I figured now was the right time. I wanted to tell him what his sister had said.
“I have to tell you something.”
He shifted so that we were face-to-face, his blue eyes far less troubled than the last time I stared into their boundless depths. They grounded me, centered me, like a beacon of bright, endless light reminding me where home really was.
“The night of my accident,” I swallowed, feeling a swarm of butterflies take flight in my belly. “I had a dream about Jewel and Charlie.”
His brows furrowed, and I smoothed his frown with my thumb. “I don’t remember everything, but I remember Jewel asking me to give you a message.”
Dane seemed taken aback by that, but didn’t laugh at me, or tell me it wasn’t possible that I’d seen or spoken to Jewel in a dream.
“She wanted me to tell you she was glad you found your cliché.”
He waited a beat, allowing my words to sink in, and then his mouth turned up into a magnificent smile. He hugged me tighter, like I was about to disappear from his grasp at any moment.
“What did she mean?” I asked gently, afraid that I’d be intruding on whatever memory her message had brought to the forefront of his mind.
He pulled back, and looked at me as he explained, “I used to tease her about the romance books she read, and always told her none of that stuff was real. She’d said that the stories were always clichéd, because it was about a guy who fell for the one girl who drove him crazy. Then one day she said she looked forward to the day I became the cliché.”
That sounded like Jewel.
“And did you? Become the cliché?”
“I did,” he replied. “I fell in love with the girl who drove me crazy most of my life without realizing it. And I’m one lucky sonovabitch because she loves me back, even after I hated her for so long.”
“She hated you too,” I mused, touching his lips wit my fingertips. “But she tripped over that fine line between love and hate, and landed in the arms of the boy who’d been there all along.”