Page 46 of Kiln Me Softly

As Aiden entered the workshop, he faltered at the crunch beneath the soles of his trainers. He looked down and immediately began to panic. Somebody had dropped their intricately hand-painted porcelain, and now he was stepping all over it.

He hopped off quickly, bending down to try to salvage what he could. Who had left it here? Were they coming back for it? How much damage had been there already?

This was the last thing he’d needed after his shitty week.

He’d come in here to have some alone time, a place to find his inspiration again after staring at blank canvases and untouched clay for hours on end.

He was supposed to be working on his portfolio, but so far, he had nothing.

Nothing to say, nothing to convey. It had been that way since the minute Juniper had left him, like she’d taken all of his ideas with her. All of him with her.

‘Don’t pick it up. Leave it.’ A barely-there voice rasped from somewhere nearby, all too familiar, and his stomach tugged in response. Juniper, hiding from him again, only this time, it wasn’t so obvious where.

Not until he treaded slowly around Chris’s desk and found her underneath, her back pressed against the wall, one knee to her chest while she stared lifelessly at a ladder in her work leggings. Pink blotches smattered her face as though she’d been crying for a while, though her cheeks were dry now.

The anxiety he’d been trying to push down all week forced its way out at the sight. ‘Juniper… What happened? Are you okay?’

She looked at him as though surprised to see him. ‘Of course it’s you.’

‘Of course it’s me,’’ he repeated, gentle, because didn’t it always seem like something was pulling them together?

A love for the same thing, or their own raw chemistry, or maybe something else, but she was always there, wherever he went.

And he would always be there for her, even if she didn’t want him to be. ‘Tell me what happened, sweetheart.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It does. It matters a lot.’ He knelt, unable to keep from placing a hand on her bent knee. She gazed at it like it didn’t make sense for it to be there, and maybe it didn’t, but he had to do something, show her some way, that he was here. ‘If you don’t want to talk to me, I can call Tilly.’

‘No,’ she croaked. ‘No. She’s working.’

‘Then Luc, or your parents, anyone.’

She closed her eyes, tears spilling over, and he could do nothing but hold his breath and try not to stop them. ‘My parents have been waiting for this to happen.’

‘For what to happen?’

‘For me to fuck everything up, like I always do.’

‘You dropped a few pots. We can fix them. Make some more.’

A shake of her head. ‘I didn’t drop them. I threw them. Because they were shitty and boring, and half of them didn’t survive the kiln.’

He eyed them. They didn’t look shitty or boring to him.

He’d assumed they’d been made by a third-year student; Chris had barely scratched the surface of some of the glazing techniques used, not to mention that they’d worked with porcelain, a delicate material Aiden had tried to stay clear of whenever he could help it.

He reached for the nearest piece, a cylinder with a hole in the centre which he assumed had been a spout.

The blue patterning around the lip was as intricate as that he’d seen in Middleport, barely a wobble in the paintwork.

Something most potters would kill to achieve.

How did she still not see her own talent?

There was no way it deserved to stay in pieces. He picked up as many of the bigger parts as he could, careful not to scrape his palms on the rough edges.

‘I told you to leave it,’ she murmured. ‘I’ll throw them away. You don’t have to clean up all my fucking messes, Aiden.’

‘I’m not cleaning up,’ he said. ‘I’m recycling.’

She sighed. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘In places like Japan, repair is part of a pot’s life cycle. You can piece things back together with gold or silver, make the cracks part of its beauty. Or you can replace the missing pieces with different ceramics and materials. This isn’t a mess. This is just one step in the process.’

‘Is this some terrible, cheesy metaphor about how beautiful pain can be and how all heartbreaks can be healed, and all that other toxic positivity nonsense?’

‘I wasn’t talking about hearts. I was talking about pottery.’ He lifted a brow, unable to keep from smirking. ‘But if the shoe fits.’

‘It doesn’t,’ she snapped. ‘My heart is fine.’

‘So I see.’ He began putting the gathered pieces on the nearest desk, ignoring her when she told him again to stop.

She could despise him and his help all she wanted, but he wasn’t letting her give up on a project that could be beautiful.

Not if it was the difference between her staying at RACA or going home.

She let out something akin to a growl and tried to stop him with a nudge, but he turned his back to her and salvaged the remaining pieces.

‘Aiden, stop it!’ she repeated, louder now. ‘It’s over, okay? I have less than two weeks until the contest, and Chris pretty much said I have no chance of winning. Just give up! I have!’

He glared at her. ‘No. Fuck what Chris said. If he doesn’t know what you’re capable of, that makes him a fool, not you. Not unless you believe him.’

‘Why can’t you just leave it be, for once?’ she asked desperately. ‘Why do you always have to try to help me?’

The answer was so obvious that he could hardly believe she was asking it. Then again, this was Juniper. Stubborn, defiant, independent Juniper. Juniper, who couldn’t see what was right in front of her eyes. ‘Because I’m in love with you!’

Aiden held his breath, waited for her to react. Her lids fluttered, mouth parted, but for once, she didn’t have anything to argue with.

He hadn’t meant to say it, but he didn’t want to take it back. What was the point? It was true, and hadn’t they always been honest with each other?

He used her silence to his advantage: ‘I’m sure this is terrible news for you, and I’m sure it doesn’t make you hate me any less, but I do.

I love you. And I’m sorry for doing things wrong.

I’m sorry for going behind your back and doing the same shit my father would have done.

I’m sorry I’ve been ignorant when it comes to money and privilege.

But I’m not sorry for wanting to help you, because that’s what people are supposed to do for the ones they love.

And I will keep doing it, because you deserve a place here, and you deserve to win that contest. You deserve everything, Juniper. ’

Her silence dragged on for minutes, so long that he wasn’t sure she was ever going to reply – and he didn’t need her to, so he went back to the pottery on the desk and began trying to piece together the matching fragments.

‘You love me. You’re in love with me,’ she said, as though trying to piece together something else entirely. Something that didn’t fit: confirmation that she was absolutely not on the same page as him.

‘Yes.’ Despite the hurt, he tried to stay focused. At least that way, he could avoid the utter humiliation that would come with her inevitable rejection.

But she didn’t reject him. Not directly, at least. She instead murmured an, ‘Okay.’ She blinked the bleariness from her eyes and then hovered over his shoulder to match up two more parts. ‘That’s actually part of the handle.’

In Juniper language, he knew that meant something like ‘I will cooperate with you, despite my better judgement,’ and could only hope it meant he wasn’t a lost cause.

Or, at least, that she wasn’t.