Chapter 31 #3
He presses his lips together, examining my face like he’s noticing details he’s never noticed before. I do the same, except I’ve already logged all of Jasper’s features into my memory vault. His freckles, his emerald eyes, his soft, peachy lips.
“I don’t want to leave you,” I say. “I won’t. No matter what, I won’t.”
With a firm hand he holds the side of my face, looking into my eyes with a sort of calmness that’s new.
“Max, when this whole thing began right here, I couldn’t face it.
I wasn’t brave enough yet, or strong enough.
My worldview was so narrow it was like trying to paint the inside of a room by staring through a crack in a door.
You’ve opened that door for me. You’ve shown me this whole world I’d completely ignored, and because of that I know the sort of leader I want to be, what sort of wolf.
You’ve shown me the kind of man I want to be.
No matter what happens. That won’t change.
You’ll always be with me. Because you’ve changed me. ”
I can’t help it, tears are welling in my eyes and making my vision go all blurry. My chin is quivering ever so slightly.
“You’ve done the same for me,” I say, as the tears dribble down my cheeks. “And I won’t leave you. I promise.”
A single tear streaks down Jasper’s face too, as he reaches to wipe mine away with his thumb.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, Max. But I do know no matter what you have to do, if you have to leave to save yourself, I want you to.”
“No,” I mumble, shaking my head.
“Max, yes. You have to promise me. My mother wouldn’t have told you that without a reason. So you promise me that you’ll do what you need to to stay safe, okay?”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
Our foreheads are pressed together as we both cry, clutching at each other.
“I know,” he says. “I know. And I’m not trying to push you away. But you have to promise me.”
Still, I can’t promise. Instead, I try to sniff back the tears but it’s useless.
“Don’t you know I’ll always find you?” he asks, surprising me.
“You can run away. Run as far as you want, you can go down as many different paths as you’d like—you can run to the ends of the world.
I’ll always find you.” He holds my face in both his hands, his insistence urgent and palpable.
“And if you need time away, or”—he gulps—“apart. That’s fine.
Even if you don’t want me around anymore, I’ll wait for you.
Even if you need space and time to figure your own stuff out, to explore, to experience different things, with different people.
” He gulps again at that last one and I worry he’s drowning even though we’re nowhere near a body of water.
Then he continues, “I’ll be waiting. This is it for me, Max.
I ran from it for too long and I’m never, never, going to let you go again. ”
He kisses me, wet and desperate, full of meaning.
“I’ll wait for you, Max. Always.”
We kiss again and it’s like our breaths converge, like our energies are flowing between us in pulsing torrents, mixing, becoming one.
“Now promise me,” he says, panting, holding my face an inch from his. “If you need to go to stay safe, you leave, okay? I’ll find you, in this life or the next. Okay? Okay?!”
With shaky breath and trembling lips, I begin to nod. “Okay.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
Our lips crash together in a flurry of kisses, and I can’t help but think back to when we first met.
How Jasper pushed me away. That day on the beach when he’d finally told me he loved me, and we kissed but then he turned his back on me.
And the months that followed, where he kept me at arm’s length all in the name of my safety.
It would be easy to think he was doing the same thing now, telling me to go for my own protection. But things are different, because back then I wasn’t sure about him, I couldn’t be. I couldn’t know that no matter what, his feelings for me would hold.
And now as we fall into the grass in this clearing, with the moon huge and brilliant, watching down on us, I feel it in my wolf-y soul, Jasper and I are endgame.
No marking ceremony necessary.
There’s no mystical warning, no wolf war, nothing that could make me think differently.
But at the same time, I feel free to be myself, to go into the world and do the things I need to. All because Jasper supports me.
Our lives may have seemed too different at the start, the responsibilities of being the alpha’s mate too great, the threats that would come for us too intimidating, and we both had a lot to learn about ourselves and each other.
But somehow, we’ve come through it all, just like we’ll get through the next thing and the one after that.
So as we lie in the grass under a twinkling sea of stars, I feel a strange and maybe unwarranted sense of hope. Because if Jasper and I can go through everything we have and come out this strong, there’s nothing we can’t face.
Bathed in moonlight, in the clearing that’s ours, we lie in each other’s arms and eventually drift off, knowing whatever tomorrow brings we’ll face together.