one small touch from van sends a rush through her entire body, bringing her hope that they’ve made it here —- into a place where she and van can forget about everything in between and just be together, live in the moment, something taissa turner has never been good at, but with van, it feels possible. part of that is just the hope they can forget about what happened in the past and not dwell on how to make this work in the future. for the first time in so long, taissa doesn't want to overthink it. she doesn’t even let herself think about how that comes from such a selfish place.
she starts to smile, softer now, her hand so naturally holding onto theirs— until van pulls away, and the smile falters again.
and then, her expression turns into something of panic, as it often does when she’s called on something— and it’s instinct for her to revert back to politician mode, trying to come up with a story, an excuse, something that puts her back in their good graces. that tactic doesn’t work on van palmer, not like it might have used to, when taissa used it simply to avoid taking a fight further without truly coming to any real closure.
where’s she been? living in a fantasy world, one she’d crafted in accordance to the life she once set out for herself, one that should have changed when she fell in love and saw her life differently, but once they were rescued, she was desperate to regain some kind of control over her life, assuming that the only way to move forward was to get back to every little thing she had planned for herself. van wasn’t a part of that plan before then, which taissa let justify moving on without them, as if she hadn’t just felt empty for it. without van.
she lets out a sigh, dipping her head down in shame, her hand sliding away from van as if she’s in trouble, and it rests awkwardly against her own lap for a moment before she pushes her hands down to her knees and forces herself to take a deep breath and compose herself, like she always does. ❝ i know. i know, van—- i haven’t been there. ❞ not for them. she couldn’t move on if van was still in her life— at least, that’s what she made herself believe in her early 20s, and now that the life she left van for crumbled apart so quickly, so easily, she wonders if that was always inevitable or if that was just a punishment for how she’d treated the only person she loved that way, so fully herself. she hasn't been herself since they were together.
❝ i’m trying now. i want to be. ❞ but van's hesitance is fair— after all, would tai have shown up on their doorstep if the campaign went smoothly, this other part of herself hadn’t been awakened, hadn't forced her to push her family away, leaving her all alone and hopeless? she showed up at van's unannounced, not considering what that would do for van. it was entirely selfish, and yet as she sits here with van now, she tells herself this was supposed to happen anyway. they don’t have enough time left, and maybe that's tai's fault— so for taissa, it feels like her responsibility to make up for it now.
but for someone who always prides herself on having a plan, she doesn't have one here.
❝ can’t we… talk about it? ❞ those same pleading eyes look back to them now. she isn't referring to their history, though— at least, not the ending, just what still exists between them, what apparently never went away in over 20 years of being apart. ❝ our kiss. ❞ it feels so teenage, like they’re sneaking around the high school again trying to figure out what they’re doing, how they feel, how they can make it work. the irony is, she definitely wasn't willing to put a label on it back then, and now, ever since that happened at lottie's compound, she's desperate for some kind of validation, to know that van hasn't given up on her even if they have every reason to. ❝ you felt something. i did, too. ❞ maybe taissa has always wondered if van fell out of love with her in those years in between, while taissa was convincing herself she had falling out of love, too, but the only way to believe that was to not think of van at all.
❝ i know this— ❞ she says, her hand waving around vaguely. ❝ isn't where you imagined figuring that out. but being with you, even if we're not... ❞ she doesn't finish that, because she doesn't even know what’s a possibility between them anymore. ❝ it's the closest i've felt to home in a long time, van. ❞