I Knew I Loved You

Chapter 9

One month later

Burcu fidgets with her pen, her thoughts miles away and her half-eaten sandwich forgotten on its plate. She's constantly thinking of Kemal these days and it's driving her crazy, sometimes in the best possible way and sometimes in the worst possible way.

This started about a month ago when Kemal rushed to her side to help her with Minnoşum's illness. Ever since, he's been sending her messages once in a while or seeking her out for casual conversations at school, and it feels like they have indeed become friends. Burcu remembers all too well that she rebuffed his friendship advances not long ago, but so much seems to have changed. And she doesn't just mean outside factors, she means Kemal and herself as well. It feels like they have developed more in those few months that they have been in each other's lives again than they have in the decade when they were apart. And that fact alone should scare the hell out of her. But on the contrary, she's been feeling less and less scared and more and more eager to explore where this could lead. Sure, it still makes her panic when he looks at her with that intensity, or when she considers that she might get hurt. On the other hand, it fills her with a giddy kind of joy and even some form of greed tinged with silly hope because she wants to have it all. And for once, she believes she might even deserve it, even if just for a while. Burcu's journey has been a whirlwind of emotions, a dance between fear and exhilaration. A tale of rediscovery and the courage to embrace the unknown.

Is she really ready? Probably not. Will she ever be? Probably not. But does she want to be? YES.

Ever since the day before yesterday, though, Burcu has been unsure what to make of the current situation. Something has changed in Kemal's behavior, but she can't put her finger on it, or rather on what triggered it. It was him all along who pushed and pulled and who was the driving factor and who made the first steps so they could grow closer again, but since yesterday it feels like he's been crawling back into whatever shall he'd been hiding in when they first met at school here. It drives her insane that he won't open up to her because she'd been valuing their increasing talk. She'd been thinking that her place in his life was now special enough for him to confine. Well, she'd been wrong again, hadn't she? Was history repeating itself?

It's clear as day that something is wrong with him, because his face is closed off, he's monosyllabic and grumpy, and there's a world of hurt in the depth of his soulful eyes that makes her heart ache.

Has she done something? Has someone else hurt him? Fierce protectiveness surges at the thought, despite the hurt his abrupt change in behavior is causing her. She wants to help so badly, more so than she does with her students when they struggle. However, he's made it clear that he doesn't want her help.

Just yesterday morning, Kemal again discovered Kemal skulking at the back of the building. Leaning his long body against the wall, one of his scuffed black boots was scraping at the dusty ground and one of his big, beautiful hands was balled into a fist and resting against the wall. His other hand lifted a cigarette to his mouth and the sight of it was way too sexy yet made her worry. She remembered their early times when they started dating at university and Kemal found out that she hated him smoking. Burcu was genuinely worried about his health. After a while, he reduced the amount of cigarettes smoked in a day and then even made an effort to stop completely. She had foolishly assumed that he might have continued with this habit over the years, but then recently she had spotted him smoking with that dreadful Billur, and now he was doing it alone and seemingly much more often. Was it another sign that something was wrong with him?

She'd gone to speak to him. Burcu lets her mind wander to that confrontation, her grip on the pen tightening until it digs into her palm.