Summary: Taylor decides running is the best option. A soulmates AU, in which ES never happened, but Tyler still existed and finds who she is (and who she isn’t).
Taylor’s first instinct is to run. So she does. She slows her angry, confused thoughts just long enough to pack a bag and call a cab to the airport, and then she leaves. Halfway through the flight to Costa Rica, she wonders if she should have stayed and demanded answers from her parents (but are they her parents? The papers she found say she’s not even fully human, so they can’t be, can they?).
But while her first instinct has always been to tackle problems head on, this is something she doesn’t think she can really fix. Running seems like the best solution at the time, even if it’s not the most well-thought-out plan. No one will think to look for her in Costa Rica. She doesn’t have to deal with any of this there.
Taylor settles back in her seat on the plane, absentmindedly tracing her fingers over the intricate compass tattoo on the inside of her wrist. She wonders how she could possibly have a soulmark, with what she found out, but she doesn’t dwell on it. It’s the least of her problems, and the familiar mark, unchanged through all of this, is reassuring.
Once she lands, Taylor makes her way out of the airport with purpose. She needs somewhere to stay, and that is something she can figure out. She finds a cluster of tiny cabins for rent not far from the beach, pays the first month’s rent, and drops her bag inside. It’s refreshingly simple, almost easy. Before she leaves, the woman she’s renting the cabin from gestures at a man reclined on one of the beach chairs out front.
He’s a pilot, the woman explains, and the only other person renting a cabin at the moment. Taylor wanders over to the chairs. The man’s eyes are closed, his arms behind his head. When he hears her sit down on the chair next to his, he slowly opens his eyes, turns his head towards her, and offers her a lazy smirk. His eyes are a startlingly bright blue.
“Something I can help you with, Princess?”
Princess?
Taylor raises an eyebrow. “Is that how you greet everyone?”
“I don’t call ‘em all Princess.”
There’s something pleasant and intriguing about his lazy southern drawl.
“I’m Taylor.”
“Jake.”
He offers nothing else up, and Taylor studies him when he closes his eyes again. He’s cute, she decides. There could be worse people to share this space with.
“I feel you starin’, Princess.”
Taylor smirks, shaking her head. “Are you only going to call me Princess?”
Jake opens his eyes again, grinning at her. “That depends.”
“Hmm. Then I have to give you a nickname too,” she decides. “I like Top Gun. Since you’re a pilot and all.”
“How in the-“ he stops, muttering something under his breath about how no one can keep their mouth shut.
“It’s not like being a pilot is a bad thing,” Taylor points out, and reclines back in her chair, kicking her sandals off. “So, Top Gun. What brings you to Costa Rica?”
Jake narrows his eyes at her. “Are you always so nosy?”
She pulls at a thread on her shorts, curling her toes into the cheap plastic of the chair. “Just trying to figure you out.”
“Not much to it. I’m on the run, you could say.”
“From what?”
His eyes burn into hers, like he’s trying to decide how much to say. Finally, he shrugs, a little regret on his face, and says, “A lie.”
“Oh.”
After a few minutes of silence, the sun beating down on them and making her debate heading inside, Jake asks, “What about you?”
“I’m on the run too,” she can’t resist saying.
One corner of his mouth tilts up in amusement. “From a lie?”
“No,” she says. “From a truth I don’t want to deal with just yet. And to sound cliché, I don’t really know who I am anymore.”
Taylor looks over at Jake, who’s smiling a bit sadly. She likes that he doesn’t offer her any reassuring words, or pry too deeply. All he says is, “Me neither, Princess.”
The heat starts to become unbearable, so she tells Jake she’ll see him later, then stands and slips her sandals back on.
“Taylor.”
Jake’s hand encircles her wrist as she goes to walk to her cabin, his voice tight and almost…shaky?
“What is it?”
She looks down and sees him staring at her soulmark. He stands up suddenly, flipping his other hand over, and Taylor sees that his soulmark is in the same spot as hers. No…not just in the same spot, she realizes. It’s the exact same as hers, the same exact color, and identical down to every last line and circle. The font of the directional letters is the same. For a long, quiet moment, Taylor just stares between her mark and his.
Never, she thinks, would she have predicted she’d meet her soulmate like this. She’d always assumed it would be in college, or close to home, not in an entirely different country.
But as she looks up into those bright blue eyes and the hint of a smile on Jake’s face, she thinks this is one time that she’s glad she decided to run.