Chapter 46
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
MILO
I briefly thought that would be the end of it, that we’d said the hardest part out loud and could finally just stay here together without trying to solve the future tonight.
But Fen’s story still sat heavily in the back of my mind, impossible to ignore for long. “What happens after?” I asked.
Calder’s gaze settled on me fully, attentive now in a way that told me he understood the weight behind the question.
“If you lose someone like that,” I went on, searching his face, “is that it? Is that the only time it happens?” My hand slid from his chest to his shoulder, holding on there. “Was she the only one Fen could ever have? Or… can it happen again?”
Fen might have started the train of questions, but this was about us now. Calder’s hand moved from my jaw to the side of my neck, thumb resting just under my ear. “It can happen again.”
No hesitation.
“It will never be the same,” he said softly. “Nothing replaces that kind of loss. But grief is not the end of someone.”
I believed him.
Maybe because Calder understood attachment differently than humans did. Maybe because immortality forced creatures like them to understand grief in ways the humans simply didn’t live long enough to comprehend.
“But love does not become impossible after grief,” Calder continued. “What he had with her was real. Losing her does not erase that, but surviving her does not mean he is condemned to loneliness forever.”
I looked down briefly, thinking about Fen walking through these woods alone for more than a century after losing her.
Then I looked back at Calder. “So there’s still a future for him somewhere.”
“Yes,” Calder said again. “If he allows himself one.”
I let out a breath and leaned forward just enough that our foreheads touched again, my eyes closing momentarily while I let the meaning of it settle fully into me.
“You’re not asking me to decide anything right now,” I said. It wasn’t a question. I just needed to hear him say it.
“No,” he answered.
His hand spread against the back of my neck, warm and reassuring there. “I am not asking you to give anything up tonight. Your life existed before me, My Heart. I would never ask you to abandon it for my sake.”
He spoke carefully, like he wanted me to understand that loving him was never supposed to be at the cost of my own humanity.
“I meant what I said,” he continued quietly. “I choose you as you are. I do not want you becoming someone else to make the future easier to survive.”
The tenderness in his voice knocked the breath right out of my lungs.
“If you never choose immortality,” he added, “it will not change what this is. It will not dampen what I feel for you. I will still love you exactly the same way.”
The questions were still there–Chicago was still there. My life, my work, my brother—none of that had disappeared just because I was standing here with him. The future still felt complicated, but it no longer felt like a countdown.
I wasn’t being cornered into a decision I wasn’t ready to make. I wasn’t being asked to give anything up on the spot just to prove something.
He had taken that off the table.
I let out a slow breath, my hand sliding from his shoulder to the back of his neck, holding him there the same way he’d been holding me. “I’m not deciding that tonight,” I muttered, surprised at the certainty in my own voice.
“I would have objected.”
“Good to know,” I teased, a smile tugging at my mouth.
“But I am deciding this–I’m deciding that being here with you doesn’t feel like losing the rest of my life.
” I raised my head enough to meet his eyes again.
“I still have a life outside these woods, a real one, but being here with you feels real too.” I held his gaze. “And I want this, Calder. I want you.”
For the first time since Fen approached us, the tension finally left Calder’s face.
I let out a breath and leaned into him again. His arms embraced me easily, like it was the most natural thing in the world now, not something either of us had to figure out anymore.
We stayed there quietly for a long moment, holding each other.
After a while, he shifted, guiding us both onto the furs without breaking contact. I went with him, stretching out along the length of him, my head resting against his chest, listening to the steady thump against my ear.
His hand drifted into my hair, slowly. His other arm tightened around me, keeping me close against him.
I lay there, staring at nothing in particular, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing under me, the warmth of him steady and real.
I still didn’t know what the future would ask of us. Chicago still existed beyond these woods, so did the questions waiting for me there.
But lying there with Calder’s arms around me, with the thud of his heart against my ear, I understood something.
Love did not become less real simply because the future was complicated.