As I was standing in the station waiting for my bus to arrive, a strange kind of peace settled all around me – a peace I’d never really felt before. It was one that was centered around me and the choices I had made, and surprisingly, I was already reaping the benefits of not putting everyone else before myself.

I had no doubt in my mind that Marcus could have been an incredible man to spend the rest of my life with. Our world would have been filled with smiles, love, warmth, security and above all else, passion. I was attracted to him. I loved him. But there was a problem.

I loved someone else more.

I’d felt more passion, more magnetism, more tension, and I’d felt more life, even when all either one of us had been surrounded by were heartache and black clouds of despair. Maybe that was why Alex and I had met during death. Maybe we were meant to find each other in the darkness, in the blurry tunnels of existence because we were, in fact, each other’s light. Maybe we were two people who connected so deeply because we understood what it felt like to be old before we were allowed to be young. Just as it needed oxygen, my body called for Alex whenever he wasn’t around. My heart spoke to him behind my back, unafraid to admit its love for him, just too afraid to say it loud enough for the more stubborn, fragile parts of me to hear.

It always would.

Lizzy once said to me, “Never let the end of one thing stop you from enjoying the beginning of another.”

It was only after all that had happened that I truly understood what she meant.

She meant that I should lose the guilt, lose the sense of failure at having had no control over something being the way it was meant to be. It wasn’t my fault her heart had failed her. I’d loved her all I could. It wasn’t my fault Alex had been scared to be with me when he was young. I’d loved him all I could. It wasn’t Marcus’ fault that my heart didn’t sing for him. It had still loved him with all that it could. I’d given everything in my life my all, even when it meant hurting myself in the process. The key now was to keep going with a smile on my face and not let bitterness or longing make me stop.

What did the future hold for me? I wasn’t sure. And I loved that I had the rest of my life to figure it all out.

It was time for another new beginning.

No more pretending.

The bus had filled up before I picked my bag up from the ground and made my way over to where it was waiting proudly. I wasn’t particularly bothered where my seat ended up being, so long as I got one. I strode onto the bus after showing my ticket, and found a seat half way down the coach. Most people kept their eyes down and their earphones in while I reached up to place my bag in the overhead storage compartment. All that suited me fine as I stretched up on the tips of my toes and pushed the bag in as far as I could, huffing and puffing in frustration. Had I not been in such a good mood, I would have had something to say to the person behind me who, without any thought whatsoever, decided that that was the right time to bang their arse against mine unashamedly. My body rolled forward, causing me to grip the edge of the overhead space while they continued to shove me out of the way.

Looking over my shoulder, I lowered my feet back down to the floor before gripping on to the edge of the seat in front of me to keep myself upright. As soon as I saw the person who had knocked me, I couldn’t help but smile lazily. There was something crazy about her as she spun around on her heels, ignoring me completely before she planted herself on the seat opposite, carefree and happy. I couldn’t take my eyes from her as I began to slide into my own space without her noticing my stares at all. She was dressed from head to toe in purple, her hair in thick dreadlocks, all dyed different shades of lilac, mauve and plum. Her clothes were baggy with many, many layers covering her skin, and her hands, which were covered in fingerless gloves, were busy tying up the string on the rucksack she’d planted on her knee.

She was manic with her chaos, but she was enchanting. Spell-binding.

“Y-you like purple?” I found myself asking, pointing to her clothes as a genuine smile took over my face.

“Huh?” Her head shot up, looking from left to right as she blinked furiously before her bright amber eyes settled on mine. “Are you talking to me?”

“Yes.” I nodded, suddenly aware that I didn’t usually talk to strangers this way. But there was something about her…

The girl looked down at her clothes before her eyes rolled up to take in the loose strands of hair that hung around her heart-shaped face. “Oh, yeah. Purple is my thing.” She shrugged, glancing back at me as a smile played on her lips. “It’s my trademark look.”

“I like it.” I smiled.

“Purple fan, too, huh?”

“Majorly.”

And just like that her attention was gone, and she paid me no mind as she reached into her rucksack and pulled out a small lunchbox. There was no etiquette in the way she moved around, and no concern for the noise her rustling, snapping and clicking were causing, either. Yet she was still so endearing.

“Shit,” she called out, making me flinch in surprise. “Shit!”

Casting a quick glance behind us both, I leaned over the aisle to get closer to her. “Everything okay?”

“If okay is shit, then yeah. Otherwise… no.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I put fucking chicken in my sandwich instead of beef.”

“Oh.” I tried not to show any humour. “You don’t like chicken?”

Her eyes snapped up to mine, her face completely deadpan as she stared at me like I was crazy. “Who doesn’t like chicken?”

“I don’t know. You just seemed upset.”

The girl stared at me with an intensity I’d never experienced before until her smile slowly began to reappear. “I take my food a little seriously. Sorry. It’s just that if I’m eating chicken, I prefer it spicy. Mexican food is my favourite. No spice. No slice.”

My hand rose to my chest as I spoke. “Mexican food is my favourite, too. Well, that and…”

“Italian!” she cried loudly.

“Exactly.” I laughed, my mouth remaining open as I stared at this girl like I’d known her my whole damn life.

Her grin was wide and unapologetic as she began to bop her body in some sort of mini celebration, rocking back and forth until an endearing fit of laughter tore free, one she could no longer keep under wraps. Focusing back on her sandwich while she spoke, her fingerless-gloved hands picked at the foil wrapping.

“What’s your name?” she asked me, lifting the bread to her lips and pausing as she waited for me to answer.

“Natalie.”

“Good name,” she approved before sinking her teeth into her food.

I watched her as she ate, knowing it was somewhat rude, but she didn’t seem to mind and I couldn’t seem to stop. There was something about her that I couldn’t explain. A familiarity mixed with a desire to be just like her – to be myself despite how crazy that might be once I peeled back all my layers.

“What’s your name?” I asked quietly.

“My name?” She frowned.

“Yes.”

“Umm. Hazel.”

Hazel. My breath caught in my throat, the audible gasp making her lower her sandwich back into its container. Her eyes lit up as she watched my reaction.

“Hazel?”

“Yeah. It was my mother’s favourite colour.”

Goosebumps trickled down my spine. “Hazel?”

“That’s what I said.” She grinned.

“That’s an unusual colour for her to choose.”

“You think so? Not really. She fell in love with my father’s eyes the first day she saw him, apparently. Like some mystical force.” She wiggled her fingers on both hands, speaking in a mocking tone before she sniffed loudly and cleared her throat. “I was a bastard child, though. Born out of wedlock, which my gramps and granny did not approve of, so they moved Mum and me away from my father.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Nope.”

“Forever?”

“Yup. Forever. She spent her whole life loving him, pining for him. Well, until…”

“Until?”

Hazel packed up all her things carefully before she turned to me and answered. “My mum passed away twelve months ago.”

“I’m so sorry,” I muttered, knowing all too well that there was nothing more infuriating than people making apologies for Lizzy’s death. Like a sorry would ease the pain. Like all I’d lost was a fucking pen that could be replaced.

“You sound it, too.” Hazel pulled her bag into her chest and gripped it tightly. “She had a heart attack. She was way too young, you know?”

“How old was she?”

“Only forty.” Hazel surprised me by smiling again, her crooked teeth sticking out as a small, out of place laugh escaped her. “But she’d been telling me that she would die young since the day I was born. Like she knew how she was going to go.”

“She knew she’d have a heart attack?”

Turning in her seat until her legs stuck out in the aisle, Hazel leaned forward and whispered as close to my face as she could get.

“The day my dad left her life, she’d starved her heart of what it needed. That’s what she said to me. ‘Imagine a fish without water or a bird without wings, Hazel. That’s how it feels every day. My heart is too tight. Always in pain. Every day, I torture it by denying it what it needs most in life, besides you. One day soon my heart will give in. It will refuse to beat anymore, just to punish me.’” She pulled back a little, glancing down at my chest where my own perfectly healthy heart sat beating, before she looked back up into my eyes. “Then it happened, and I was happy for her.”

My frown deepened as I studied her face to find the lie I could have sworn she was telling, but all that stared back at me was honesty and contentment. “I don’t understand.”

“I watched her live a lie all her life. Seeing her aching that way – do you know what that’s like? To watch a loved one suffer silently?”

“I do.” I gulped down.

“Then you should get it. It was good to know Mum was at peace. No matter who happened to come along after my father, she’d always have missed him.”

I thought of Alex then. I thought of Marcus, too. I could relate to Hazel’s mother so much that the stab of sympathy in my chest for her was painful. Somewhere between looking down at my feet to try and fight back the tears, I heard Hazel move. By the time I looked up, she was out of her seat, her rucksack slung over her shoulder as she navigated her way down the aisle back to the front of the bus.

“Wait,” I called, using the headrests to pull myself up. “Hazel, wait!”

She glanced over her shoulder one last time and smirked at me in amusement, looking far too calm and in control while I frantically scrambled to catch up to her. She looked to be gliding on skates while I was trying to climb a descending escalator.

Before I could pull in another breath to shout her name again, she’d disappeared from view, jumping off the coach with a flourish, and I growled in frustration as soon as I lost sight of her. It felt like forever until I hit those same steps and scurried down them. I landed back out in the open Yorkshire air with a thud, all the loose strands of my hair fanning around my face as I wheezed for breath and turned from left to right. I spun in a circle to look for her. I spun until I became dizzy, but it was no use.

Not even in a city of stone and a sea of grey suits could the purple girl be seen.

She had gone, and I had no idea why that left me feeling so anxious. My heart thumped in my chest, and in one last bid to find her, I ran to the back end of the bus, scanning all the places I hadn’t already scanned. I was breathless, lost in a city I knew well, searching for someone I didn’t know at all.

The engine of the bus beside me roared to life, causing me to blink furiously as I tried to claw my way back to reality.

“Shit!” I hissed as soon as the bus began to reverse. “No! Stop!” I yelled, trying to be heard over the noise. “Stop, stop, stop!”

My hand smacked the side over and over again as I sprinted down the length of it with all the power my legs possessed.

“Stop, please!” I cried. “All of my shit is on there.”

Just when I thought I was fighting a losing battle, and when the bus had reversed as far as it was willing to go, the engine quieted, giving me just enough time to rush to the doors and beat them like I was an ape and the glass panels were my chest.

“Jesus, lady, calm the hell down,” the driver scolded me when the doors eventually sighed and opened.

I could barely breathe, but I didn’t wait to jump back on board. Pulling myself up in front of him, I bent over and gripped my knees, speaking through heavy breaths as I glared at the floor.

“My… bags…” I wheezed. “I thought… I thought you were…”

“Leaving?” he snapped. “You’d have been right there, darling. Tip number one: Don’t get off the bus if you don’t want to miss the ride.”

I held up a single finger as I collected more breaths. “Tip noted. Thank you. I mean, sorry. I just… the girl with the purple hair, Hazel, left something in her seat,” I lied. “I didn’t want her to leave it behind.”

“What girl with the purple hair?”

Standing slowly, I couldn’t hide the small frown on my face. “The one who got on the bus just after me. The one who got off it about ten seconds before I did.”

The driver pulled his chin back, his eyes falling to my feet before they rose up the length of my body like he was checking I didn’t have a bomb on me. “You taking drugs on my bus, lady?”

“What?”

“Cause you sound like you’re tripping.”

“No.” I gasped. “I’ve never taken drugs in my life. I just…” had to stop talking myself into graves.

“Listen, you look like a nice girl and all, but don’t make me kick you off here already. If you’re on this bus ‘til the end, we’ve got a long journey ahead of us. If you want to make it, go and take a seat.”

“You really didn’t see her?” I whispered.

His hands stilled on the giant steering wheel before he raised a single brow and cocked his head. “No. No, I did not see anyone with purple hair get on after you. Only one passenger got on after you, a normal one. No purple. I noticed they were normal because they knew when to smile and go… sit… down. Unlike some of you on here.”

“I’m sorry,” I gushed again, unable to ignore the hairs that were standing to attention on the back of my neck when I finally turned away from him.

As I made my way back to my seat, and the driver put the bus into gear, I kept my eyes trained on the floor, using all the headrests to guide me forward while I drowned in confusion over everything that had just happened.

Had I just imagined her, for Christ’s sake? Had all of that been some epic trip that my mind had thrown at me as payback for all the problems I’d thrown at it recently? My thoughts were coming out in grunts and sighs as I muttered to myself and took my seat.

Let it go, Nat, I thought. Letting my head fall back in my seat, I blew out a heavy breath before I flared my nostrils and inhaled an even bigger one to try and calm my breathing.

It was then that I smelled him. His aftershave taunted me, weaving its magic through my mind, making my head roll from side to side as a small smile played on my lips. Even when bathing in the smell of him, I hadn’t for one second imagined he was beside me, but when that huff of amusement fell from his lips, and my eyes pinged open in surprise, my head snapped in the direction of the seat that Hazel had been in, only to find him – my Alex – sitting in her place, his body slumped casually as he looked at me through amused and satisfied eyes.

“Hey, fancy seeing you here.” He smirked.

“Alex?” My own eyes popped and my body swung around in its seat, all my thoughts bashing and colliding together. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He shrugged. “Just catching the bus.”

“To London?” I cried.

“Shh.” He laughed before pushing himself up and leaning forward over the aisle the same way I was. “You’re sounding hysterical.”

“B-but, what are you… I mean… You not meant to be…”

“Breathe,” he whispered through a smile.

“I can’t,” I squeaked.

“Like this,” he instructed, flaring his nostrils as he took a deep breath for himself, his chest expanding before he exaggerated his exhale.

I narrowed my eyes on him, but failed to contain my smile.

“Take as long as you need.” Alex smirked. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”

Humour shone from his face as he watched me inhale slowly, and I found myself shaking my head, completely dazed and confused by his presence.

“Better?” he asked.

Peeking up through my lashes, I eventually blew all the air out of my cheeks. “What the hell are you doing here?” I asked him through a small, nervous laugh.

“Well,” he began, “I was coming to wave you off. Your parents told me you didn’t want any goodbyes but I just had to see you one more time. Only, like an idiot, I was running late. I thought I’d missed you and I had no idea what coach you were meant to be getting on. I figured I could be like one of those dudes in all those romance films. You know, rush in at the last minute and sweep you off your feet, make you think twice about leaving me and then slam you up against a wall and screw you so hard you’d be thinking of me for months, no matter where you went…”

My cheeks flamed at the thought, but I stayed quiet.

“But I couldn’t see you. Not until you ran off the bus just now. I swear to you, Natalie, you stand out of the crowd to me like a fucking beacon. It’s like when you’re there, I’m pulled in your direction.”

“You saw me get off the bus?”

“I did, and I’ve never been more grateful for your erratic behaviour.”

“I can’t explain what just happened.” I paused as I tried to collect my thoughts. “I was talking to a girl, then she got up to leave and…” I stopped myself from saying anything else, all too aware that I would sound crazy if I told him about Hazel, so I pressed my lips together carefully and blinked.

“Whoever she was, I owe her a drink some time.” Alex lifted his hand to my face and let his thumb brush softly over my dry bottom lip.

“We both do,” I whispered.

“Nat, listen. I know you want space to figure yourself out, and me being here isn’t what I promised you at all. I know I said I’d wait, but …”

“But what?” I mouthed.

“I just wanted to make sure you got home okay.” His grin tore free, and my heart grew three sizes, my love for him tripling in ways I could never have thought were even possible.

“Well that was smooth,” I pushed out through a barely-there chuckle.

“I do that a lot.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“You want to hear something else that’s smooth?”

“I really do.” I grinned brightly.

“As soon as I saw you standing out there looking lost, I knew I couldn’t let you go anywhere. Not without trying to convince you that we should quit messing around and stop finding excuses to be apart. Everything fell into place, and I don’t know about you, but I’m desperate to start our forever today. Right this very fucking second. You and me, Nat. Together.”

I sucked in another sharp breath. My mind was racing, flicking through all the plans I’d made to travel and find out who I was, but my heart was beating so fast and I suddenly couldn’t imagine wanting to discover anything new without Alex by my side. Even with him sitting only inches away from me, he felt as though he was too far away.

“You’ve got to stop making me forget how to breathe,” I whispered, pressing a hand against my chest to steady myself. “And if I say no? If I ask you to wait?”

“Then I’ll leave you as soon as you get off the bus in London if that’s what you need me to do. I’ll let you go on your journey of self-discovery. I will wait however long you ask me to wait, because I just want you to be happy. No, I need you to be happy. But I feel like there’s been so much I’ve wanted to say since I came back into your life, and I’ve always ended up so tongue-tied and scared of losing you, pushing you further away, I’ve not been able to tell you how ridiculously perfect you already are to me.”

“You think I’m perfect?”

“You know I always have. But I get it. I understand and I know what it’s like to question yourself all the time. You need to know, though, there’s always something wrong with someone. All of us are messed up. Nobody is perfect or monster free, even if that’s the way they look to the rest of the world. It usually starts with our parents or our siblings. They’re the ones who fuck us up first. Too strict or not strict enough. Too emotional or too cold. Too competitive or too lazy. Too soft, too violent. Too hard to keep up with, too quick to abuse our trust. There’s always something, even if that something is that, actually, there’s nothing wrong with them at all, and you have no one to blame for your faults but yourself.”

My eyes searched his as I waited for him to go on.

“I’m more fucked up and dependant on people that you can imagine, Nat. Especially you. Pushing you away was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but it was also the best. I needed to be without you, to feel that pain and loss so that I could come back and appreciate you the way you deserve to be adored. I didn’t want to break you back then.”

“And what’s changed?”

“Everything. Nothing. I’ll probably still break you.”

“I see.” I smirked back at him, my chest heaving at the thought of all the fun ways he could break me.

“But I promise,” he started, moving both his hands to cup my cheeks as he pulled me closer to him, “that I will always be the one to pick you up and put you back together. I’ll be the man to try and catch you, even when it’s my hands that have let you fall. I don’t want to waste another second of this life without you in it. I want to be with you. I want to wake up and see your smile every single morning, and know that no one can take you away from me again. I can’t promise I won’t fuck up or make stupid mistakes along the way, but I can promise to love you like no man has ever loved a woman, and I can promise to do that forever.”

“Forever,” I whispered as I drowned in his perfection.

“Forever.”

“No matter what?” A tear of happiness slipped down my cheek while my hand reached up to his face just to feel what it had been desperate to feel for so long.

“No matter what.”

“You promise me, Alex?”

“All the way, baby.” He grinned.

“Natexus,” I mouthed as my gaze fell to his lips.

“Natexus.”

Then we kissed – two halves of one being coming back together after such a long time apart.

I may not have made it far in my journey of self-discovery, but the moment his breaths became mine and I tasted him again, I knew I’d found everything I was ever going to need.

It had always been Alex. It would always be him, too, and it was better to have a fragile heart filled with too much happiness, no matter how temporary, than to have a heart made of stone, aching with emptiness and permanent longing.

It was better to be real than to pretend.

As he pressed himself against me on that coach that was about to take us to a brand new beginning, I knew I would always be real for him.

For that fifteen-year-old girl that fell in love with the boy on the bus.

For us.

For Natexus.

Always.