Before We Knew Novels & Stories

And I thought that whatever came next. Whatever his past was carrying toward us. Whatever the unknown phone call on a Monday morning had set in motion. We were in it together now. One soft kiss at a door had made us in it together. And I was not afraid of what together meant. Not even slightly.

Seven days. The number sat in both of us without being spoken. We knew it was there. We could feel the other person knowing it was there. And we had arrived, without discussing it, at the mutual decision to live the days that were available to us before the result in the most ordinary way we could manage. We went to work.

But I knew, with absolute certainty, that we had definitely been exposed and there is no out of this one. And things were about to get very complicated.

The way before us was long, dangerous and led in the heart of a continent that no one knew what it was lauded. But when I looked at Kael, I knew we were ready. “Then let’s pack,” I said. “The scrap is not waiting.”

Loud and indifferent and completely unaware of everything that had just happened inside a quiet room on a quiet floor above a quiet street. “Your father knew my mother,” Elliot said. “Yes.” “And neither of us knew that for four years.” “No.” He looked at her. “We were connected before we ever met.” She looked at him steadily. “We were,” she said. “Not the way anyone arranged or calculated or used. Something older than all of that.” She paused. “Something that was ours before anyone had the chance to make it something else.” He held her gaze. The morning moved around them. “Sera,” he said.

We were not isolated; we were centered. We didn't need to go anywhere. We didn't need to be anyone other than who we were in this moment. The story that had brought us here—the plot twists, the close calls, the relentless forward motion—felt like a dream I had woken up from, a frantic narrative that belonged to a person I no longer recognized. "Do you ever think about the 'before'?" I asked, testing the word like a stone I hadn't picked up in a long time.

Like the room only made sense because I was in it. Like he'd always known what I was, even before I did. "Let's go home," I said. And we went.

We were walking toward the same answer. And neither of us knew where it would lead. But for the first time since everything fell apart… It felt like we might finally be ready to find out.

she said. Damien held her gaze for a moment with the expression she knew now as the underneath version—the one that had paid its costs and was standing on the other side of them. "You knew before I said it," he said. "Yes," she said. "You've known for a while," he said. "Yes," she said. "The same way he's known for a while. We're both people who know things before they're said. That's apparently one of the things we have in common."

Noah was fighting to get his future back, I was finally stepping into mine. Somehow, even hundreds of miles apart…We were still cheering each other on.