True believer - Nicholas Sparks [132]
Leaving the path, he moved around a crumbling crypt, walking slowly to keep the noise to a minimum, climbing the slight incline. Above him, the moon hung in the sky as if tacked to a blackened sheet. He thought he heard a low murmur, and when he stopped to listen, he felt an intense surge of adrenaline. He had come to find her, to find himself, and his body was readying him for whatever came next. He crested the small hill, knowing that Lexie’s parents were buried on the other side.
It was almost time. He would see Lexie in just a moment and she would see him. He would settle it once and for all, here where it all began.
Lexie was standing just where he imagined she would be, bathed in silvery light. Her face had an open, almost mournful expression, and her eyes were a luminous violet. She was dressed for the weather—a scarf around her neck, black gloves that made her hands mere shadows.
She was speaking softly, but he couldn’t make out the words. As he watched, she suddenly paused and looked up. For the longest moment, their eyes simply held one another.
Lexie seemed frozen in place as she stared back at him. Finally, she looked away. Her eyes focused down on the graves again, and Jeremy realized he had no idea what she was thinking. He suddenly felt that it had been a mistake to come here. She didn’t want him here, she didn’t want him at all. His throat tightened, and he was about to turn away when he noticed that Lexie wore the slightest smirk on her face.
“You know, you really shouldn’t stare like that,” she said. “Women like a man who knows how to be subtle.”
Relief flooded his body, and he smiled as he took a step forward. When he came close enough to touch her, he reached out and placed his hand on her lower back. She didn’t pull away; instead, she leaned into him. Doris had been right.
He was home.
“No,” he whispered into her hair, “women like a man who will follow them to the ends of the earth, or even Boone Creek, if that’s what it takes.”
Pulling her close, he lifted her face and kissed her, knowing that he would never leave her again.
Epilogue
Jeremy and Lexie were sitting together, cuddled beneath a blanket, staring down at the town below. It was Thursday evening, three days after Jeremy’s return to Boone Creek. The white and yellow lights of the town, interspersed with occasional reds and greens, seemed to be flickering, and Jeremy could see plumes of smoke rising from chimneys. The river flowed black like liquid coal, mirroring the sky above. Beyond it, the lights from the paper mill spread in all directions, illuminating the railroad trestle.
Over the past couple of days, he and Lexie had spent a lot of time talking. She apologized for lying about Rodney and confessed that driving away as Jeremy stood on the gravel road at Greenleaf had been the hardest thing she’d ever done. She described the misery of the week that they’d been apart, a sentiment that Jeremy echoed. For his part, he told her that while Nate wasn’t thrilled with his move, his editor at Scientific American was willing to let him work from Boone Creek, provided he made it back to New York regularly.
Jeremy didn’t mention that Doris had come to visit him in New York, however; on his second evening back in town, Lexie had brought him over to Doris’s for dinner, and Doris had pulled him aside and asked him not to say anything.
“I don’t want her thinking that I was interfering in her life,” she said, her eyes shining. “Believe it or not, she thinks I’m pushy.”
Sometimes he found it hard to believe that he was really here with her; on the other hand, it was hard to believe that he’d ever left in the first place. Being with Lexie felt natural, as if she were the home he’d been seeking. Although Lexie seemed to feel the same way, she wouldn’t let him stay at her house, insisting, “I wouldn