Page 19 of The Compass Series

I couldn’t stop it, though. It was why I did my best to unplug from society. It held too many reminders of all the joy I’d lost.

“You can,” he disagreed. “You can walk.”

He didn’t understand.

No one understood.

His arm slid under mine, and he looped it with his own.

“Wh-what are you do-doing?” I stuttered, my voice hoarse.

“This,” he explained, stepping forward and taking me with him. “Now you do it.”

“Please, no, I ca?—”

“Stop it. Stop saying what you can’t do when you can do it. Mind over matter. Come on, Sun…” His voice was low but nowhere near as cold as it’d been before. The nickname I hadn’t heard in so long hit me like a freight train. He knew. He knew it was me. He remembered. “Walk with me,” he begged.

One step.

Then another.

I was moving. That, or he was lifting me up and making me float down the sidewalk.

Either way, he walked me all the way back to my house in complete silence as my heartbeats began to come down to a much tamer speed.

I felt everyone’s eyes on Jax and me as we walked, and I hated it.

I hated the embarrassment that came with the panic attacks, the way people stared as if I were a nutjob.

I remembered my first panic attack in a public place.

It was at Penn’s real estate agency’s annual Christmas party.

I had a full-blown meltdown while the speakers blasted my baby girl’s favorite holiday song, “This Christmas” by Donny Hathaway.

I was mid-conversation with his boss when my knees buckled from beneath me and I hit the ground in a warp of panic.

He was humiliated to call me his wife after that.

I could only imagine how Jax felt walking me home in this moment. What was worse was he wasn’t even married to me. He was a complete and utter stranger dealing with the looks of the whole town. He didn’t seem bothered by it at all, though. He just kept walking with his arm linked with mine.

When we arrived at the house, I thanked him, and he shushed me and told me to sit down on the front step.

“I’m really okay,” I said, still feeling a bit shaky and lightheaded.

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes before releasing his sigh. “ Please ,” he urged. “Sit down.”

Even though I wanted to argue, I decided to pick my battles.

I sat, and to my surprise, he took a seat beside me.

I didn’t know what to say to him, but thankfully, Jax wasn’t looking for words.

He simply sat next to me in a complete silence that felt…

comforting? Yes. I felt so much more comfortable than I had when I was walking into town, all because Jax was on that front porch step.

It turned out you didn’t need words to bring you comfort. Sometimes, all you needed was for someone to sit beside you in the middle of your panicked storms.

When the time came for him to leave, he rose to his feet and glanced down at me. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I am. Thank you for helping me.” I paused. “How long? How long did you know I was…me?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “A few days. I saw your family car sitting in the driveway.”

“I… This…it’s crazy, right? After all these years, for us to meet up like this… I’m just trying to understand what it all means, how it all?—”

“Nothing. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

I placed my hand against my chest and breathed in deeply.

“But it could, right? It could mean something. I mean it almost feels like kismet, right? Of all the towns I could’ve ended up in, I ended up here.

You feel it, don’t you? You feel how this feels…

I don’t know…it’s just a feeling in my chest. What if?—”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t try to make this something it’s not. Truthfully, we should probably keep our distance. To keep the past in the past.”

I stayed quiet because, I didn’t know what to say.

To be honest, I felt a little crazy. My mind was still spinning from my panic attack, and my heart rate was too high to decide if I wanted to hug Jax or yell at him for disappearing all those years ago.

Before I could do anything, he was already walking away, leaving me alone with all of the thoughts and questions shooting through my brain.

After Jax left, I headed straight into the house with an overwhelming urgency.

I rushed toward my bedroom, straight for a box I had yet to unpack.

Ripping the tape from it, I tossed items out of the way until I came upon a golden treasure box.

In that box was where I kept all my most precious items. Mama’s jewelry.

Daddy’s favorite ties. Daisy’s drawings. Old photographs. And letters from Jax.

Letters he’d written to me so long ago. Letters I’d kept safely locked away throughout the years. I hadn’t read his words in the longest time, but now my heart was pounding wildly in my chest as I reached into the box and unfolded the notes to read the words ten-year-old Jax had written to me.

His words were scribbled across the pages in black ink, and I smiled at how he was always able to stay within the lines—the complete opposite of how I used to write my notes. While my handwriting was messy, Jax’s was always tame.

I collected the pieces of paper and headed out to the convertible to sit under the sun while I read the words from the man who once was my best friend.

I didn’t expect to get so emotional while reading them.

I didn’t expect tears to form in my eyes as my stare dashed back and forth on the pages.

We’d written each other for three years straight during the months we weren’t spending at summer camp together.

We’d stayed in touch the best way we knew how.

I remembered spending three years rushing out to the mailbox, hoping to see Jax’s perfect penmanship on an envelope.

I swore I had probably read those letters a million times back in the day. The edges of the pages were tattered and worn, but that didn’t take away from the odd set of butterflies that found their way to me. It was from little things that had probably felt so minor back then when I read them.

Words like:

I miss you.

If you need anything, let me know.

See you later.

They were all so simple, not holding a big meaning to them at all, but at that moment in time, I felt as if they meant the world to me—especially see you later. There had been a day and a time when I thought I’d never see Jax again, yet now here we were. Later had finally found its way to us both.

My finger rolled across the envelope with Jax’s address on it.

My eyes focused on the word Havenbarrow in his address, and goose bumps filled me up.

I had been just a kid so I hadn’t known how to track him down, but he’d been right here this whole time, a forty-five-minute drive away.

I supposed my mind hadn’t held on to the name of the town all these years since I hadn’t known where it was, so I hadn’t recognized it when Yoana surprised me with the house here.

To my young self, it might as well have been across the world.

I read one of the last letters he’d written to me, and one paragraph stood out to me more than any others.

I know there’s no reason for me to say this because your parents are awesome, but you say it to me in every letter you’ve written to me about my dad, so I figured I should say it back, just in case there’s ever a day you need to hear it.

If you need to run away, run away to me.

-Jax

The tears I’d been fighting finally began to fall from my eyes.

Even through all my hurting, I still believed in many things, and destiny was at the top of that list. There had to be a reason I had been brought to the town where my former best friend lived.

Not only did he live in Havenbarrow, but we also crashed into each other in the woods.

It had to be a sign of something. It had to hold meaning in some way, shape, or form.

Perhaps I was wishing and hoping for it to mean something even though it didn’t. Maybe my spirit needed a bit of magic in it after a year of holding so much darkness.

I wished for a miracle, and around the corner was Jax Kilter.

Still, I didn’t know what it meant. I just needed it to mean something. Anything, really. I needed something to feel hopeful after a year of feeling the complete opposite.

Just then, my phone dinged, and a message appeared.

Penn: There’s a big gala happening this weekend, and I don’t want to have to explain why my wife isn’t there. You can come home now. I overreacted. We’ll figure our shit out.

Penn: Fuck, Kennedy. Please. I need you. I miss you.

I miss you.

Those words didn’t give me butterflies the way they had in Jax’s letter.

They felt forced—controlling, almost, as if he only said them to get his way.

I knew the only reason he said that was because he was feeling the strain of having to explain to his friends and colleagues why I hadn’t been attending events.

He worked so hard to keep up the appearance that he and I lived the perfect life, that we were the happily ever after others dreamed of.

I would have bet he was having panic attacks trying to sugarcoat the fact that his wife had left his side.

Good.

It was about time he knew what panic attacks feel like.

Regardless, his kind, gentle text messages didn’t erase the nasty words he’d said to me the night he pushed me to leave his side. I knew better than to fall into the false narrative of emotions he’d randomly text my way.

I went back to reading my letters from Jax. They held much more authenticity within the words.

My mind couldn’t help but wonder about Jax and who he’d become throughout the years. I couldn’t help but wonder how many parts of the young boy I’d once loved still lived within his heart.