Chapter 22
Chapter 22
After another two hours of driving, Colette felt the familiar tug of exhaustion pulling at her. The landscape outside had shifted, the familiar sights of the highway giving way to narrower, less- traveled roads. Matt’s silence was unnerving, and she found herself glancing at him every few minutes, searching his face for clues. When he turned the car sharply onto a smaller road, she finally gave in to her curiosity.
“Where are we going?” she asked, her voice tinged with suspicion. They seemed to be heading in the opposite direction of their intended destination.
Matt remained silent, his jaw set with determination as he continued to drive with a singular focus. Colette’s frustration grew with each passing mile, until at last, the destination revealed
itself.
She blinked in surprise as the sign loomed into view. “The Muttonbird Island Reserve? Really. Matt? Why are we here?” Her voice cracked slightly, a mixture of confusion and disbelief.
But Matt only smiled, his excitement barely contained. “Come on!” he urged, already out of the car and waiting for her to follow. “We’re going whale watching.”
Whale watching? The idea seemed so out of place, so bizarre given everything that had happened between them recently. But there was no time to dwell on it. She barely had a moment to register what was happening before she found herself stepping aboard a large yacht, the gentle sway of the vessel immediately calming her nerves.
The yacht was a luxurious marvel, all polished wood and gleaming chrome, outfitted with plush seating and a spacious deck that promised unobstructed views of the ocean. Colette couldn’t help but marvel at the opulence, the sense of peace that seemed to emanate from the very structure of the yacht itself. It was just the two of them, alone amid the vastness of the sea.
As the yacht glided into the deep, dark blue waters, surrounded by towering coves and rugged mountains, Colette felt a strange mix of anticipation and awe. The ocean stretched endlessly before them, a canvas of shifting hues and textures, its surface rippling under the gentle touch of the wind. They waited, the silence between them filled with a quiet intensity, until at last, they saw it a shadow beneath the water, moving with grace and power.
Then, with a sudden, breathtaking surge, two massive whales breached the surface, their enormous bodies cutting through the water with an almost otherworldly elegance. The sound they made was unlike anything Colette had ever heard, a deep, resonant call that seemed to vibrate
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through her very bones.
Colette had heard that whales were larger than elephants, but nothing could have prepared her for the reality of it. As the whales swam beneath the yacht, she felt impossibly small, a mere speck that would disappear under their giant flippers. The sheer size of these creatures, their majesty and grace, left her feeling both humbled and awestruck.
As the sun began to dip below the horizon, painting the sky with shades of deep orange and pink, Colette turned to Matt, her heart full of a thousand unspoken words. She wanted to thank him for the day, for the breathtaking experience of seeing the whales, but when she met his gaze, she found something far more profound than she had anticipated.
Matt’s eyes were fixed on her with an intensity that made her breath catch. “I was wondering when you were going to smile at me like that again,” he said softly, his voice carrying a weight of unspoken pain. “Like you did at the harbor.”
The words hung in the air, heavy with meaning. Colette felt a lump rise in her throat, the intimacy of his observation both comforting and devastating. It had been months since she had smiled at him with that kind of genuine warmth, months since she had felt the same lightness in her heart that now seemed to flicker back into life. She had been so preoccupied with her own
see the heartache, with the storm of emotions that had driven them apart, that she had failed to pain mirrored in Matt’s eyes.
“You hadn’t smiled at me like that in months, Matt continued, his voice breaking slightly. “It had been 25 days since you kissed me goodbye before I went to work. Mrs. Rose had been making my breakfast toast for the last three months since you stopped making it yourself. You had been pushing me away for so long before you actually left me, Itty.”
The sun’s rays reflected off the water, casting a golden glow around them, but it did nothing to soften the harsh reality of Matt’s words. Colette could feel her heart constricting, the pain of their estrangement surfacing anew. She felt his arms around her, pulling her closer, and the warmth of his embrace was both a comfort and a reminder of what they had lost.
“Sometimes,” Matt’s voice faltered, barely audible above the whispering wind, “it did make me wonder if there was someone else now…someone who had become the center of your world…like !
once was.”
“And then,” he said, his voice a mere whisper now, I would come home and make love to you with the desperation of a dying man. You responded with your body, but never with your words. You stopped saying ‘I love you‘ like you used to after we made love. It hurt me. Many times I thought of saying it to you, wondering if you would respond with the same. But I was terrified to actually do it, because what if you didn’t reciprocate? What if you didn’t turn around and say, ‘I love you
too, Matt‘? What would I do then? I had no idea.”
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Colette’s eyes widened in shock. So, he HAD noticed. He had seen the shifting dynamics in their relationship too but interpreted it as a sign of her infedility. Her mind raced, “Why? wondering if Iris’s manipulations had played a role in this as well, if her subtle machinations had driven yet another wedge between them. But she couldn’t voice that suspicion, not now.
Instead, she took a deep breath, her voice steady but filled with emotion. “There has never been another man in my life, Matt. Ever but you.”
Matt closed his eyes tightly, as if the admission had released a flood of pent–up pain. His grip or her tightened, and she could feel the depth of his feelings through the strength of his embrace. “I love you so much, Itty,” he murmured, his voice choked with emotion. “So, so much that sometimes it hurts my heart to
feel it.”
with a
As she looked into his eyes, full of love and vulnerability, Colette’s heart swelled bittersweet mixture of joy and sorrow. And it hurt Colette’s heart right then as she looked into her husband’s full loving eyes….yes, this was her husband. The man from her honeymoon, the man she had fallen in love with all those years ago.
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