Painted Souls

Part 6

"I still can't believe we've met before this." Y/N said as she shook her head slightly.

After the initial shock between the two, they managed to head over to the picnic area where Elijah set up a dinner for them. The meal had been made right there at the cabin. While Elijah cooked, and Y/N helped, they talked about several things.

They talked about how much their lives changed after that party. How Y/N had gone to her first showing a few weeks after that. She went into detail about how much it had meant to her and how much it had excited her to see all the work there. Elijah loved that she had been painting ever since. And if memory serves him right, it was around that time he began seeing paint splatters and strokes appear on his skin.

Elijah spoke about how he wanted to follow his father into the law profession. While he didn't know what his specialty was going to be, he tried to keep his options open. Elijah talked about how there was a time or two that quitting and changing majors was a high possibility, but ended up finding ways to keep on track. Y/N loved how much he lit up at speaking about his profession. It didn't matter if it was something simple or something chaotic that happened in the courtroom, it was nice to see him smile as he was in that moment.

They had been talking about everything and anything under the sun to get to know one another. But it was as her eyes landed back on the tree where their names were carved, the memory wanted to play itself over and over again.

"It makes me wonder if Rebekah remembers you." A smile pulled at his lips.

He wasn't sure if he wanted to bring up Celeste just yet. There was a reason they hadn't remembered meeting each other. Their lives may have been intertwined from one moment to the next, but they were very much on different paths in their lives.

"It was so long ago. A distant memory that I only remembered because of being in familiar surroundings. I won't hold it against Rebekah if she doesn't remember."

"If she remembers, I'll never hear the end of it." He said with a shake of his head. "I've had a chance to know you, and I refused to see it."

"Remind her to go easy on you." There was a softness in her voice. "We were young. No one was going to force us into a relationship at that age. We weren't the same back then, either. Our lives were so different. It makes sense for us to get to know each other now. Otherwise, we would have had this notion of needing to be with each other."

A brush of a smile pulled at Elijah's lips before it left. "It would have saved us the heartbreak if we didn't wait."

Y/N reached over and placed her hand on top of his. "Without that heartbreak, we wouldn't know what we needed to prevent it from happening again." Y/N had enough heartbreak in her life as it was. Even though she hoped she'd meet her soulmate, it didn't mean she couldn't date. "Whatever it was that put you through that heartbreak, I wouldn't dream of doing that to you."

He chuckled at that. "I would hope not seeing as you are my soulmate." Her eyebrow raised, and before she could ask what he meant, he continued. "My ex, Celeste," He sighed softly. "she met her soulmate and left me. We had made this pact, that since we had worked so well together, that we wouldn't look for who was on the other side. Four months later, she met him in one of her classes."

Y/N swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat at the words. "It was why you never responded."

She was always curious as to why Elijah had never responded to anything on his skin. The random memos or failed attempts at communication, and the ideas that she would write on her wrist had all been left unanswered. The answer she never knew she needed was finally answered.