than a lot to me." I chuckled. "Did you keep mine?"

She nodded. "They're in a shoebox under my bed at home." She ran her fingers over the edges of the multicolored envelopes. "It seems so real now," she mumbled.

"What?"

She shrugged. "It just...you having feelings for me always felt so ostensible. I haven't really thought of myself as being worthy of your affection, but now..." She trailed off. "Now, it feels less like a dream. It doesn't feel like I'm waiting for the sand in the hourglass to run out on your interest in me."

I stopped. "Did you really think that my feelings for you weren't real?"

"Of course I did," she said. "Kaden, you're a literal Prince Charming. You're funny, and you're smart, and you're nice. You're attractive and perfect and everything any girl could ever want. All this time I've been wondering how someone as distinguished and astral as you could possibly fall for me. We're like two completely different stars, Kaden. It makes no sense."

I stepped away from the mirror and crossed the distance between us. I gently pried the letters from her hands and set them on the bathroom counter, and then I held her hands in mine. "It doesn't have to make sense," I said. "Before I met you, I didn't really know what I was doing with myself. I mean, I guess I did, but I wasn't setting myself up for a life of happiness. Contentedness, maybe, but not happiness. I didn't understand the difference between them before. Now I do." I swallowed hard. "Emmaline, for me, you are the sun, the moon, and the stars. You are my dawn and my twilight. You are the force that tethers me to this life and keeps me here. You're the air in my lungs and the blood in my veins. You are everything I need and want and you are all there will ever be for me. If you weren't, I wouldn't have done so much to get you here. I wouldn't have snuck out to meet you, I wouldn't have gone to the Players' Place to watch you perform that night, and I wouldn't have gone to such lengths to have you here with me now. I'm in love with you, Emmaline Cadence Levitt." 

Her head snapped up, and she stared at me with wide eyes. For a minute, she was speechless. She wrapped her arms around me and reached up, pressing her lips against mine. The kiss was all too brief, but it was a kiss, and it was wonderful. Her eyes were still shut when she pulled back, and her lips lingered close to mine. "I'm in love with you, too," she said, and she opened her eyes. A small smile graced her lips.

We both stood in that spot for what felt like hours, grinning stupidly at each other. She was wrapped in my arms and I wanted her to stay there for the rest of time, but I knew that the moment would have to end far too soon. That didn't stop me from dragging it out as long as possible.

"You should finish getting ready," she murmured. She reached up and started carefully knotting my tie for me, her fingers working slowly but surely, as if she'd done it thousands of times. I wondered how she learned how to do it and why she was able to do it so easily, but I didn't want to end the moment. Her eyes flickered up to meet mine. "I'll be right outside."

I leaned down and kissed her once more. She was intoxicating and addictive in a way that made me want to be never be out of arm's reach of her. "I'll get done as quickly as possible."

She swatted at my arm and swiped up the letters. She threw a bright smile over her shoulder at me and then turned, barely shutting the bathroom door behind her.

I was a stupidly grinning wreck. I leaned against the bathroom counter and smiled at the ground, unable to help myself or make myself finish getting ready. I ran my hands through my hair and tried to calm my racing heart, but I couldn't stop smiling and I couldn't find it in me to do anything but stand there. For how intelligent I was and how many words I knew, I couldn't think of anything beyond the look in her eyes when she told me that she's in love with me. I could no longer think in words, in curving letters that I could usually tie together perfectly. My mind was a messy collage of her--her smile, her eyes, her hair, the way she looked holding her violin, the way she looked when I awoke with her in my arms. Emmaline Levitt was everything I wanted and I was close to having her, and I couldn't have been any happier than I was in that moment. The end of my Selection had never felt farther away. It felt as though it would be years before I married her, not months. But I was ecstatic.

I rushed to finish preparing for the afternoon, since I'd slept in late that day. I wanted to spend it with her, doing nothing but enjoying her presence. I wanted to listen to her voice and marvel at the way she fit in my arms. Her. She was all I wanted. She was all I ever wanted and ever would want.

I'd never been more elated.