Page 62 of The Call of Azure (Unexpected Love #3)

Fifteen years ago, I was found alone on the side of the highway with no memory. I don’t know where I come from or who I was before that day. I’ve never remembered a thing, and no one has ever shown up looking for me.

Mr. Kenneth Johnson found me on the side of the highway, lying unconscious in the snow fifteen years ago.

When he found me, he was alone. Not just in the sense that he was the only one in his car that night, he was truly…

alone. His wife had passed away several years earlier, and he was nearly estranged from his only son.

We were both alone, and when it became clear that I had no one who cared enough to come looking for me and nowhere to go, he’d cleaned up the small one-room cabin that sat not far from his two-bedroom cottage and told me that I could live there as long as I wanted.

Not long after, I began working with Ken at his small business, the local mortuary and funeral home, of all places.

We spent time together outside of work, too, and he quickly became my friend.

Ken is a kind, soft-spoken man who’s become the closest thing I’ll ever know to a parent.

For years, I lived a comfortable life in my little cabin, and the tiny family we formed, as two men who had no one else in the world, was enough.

I spent my days wandering through the woods, helping Ken however I could, and wondering about all the people who lived in our small town.

Aside from the time I spent with Ken, I kept largely to myself because, well…

I’m different than other people. Not in a way that’s obvious or debilitating.

When I wander through the park or stand in the grocery checkout, I look just like everyone else.

I don’t feel like everyone else because I feel…

everything. I feel things in a way others don’t.

I feel them with my heart and my soul. They set my nerves on fire and rearrange my cells and spread across my skin until they consume me.

I’m not sure if the way I am is a curse or a gift.

Either way, it makes being around other people difficult.

Their emotions are too overwhelming. Each time I went to the grocery store or helped Ken with the people side of the business, I couldn’t escape the way others’ emotions washed over me until my own were nearly hidden.

Each time I felt someone’s emotions as if they were my own, I’d wonder.

I’d wonder who they were and why they felt the way they did.

I’d wonder how they spent their days and what they hoped for and dreamed about.

While I passed much of my time alone wandering the woods, listening to the creatures that lived there and the rush of the wind through the trees and the haunting sound of the aurora on dark, icy nights, I also spent my days reading.

I read about heartbreak and magic and love.

I read about emotions I knew all too well and those I’d never experienced.

I’d wonder about those too. I wondered what it would feel like to be loved.

Ken and I grew to love one another, of course.

It didn’t take long before we loved each other as friends and companions, and eventually, almost the way a parent and child share a loving bond.

I’m lucky to have found that - not everyone does, after all.

I still wondered about love. I wondered what it would be like to know the kind of deep, passionate, unbreakable love that I read about.

Something bright and vibrant and overwhelming and achingly beautiful.

I didn’t believe that it was an emotion I was ever destined to feel for myself, but I hoped that one day, if I was very, very lucky, I might be able to feel it through someone else, just to know that it truly existed.

Today, I’m sitting in the middle of a forest clearing on a warm summer day.

There is an arch set up at one end near redwoods and pines, whose boughs hang heavy with moss.

The arch’s pillars are covered in pale flowers and evergreen ferns, and there are chairs positioned in front of the archway.

Chairs of pale pine with indigo cushions and golden ribbons adorning their backs.

The forest clearing belongs to my family.

Ken owns four acres of our combined ten.

He has a small farm-style cottage with a large deck and a garden he tends to nearly daily.

He has a handful of chickens and a couple of goats, and a family of pheasants has decided to make his lavender patch their home.

My husband Jayce and I own the rest of the land.

We have a slightly larger two-story home with an even larger deck built off to the side in its own little clearing.

On warm nights, we curl up in piles of blankets and watch the stars circle overhead.

Jayce is sitting on my left, wearing a green-and-black plaid shirt nearly identical to the one he was wearing the first day we met.

He’s holding my hand tightly, his thumb sliding idly along the back of my knuckles.

Ken’s son Ethan, a man I now consider my brother, is on my right, and his boyfriend Blue is holding his hand with just as much love and care as Jayce holds mine.

Blue’s best friend Gabriel sits on his other side.

His head is leaning on his partner Liam’s shoulder as Liam’s fingertips idly trail along Gabriel’s arm.

The rest of the chairs are filled with people.

People from the gallery where Ethan works and Jayce and Blue showcase their art.

People from the small local businesses whose bookkeeping I handle remotely.

People who work with Liam at the bakery or perform with Gabriel.

I’m surrounded by people, and yet…I’m okay.

I’m okay because there is so much love and joy and passion and magenta and gold and azure swirling around and embracing us all.

It is so much more intense and all-encompassing than I ever imagined it could be.

It’s beauty and hope and magic. It’s the most important thing in the universe.

Ken is standing under the arch with Marigold, and we watch and smile as they exchange vows and rings. We watch as they laugh and kiss and wipe stray tears from the corners of their eyes. I watch as my family finally becomes whole. Each of us loved by another. Each of us loved by all.

I watch as my dreams come true.