Writer's Note: Hey, guys! I hope you had a good weekend. Thank you for all your comments! Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on this chapter. :)

Chapter Eleven

Elizabeth slid into the front seat of the old Chevy that sat with its engine running on the road outside Aunt Joan's apartment. The car had a couple of dents in the passenger side, possibly from another vehicle parking too close, resulting in a little door-on-door action, and the paint was now more rusted than red. She pulled the door shut with a clunk that shook through the car, dragged the seatbelt across her, and slotted it into the buckle with a click. Then she turned to Henry.

"So where are we going?"

The only instructions Henry had given her were to be ready to leave at nine and to wear something she would be comfortable walking in, so she'd opted for hiking boots, waterproof pants and a bright blue windbreaker that rustled with every movement and she'd spritzed herself in just enough natural insect repellant that a waft of lemongrass followed her wherever she went. (The lemongrass had a calming effect on the Ink kitten, which had sprawled out on its back along the line of her right collarbone, like it were lounging in a pool of sunlight atop the covers of a bed—Bonus.)

Henry looked over his shoulder, checking his blindspot, and then flicked on the turn signal and pulled out into the otherwise deserted road. The clink-clunk, clink-clunk, clink-clunk of the turn signal caused the Ink puppy to startle on the back of his hand and dash for cover beneath the sleeve of his flannel shirt. "You'll find out when we get there."

"So you aren't planning on whisking me away to some remote cabin in the mountains and having your way with me?"

"Why?" He glanced at her. "Are you offering?"

She gave a bitter huff of a laugh. "In your dreams."

A faint blush rose through Henry's cheeks, and his grip on the steering wheel tightened.

Oh.

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows at him and a teasing smile unfurled across her lips. "Henry McCord, have you been having inappropriate thoughts about a student?"

Like she hadn't caught her mind straying once or twice, imagining what it would feel like to have his hands running down her thighs, the taste of his lips and tongue, the weight of his body pressed against her own...

He shot her a quick look, unimpressed, before returning his gaze to the road. "Because that's a totally appropriate question to ask a strictly professional acquaintance."

She schooled her expression to sober. "You're right. I'm sorry…"

Then she added with a smirk, "Sir."

"Jesus Christ." The mutter escaped him with a sharp exhalation.

She laughed.

His blush deepened and he nodded towards the side window. "Just enjoy the view."

"I'm rather enjoying watching you squirm."

He shook his head to himself, and then a second later, he stilled and hitched his thumb towards the seat behind. "There's chips in the bag."

"You think you can distract me with food?"

"Yes."

"Well…you're right." She slackened her seatbelt, and then twisted around, leant through the gap between their two seats and reached for the backpack.

oOoOo

After almost an hour of driving, Henry slowed the car to a crawl and turned off the main road, onto a gravel track. The branches of the trees that lined either side of the track reached across to form an interwoven canopy, the leaves that had yet to fall blocking the sunlight and casting a watery mosaic of shade that wound towards the parking lot. The scrunch and pop of gravel churning beneath the tyres filled the car. Elizabeth had fallen silent a while ago. Not the absent-minded kind of silence that comes from staring out the window during a car journey, the mind drifting from thought to thought with the changing scenery, but a deeper kind of silence—one that entombed her and made it feel like her mind had been transported to a different time or place. He thought about asking her if she were okay, but he got the feeling she would probably resort to her barbs again—not that he minded her teasing, but it felt like she was using it to hold him at a distance, and distant from her was the last place he wanted to be.

He guided the car into the parking lot, taking care to mind the people who milled around the other vehicles and the kids who dived out from between the cars, and he pulled into a bay near the small wooden kiosk. The lake stretched out before them. The waters were a dark, inky blue, and they reflected both the crisp clear expanse of the sky above and the row upon row of trees that covered the opposite bank, the fall foliage incandescent with bright crimson and fiery orange.

With the car in neutral and the parking brake on, he switched off the engine. The hum died out and gave way to the squeals of kids and the scrunch, scrunch, scrunch of footsteps outside.

Elizabeth continued to stare out the side window, her chin propped to the heel of her palm, her gaze distant, like she wasn't aware that they'd arrived.

A light frown settled on his brow. "Everything all right?"

Silence.

"Elizabeth?" He laid a cautious hand on her knee. "Hey."

She blinked, as if startled. Then she turned to face him with a weak smile. "Yeah. Fine."

His frown lingered. She didn't seem 'fine', but he didn't want to press the issue. "I thought we could go for a walk. There's a spot on the far side that I like. It should take us a couple of hours to get there. Then we can stop for lunch."

Her smile widened, but remained just as empty. "Sounds great."

oOoOo

They took the trail that looped counterclockwise around the edge of the lake, the mud path mostly hidden by the carpet of crisp orange leaves. A light breeze shivered through the trees and set the leaves rustling and skipping across the track—it was pleasant in the spots of sunlight that burst through the canopy, but cool in the stretches of shade. Elizabeth soon settled back to her normal self when they started talking about her paper—she asked questions, she engaged with the conversation, she drew connections that he hadn't considered before. It felt like her mind worked in a different way to his, like all information were part of a map, and while others saw only a set of disparate landmarks, she could half see, half intuit all the direct paths, scenic routes and shortcuts that ran between them. He wanted to explore that map with her, to get lost in conversational side streets and back alleys. He felt his understanding of the world was being redrawn to accommodate her, and he hoped that maybe her understanding of the world might come to incorporate him in the same way.

Eventually the path broke free from the covering of the trees, the mud and leaves replaced by boulders and loose rocks. Henry followed a couple of strides behind Elizabeth, their pace slowed as they had to pick out the route that looked most stable, choosing the rocks that seemed least likely to wobble or slide away beneath them. As they focused on the placement of each step, their conversation dwindled, and the gentle lapping of water against the shore, the twitter of birds in trees and the honks of a V of geese flying overhead took over.

Elizabeth glanced up, perhaps to watch the geese, one hand raised to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun, and with her next step, she missed her footing and slipped.

"Shit." Her arms flung out to the sides.

Henry darted forwards, the Ink puppy leaping to attention where it had been curled in a ball and dozing on his chest, and he caught hold of her waist from behind. "I've got you."

But in the split second it had taken for him to reach her, she had already steadied herself.

She turned her chin to her shoulder, and with a wry smile curling the corners of her lips, she rolled her eyes at him. "My hero."

He let his hands fall from her waist—reluctantly—and then stood back and watched her as she strode on. A sense of deflation swept over him, the air escaping from that particular safety ring, but he tried to brush it aside—she was okay, that's what mattered—and he set off after her again.

A second later, he slipped on the same rock she had, fell backwards and landed on his ass.

"Ow!"

Elizabeth stopped and turned around. She took one look at him and laughed.

He glared at her. "It's not funny."

She bit down on her bottom lip in an effort to suppress her laughter, but still it broke through with the glint in her eyes. "Sorry."

"You aren't even remotely sorry."

"Nope." She popped the 'p' and continued to smirk at him.

He tried to haul himself to his feet, but the weight of his backpack threw off his balance.

"Here." She strode back down the path towards him, skipping from rock to rock without a second thought. She stopped in front of him and offered him her hand.

He eyed her for a moment, not sure if he wanted to accept her help. But perhaps the only thing worse than falling down and making an ass of himself would be falling down and making an ass of himself and then making a scene by stubbornly refusing her help, so he reached up and grasped her hand, her fingers soft and delicate and warm in the grip of his own, and he let her half pull him up, half steady him as he pushed himself to his feet.

He let go of her hand and brushed off his jeans, ridding them of the dust and leaf debris.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Just a bruised ego."

She eased a half-step towards him, bringing them toe to toe and causing her warmth and the scent of lemongrass to waft over him. With her gaze fixed on his chest, she straightened the fronts of his jacket for him and murmured, "Good thing you aren't trying to impress anyone then."

Her gaze flicked up to meet his, her eyes sparkling with the smile she fought to resist. Then she patted his chest with both hands, turned, and walked away.

oOoOo

They soon came to the spot Henry had mentioned earlier, where slabs of smooth grey rock jutted out from the shoreline, forming a kind of shelf against which the waters of the lake lapped and sloshed. He and Elizabeth sat side by side on the slabs, the cars in the parking lot now nothing more than tiny metallic specks glinting in the distance, occasionally obscured by the brightly coloured sails of the boats that glided past. Without the cocoon of trees around them, the breeze that rolled off the lake carried a distinct chill, but the rock beneath them had soaked up the morning sunlight and it radiated a steady warmth.

Henry retrieved the foil parcel of PB&J sandwiches from his backpack and set it down on the rock between them. He handed Elizabeth a bottle of water and pulled out a second for himself.

"Here," Elizabeth said.

She held out her hand, and for a second he thought that, for some reason, she wanted his water bottle too, but then he noticed the Ink kitten had appeared on her palm, presumably having woken from its nap or whatever it had been doing all morning. He took hold of her hand, just long enough for the Ink kitten to scamper over onto his skin and for the Ink puppy to make another attempt at reaching Elizabeth, resulting in it slamming into that invisible wall and tumbling head over tail again, and then he let go. He tried to ignore the pang in his chest that accompanied the wish that they could have sat there holding hands, her fingers linked through his own.

The Ink puppy stood on the back of his wrist, sniffing towards Elizabeth, while the Ink kitten dabbed at the Ink puppy with its paw, trying to get it to play. For some reason, the Ink puppy found the smell of Elizabeth's insect repellant particularly alluring. Perhaps that's what the Ink kitten had been up to that morning—basking in a lemongrass-induced haze.

Elizabeth tore off a shred of sandwich, red jelly oozing from the sides, and then shot him a sideways glance. "So, do you bring all the girls here, or just the ones who make your Ink animate?"

Somehow it sounded like a euphemism, the way it rolled off her tongue. Or perhaps it was the hint of the smirk that still crooked the corners of her lips and glinted in her eyes.

He chuckled, his gaze dipping to the stretch of rock in front of them. The laughter faded to the wisp of a smile, and he gave a slight shake of the head. "I like coming here when I need a break or when I need to ground myself." He picked up one of the squares of sandwich from the pile. Then he glanced at her. "I don't know why, but something about it here reminds me of you."

"Well, obviously because it's so peaceful and I'm so laidback." The irony flowed thick.

He laughed.

She smiled too, for a moment. Then her expression sobered and something in the air around her changed, like her aura had turned to grey. "My parents used to bring me and my brother here all the time." She met him with the flinch of a smile. "I haven't been back since they died."

His heart dropped as he continued to stare at her.

The silence she'd sunk into as they'd neared the lake, the way it felt like her mind had disappeared to a different time or place, the shift in her mood…

"Elizabeth…I'm sorry. I didn't know, or think—"

She shook her head. "It's fine. It's nice to be here." She paused, and then met him with another smile, warmer and more genuine this time. "You know, my parents would have loved you."

He frowned. "Really?"

She shrugged one shoulder. "There's a lot to like."

He studied her for a moment, the square of sandwich still gripped between his fingers but now forgotten. He didn't know which way to steer the conversation, but he got the sense that asking her once again if she liked him wouldn't be the right option.

"Do you want to tell me about them?" he asked.

She shook her head and turned to face the water. "I don't really talk about them."

"Why not?"

Her eyebrows rose and her gaze turned distant. "Because I miss them."

"Sometimes remembering the good moments can help."

"It can also remind you of what you no longer have. And I'd rather not think about that."

With her head bowed, she pulled off pieces of sandwich and fed herself the scraps one by one, chewing them slowly, like eating were both a distraction and a chore.

He continued to watch her. "Losing them… Is that why you don't want a relationship?"

She snorted, and then spoke through a mouthful. "Because I'm so damaged and broken?"

"It would make sense for you to be scared of losing someone else important to you."

"It also makes sense that I've got a lot of other things going on—my studies, the internship, my career—and maybe a relationship doesn't fit into that."

"People can be in the CIA and be with their soulmate."

She turned to him and met his gaze, the look in her eyes full of challenge. "People can be happy without being in a relationship."

"Are you happy?" The question slipped out before it had even formed as a thought.

She held his gaze. Something in her eyes hardened, like her soul had taken a step back, allowing another wall to shoot up around her and a vacuum to fill the space between them.

A million thoughts might have flitted through her mind in that second.

Then the look faded and she turned back to face the lake. "You know, trying to persuade me to go out with you just makes you sound needy."

He frowned in faux-bemusement. "I thought girls loved needy guys."

She gave a small huff, like she was trying to hold back a laugh, but a smile crept through.

He smiled too. "You want me to change the subject?"

She picked up another square of sandwich from the pile and then sucked her thumb clean of the smear of strawberry jelly that had seeped out. "Talk to me about religion."

"In general? I mean, it's a pretty big topic and underpins basically all of civilisation."

She shoved her shoulder into his. "Something related to the class, smart-ass."

oOoOo

Henry spoke to her about the difficulty of defining religion—a topic they'd touched on briefly before, but now with the knowledge she'd accumulated over recent weeks, they could discuss in more depth. She knew he'd rather talk about her and her family and her history, like he thought if only he could accumulate enough information about her, then maybe he'd find a way to change her mind about dating him.

He could quite easily change her mind about dating him.

But that was the problem.

When she was around him and he was making her smile and laugh and feel desired and safe, it was almost enough to make all her fears about being hurt fade away. She could let herself believe that maybe this time things would be different, that maybe she would find happiness with him.

But she'd known happiness before and she'd lost it and she couldn't go through that again.

At some point, they fell into silence—a comfortable silence. Henry scrunched up the foil that had held the sandwiches and stuffed it into the netted side-pouch of his backpack before the breeze could catch it and cause it to skitter away. Then they sat staring out across the lake.

The breeze ruffled the surface and blurred the reflection of the trees so that the image looked more like an impressionist painting than the crisp replica that could be seen when the waters were still. Elizabeth closed her eyes. The breeze ruffled over her skin, too. It blurred the edges of her mind, until time was no longer a straight line but something that existed all at once, and she was both sitting beside Henry and hearing her parents' voices, her mother shouting for her and Will to be careful as they raced barefooted towards the edge of the rock, her father complaining that they'd left the sun lotion in the car again. It seemed impossible that she was the same girl who used to cannonball into the lake, so unafraid, so oblivious to any potential pain. She wanted to be that girl again, but at the same time knew that innocence—as a general concept or of a particular thing—wasn't something one could regain. The most she could hope for was to learn from the pain, to use the memories she had of it as a reminder of why it was safest for her to push Henry away.

A whip of wind gusted off the lake and swept away her thoughts.

She shivered and opened her eyes again.

Henry's gaze prickled against her cheek, a constant presence. "Are you getting cold?"

"Why?" She twisted to face him. A playful smile quirked the corners of her lips. "You gonna lend me your jacket only to end up succumbing to hypothermia?"

He huffed. "I admit that falling over like that wasn't exactly smooth—"

"Unlike the rocks." Her smile widened.

He stared at her, his lips pursed, his brow furrowed, distinctly unimpressed.

Then he took a deep breath and continued like she'd said nothing. "I was thinking maybe we should head back. Grab a coffee from the kiosk?"

Her gaze flitted to the wooden hut, now no more than a dot on the opposite side of the lake.

"Sure." She nodded.

She pushed herself up to her feet, her legs a little stiff from being bent towards her chest for so long, and then dusted off her palms against the sides of her pants. She waited for him to stash the water bottles in the backpack and zip it up again, and then she offered him her hand. When he took it, the Ink puppy dashed out from beneath the sleeve of his jacket, the Ink kitten in pursuit, and it tried to leap over onto her skin. She felt nothing, no more than she'd felt her parents' Inks when they nuzzled against her, just saw it bounce back and tumble away again.

"He isn't exactly a quick learner," she said as Henry let go of her hand and the Ink puppy scrambled back to its feet and shook itself off, perhaps planning an umpteenth attempt.

Henry picked up the backpack and settled the straps on his shoulders. His gaze drifted out across the lake for a moment, pensive. Then a subtle smile blossomed on his lips. "He has hope."

He returned his gaze to hers. Hope glimmered in his eyes, too.

She held that look. "Maybe you ought to tell him that hope is just another form of delusion."

He gave a kind of mouth shrug. "I hoped you would come here with me today."

"That's true." She tilted her head to one side. "Though, you were also hoping for that secluded cabin rendezvous, and I'm telling you now: not going to happen."

"I think you'll find you were the one who brought up that idea."

She snorted. "Oh, like you're so averse."

"Not at all. But the fact that you'd even thought about it would suggest—"

She glared at him. "Not going to happen."

He smirked. "There's still time."

Before she had the chance to protest that, to insist that never meant never and to remind him of the terms of their arrangement, his expression turned more serious. "I know you don't want to see me after this semester and I know there's probably a number of reasons as to why that's the case, but I want you to know that I'm not going to give up hope, and if you want to keep on being just acquaintances or maybe even friends, then that's okay, and if you want to work through whatever it is that makes you not want to be in a relationship, then that's what I'm here for. I believe that soulmates are matched for a reason, and whatever you need, I'm here for you."

She studied him, her eyes narrowed. "What if what I need is to be alone?"

"Then God would have made you a Blank. Or He certainly wouldn't have matched you with me or brought us together now."

"What if I don't believe in God?"

"Then believe that you're an interesting, funny, incredible person, and you deserve more than a lifetime of being alone."

"People don't always get what they deserve."

"It's true: they don't. That's why if you have the chance for happiness, you should take it."

"And you think you could make me happy?"

He shook his head. "It doesn't matter what I think. The question is: do you?"