Page 58 of Somehow You Knew

“You sure? Because you’ve been weird ever since we picked out that wind chime.”

She shakes her head. “I’m fine.”

I toss my keys on the kitchen counter, crossing my arms over my chest. “I may not have much experience in relationships, but I do know that when a woman says she’s fine, it means she’s not.”

Hazel scoffs. “Why do you care?”

“Why do I—” I drag a hand down my face. “Because you flipped a fucking switch on me!”

She shakes her head again, lifting her glass to her lips and taking several gulps before dropping the glass back down to the counter, studying the liquid like it holds all of the answers to every question flowing through her brain right now.

I exhale sharply. “If I did something, tell me. I can’t fix it if I don’t know what I did.”

Silence.

I want to bring her smile back, but what am I supposed to do if she won’t talk to me?

“Fine. I’ll leave you alone.” Dropping my arms, I turn to leave the kitchen, but stop dead in my tracks when she speaks.

“Why didn’t you tell me who you were that day?”

I freeze.

Shit.

I close my eyes and let my head fall. I knew this conversation was coming at some point, but I didn’t expect it to benow.

Twisting to face her, I find her only a few feet away, her hands hanging at her sides and tears in her eyes.

“I didn’t know who you were,” I say carefully. “So it didn’t make sense to tell you whoIwas.” I shrug.

“So you just go around drawing on random women for the thrill?” Her brow furrows as she waits for my reply.

How do I explain this to her without revealing too much?

I push a hand through my hair and blow out a breath. “It’s something I started doing a few years ago. Art is like this universal language and some people just give off this energy that I can’t ignore. When I saw you sitting in the coffee shop that day, Ifeltsomething. So, I followed my gut, and the first thing that came to me when I touched you was a hummingbird.”

Her eyes well with tears. I take a step closer to her, but she takes a step back, turning away from me.

“Fuck. Why are you crying?”

“It’s nothing.”

I place my hand on her shoulder. “It’s obviously not fucking nothing, Hazel. Talk to me.”

She gathers herself and turns to face me again, inhaling shakily. “Before my dad died, he told me that when he visited me, he would come to me as a hummingbird.”

My chest aches from her admission. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah. So that wasn’t just some meaningless interaction for me, Gage. It felt like it was a message from my dad.” She wipes under her eyes again. “And then you came up to me with that wind chime today, and all I could do was think about your aunt and all of the wind chimes she had on her porch.”

“I know,” I reply, hating how seeing her cry is affecting me.

This pull toward her is growing stronger by the day. No matter how detached I try to remain, I can’t deny that we are connected somehow, and all of these little coincidences are getting hard to ignore.

“Nobody knew about that conversation except him and me.” A tear slips down her cheek. “I told my mom eventually too, but that day when we met at the coffee shop…it meant something to me.”

“I’m sorry, Hazel. If I would have known—”