Free Bind Our Loving Souls by April Marcom

each other. He could never have the
thing he wanted most with me.
    It was even worse now that I’d seen every
part of his life and who he was, and had truly felt love for him. I
felt like I’d known him my whole life and maybe I could spend
forever with him. I just wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment
yet. But now it wasn’t even an option.
    I sincerely hoped he could forgive me for
being human and be content with the way things were for now,
because it was all I was able to offer him.
    The way he’d acted and looked so frustrated
before he left me kept playing through my head, though, and I
couldn’t help but cry for my broken heart. Not knowing what would
happen after I’d gotten unimaginably and impossibly close to him
hurt so badly.
    My bedroom door opened just then and my heart
lifted, hoping it might be Enock. But it was Helena who poked her
head inside. “Are you all right?” she asked, looking worried.
“Everyone in the kitchen really wants to talk with you again.”
    As she stepped into my room, I noticed the
cherries she’d woven into a matching necklace, bracelet, and ring,
which almost made me smile.
    I stood up, smoothing my stray hairs back.
“Not really, but going to the kitchen might be the perfect way to
take my mind off it.”
    Helena took my spot sitting on the bed. “Did
something happen at breakfast?”
    “No offense, but I’d rather not talk about
it. Let me just change my dress.”
    “But you already changed. What happened to
your back?!”
    I put a hand over the rip. “Oh, I was taking
a walk in the forest. There are a lot of sharp branches out
there.”
    “Why did you take off the other dress?”
Helena raised her voice as I disappeared into my closet and picked
out a simple blue one.
    “You should try it on some time.”
    When I finished changing, I moped beside
Helena to the kitchen. And once we arrived, there was so much going
on it was difficult to think of much else. Everyone was so excited
to see me. And I got to taste-test a dozen things at least, most of
them amazing.
    A guy dropped by to see Helena, and that was
interesting. His name was Eddy. A little lanky and extremely
awkward, he was adorable with her. The awkwardness was clearly due
to the crush he had on her. His wide dark eyes hardly left Helena
the entire ten minutes or so he was there.
    “Is Eddy your boyfriend?” I asked her quietly
as we walked outside through a back kitchen door.
    “No, I haven’t got one,” Helena giggled.
    I nodded and gazed around at the open land
boxed in by three long walls of manor. There was nothing there but
perfectly trimmed grass, a large stone picnic table, and a little
birdbath full of sparkling water and a few bluebirds ducking their
heads in the water and wiggling around so it would run over their
backs. It was very serene, and the air had become pleasantly
warm.
    We walked toward the back, where the walls
opened up to rosebushes and grandfather trees bursting with
enormously heavy limbs. Even though the trees were well spread out
over the grounds, the branches blanketed everything with shadows,
creating a beautifully sorrowful-seeming place.
    “Do you want to play hide and seek?” Helena
asked unexpectedly.
    “Um…how old are you, exactly?” I asked,
thinking how childish she sounded.
    “Sorry,” Helena flushed. “You must think I’m
silly.”
    “No.” I felt bad. I just didn’t know any
other teenagers who were still playing that game. “It sounds like
fun.”
    “Really? You can tell me if you don’t want to
play.”
    “No, let’s play.”
    “Okay—how about if you be the one to hide and
I’ll find you. One, two, three…” she started counting. She got to
five before it hit me that I needed to hide.
    So I ran off a little ways and dove into a
patch of stringy bushes, hoping they would hide me. It didn’t take
long to realize it was a terrible hiding spot, but I was more than
a little out of practice. And not knowing what number she was
counting to,