Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
I nside of ten seconds, it turns into a fight.
Of course it does.
I stand by the fireplace, trying to soothe the scorch of my anger with the gentle warmth of the flames. But my skin feels too tight, my blood whirring with equal parts rage and relief.
Goddess, Weston could have been killed out there. Weston, not Jack, because he’s the one who stole me. Jack doesn’t actually exist. Whoever I saw on the road that day was...a decoy, probably. Just another layer of the lie. Because after I saw that man’s face, I lost sight of him, at least for a minute or two.
A minute or two in which Weston must have taken over.
“How dare you?” I whirl and fling an accusing finger at him. “What in the world made you think it was okay to trick me like that? To lie?”
He stands just out of reach, his arms crossed, his eyes guarded. “I didn’t lie.” He’s abandoned that growling voice, at least, and now sounds like himself again .
“Yes, you did,” I hiss. “You told me your name was Jack. You told me you lived here. You said there was some woman on the other side of a wall you needed me to save.”
“My name is Jack.” His lip curls, the makings of a snarl. As if all it takes to spark his anger is to feel the flare of mine. “It’s my middle name. Weston Jackson Wildes.”
I narrow my eyes. He’s never told me that before.
“And I do live here,” he continues.
“No, you live in town.” I hurl the words, at least ninety percent sure they’re true. I’ve heard Brendan talk about Weston’s place in Pine’s End, though I don’t know where it is, exactly.
“I rent a room there, that’s it.” He leans in, which somehow grants him another inch of height. If he’s going for imposing, he’s definitely succeeding. “But it’s a hovel. I only sleep there when I’m doing the books for the mill. They won’t let me on the property while the machinery’s running, and I like to be alone, anyway. But whenever I’m not working, I come here. I get away .”
“Away? From?”
“Everything!” He glares from beneath flattened brows. “The stares. The whispers. The fact that horrible things happen to anyone who comes near me. I built this place so I’d have somewhere that was mine. Even though it took me years. Even though everything kept going wrong.”
At that, I wilt a little, losing steam. The sentiment threads a hot wire through my heart and pulls it clean out the other side.
“And there is a woman across the wall,” he continues darkly.
“Who?” I do my utmost to rally. If I don’t keep hold of my anger, I’ll only embarrass myself. I’ll probably burst into tears and beg him to touch me again, like I did at the mill. “Who is it I’ve been helping all this time? Your girlfriend? Or one of those lovers you’re so quick to get away from? Were you just using me to fix her so you could send me back to the duke?”
“Fortuna’s curses.” He slams his eyes closed and pinches between them with gloved fingers. “You don’t get it, Birdie. You really, truly, absolutely and completely do not fucking get it , do you?”
“No, I don’t. Of course I don’t! How could I, when I have no clue what this was for?” Fresh ire bristles hot in my chest, all my frustration of the last few weeks boiling over. “You walked away from me, Weston. You let Brendan sell me to that awful man and just...just left . Then you apparently changed your mind and stole me, only you told me you were someone else, and then you gave me all these books and made me cure your girlfriend, which, to be fair, I would’ve done anyway, if you’d just asked, and then you got me all that milk, and you... You...”
I run out of air. My lungs heave, trying to suck down more, only he’s standing closer than he was a moment ago. Much closer. He bends his head, staring down into my face, and it hits me. Finally.
“You kissed me,” I finish. The words slide from my tongue, molten.
Because Fortuna help me. Eight days ago, in the duke’s carriage, I kissed Weston. Weston Wildes. The man I’ve hungered after for a decade. And he kissed me back. With fire and fervor and everything I’ve dreamed he might hold locked up in his heart .
My hand rises, unbidden, to my mouth. Weston’s eyes track the movement with unerring focus.
“And you have no idea why I did all that?” he says, still watching my fingers. The question comes out smooth and oiled, like a threat. “None at all?”
“I...don’t.”
“You can’t even begin to guess? You don’t find it painfully obvious by now?”
“Because I asked you to?” I say, breathy. “Because I begged you to steal me?”
“Yes, because you asked.” His tone rises. “And because I couldn’t stand to see you as terrified as you were in your foyer. Because Brendan won’t let me marry you, but I can’t seem to let you marry anyone else. Because I’d rather keep you here like some museum treasure no one can touch than let the duke lay a finger on you. Because I wanted you to have books and milk and a comfortable place to sleep without you owing anyone anything, and I wanted you to be mine to watch over. For just a few days, I wanted you to be mine. So yes, I stole you. And misled you. And you can hate me for that, if you like. I probably made sure of it the moment I jumped onto the duke’s carriage.”
I gape at him. “I...” My voice has fled somewhere. Gotten lodged between the floorboards, out of my reach.
Weston’s nostrils flare. He’s so close now I can smell him, clean and salted and male, with an underlying hint of amber. He doesn’t usually venture this far into my personal space, so I’ve never gotten a proper nose full of him before. Except maybe while we had our tongues in each other’s mouths, but I was too lost in delirium then to take it in .
“And the person you’re saving isn’t my girlfriend .” His eyes spark, his jaw working like he’s trying to chew something in half. “I don’t have a girlfriend. I don’t ever have a girlfriend. The woman in that bed is my aunt.”
Aunt . The word drops through me. I didn’t realize Weston has relatives. At least not that he’s in touch with. Because his mother...
“I thought you didn’t talk to them anymore,” I say. “Your family.”
His lip curls. “I don’t. My mom stays away. She knows better than to get anywhere near me. But my aunt... Well. She’s always written me letters. Even though I’ve never answered. I don’t know what made her decide to come looking for me after all these years, but look what it almost cost her. At least now she’s learned her lesson. Finally. The way everyone?—”
He bites down, cutting himself off, but I know what he was going to say.
Everyone always does.
All at once, the high peaks of my anger give way, unable to withstand the reminder of how much he hates himself.
Or the realization that Weston did all this for me. I think. And for his aunt. And for himself, maybe, in some convoluted way that tucks a seed of hope into my palm and closes my fingers around it.
“Why pretend to be someone else, though?” I say, quieter now. “Why make sure I saw that man on the roadside, before you stole my carriage?”
He looks away. “So the duke wouldn’t know where to look. So even you would think I was a stranger. ”
“But why? Who was that man?”
“Just someone with hair like mine. Someone I hired to be seen.”
I make a thick sound in the back of my throat. “But why trick me ? The duke…fine, but me? Was it so I wouldn’t turn you in, like you said? So you wouldn’t have to answer to the law?”
“No.” An angry line wrinkles the bridge of his nose. “I don’t care if you tell the police. Go ahead. If they end up hanging me for this, it’ll probably be no more than I deserve.”
All the blood dives out of my cheeks. “No. What? I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I can’t stand the thought of a world without you in it.”
He laughs, sharp and quick and cold. “You’re going to have to, Birdie. We both know I’m on borrowed time. If it’s not the hangman’s noose, it’ll be something else. I’ll probably walk under a window just as someone tosses out something heavy. Or I’ll step on a nail and get tetanus. I’ll eat the wrong sort of mushroom while everyone else at the table lucks out with the edible kind.”
I can’t help myself. I grab his forearm and squeeze. Hard.
He doesn’t flinch, like he would have a few weeks ago. He doesn’t even move. His arm is like corded steel in my grip, his skin hot through the fabric. He watches me so intently that I feel the force of it in my toes.
“That’s so...” I swallow the fresh horror pooling in my throat. “...easily avoidable.”
“No,” he says. “It’s not.”
The fire cracks and snaps, begging for attention, but we both ignore it. In the pause, Weston’s gaze slides downward. For the first time in my life, he traces a path from my eyes to my chin, then downward further still.
He settles on my Mark, which peeps through the neckline of my nightgown. “You want to know why I couldn’t let you know? It had nothing to do with the law. It was so you wouldn’t ask me to touch you again. So I wouldn’t be tempted. Because that ”—he rests a gloved finger against my chest—“is what saved you tonight. That man had a knife to your throat, and I couldn’t help you, Birdie. I couldn’t do anything . Not without putting you at risk. But that Mark could. So call it stifling if you want. Hate it if you want, but this is your insurance. And mine. It’s the thing that lets me know you’re protected, anywhere you go, all the time. And if I have to buy that guarantee with an early end, so be it.”
I cease to breathe. So many things are happening inside me at once, Weston’s words crashing over me in waves. All he seems to care about is keeping me safe. The revelation kindles a fragile dream in my heart, even as his bleak outlook breaks it.
He lifts his eyes from my Mark. Anguish flickers there, quickly shuttered away.
“Why do you...” The words tangle on my tongue, so I try again. “Why do you care so much?”
The firelight plays across the hard planes of his face. His hand falls from my triquetra. “You don’t want to hear it. Trust me.”
I press a splayed palm to my chest, as if I can trap the memory of his touch against my skin. The space beneath feels hollow, just waiting to be filled up. “I do, though. I want to hear it more than anything.”
“Why?” An edge of despair slices through the word. “Why bother? I mean, I’ll admit, I thought...that there was something in the way you looked at me, maybe. You’d do it for too long, sometimes. Too often. But I get it now.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” His mouth twists. He yanks at his collar, wrenching his shirt open to bare his triquetra. “You see this and it looks like an opportunity to you. It looks like a way out. That was why you asked me to touch you at the mill.”
The absurdity of that makes me sway on my feet. That’s not it. At all. I mean, his Mark does look like a way out, but that’s entirely beside the point. I crave Weston because he’s Weston. Because when I stand in front of him, I’m safe. Because here, under the force of his glare, is where I feel most at home.
“That’s ridiculous,” I say.
Resignation etches grooves beside his mouth. “It’s not.”
“It is. And I want you to say it. Whatever you’re not telling me.” Please , I silently amend. Please let us be talking about what I think we are .
He scowls. “There’s no point.”
My nails bite into my palms. Joy and frustration war within me, the clash threatening to tear me apart. “Yes. There is. Say it.”
“Why?” He steps back. “So you can smile at me the way everyone else does? Like you pity me? So I’ll know for sure that the thing I fooled myself into believing was never real?”
My breath speeds, a chaotic whirl in my lungs. “No. So I can say it back.”
He freezes, and for once, the anger drains from his features. They’re no less harsh for it, no less unforgiving, but they’re softened in some faint way by surprise. Haloed with disbelief.
Something inside me cries his name. I can’t believe he doesn’t realize. I can’t believe he believes a single word of the nonsense he just spouted.
Only...I understand why. Life, in all its relentless cruelty, has divested him of his ability to hope.
But maybe I can give him a reason. If he can give me one, too.
“Just say it,” I plead.
His throat works. He blinks a few times, hard and fast. “Fine. If you’re so desperate to know, then here it is: I’ve been cursed twice in my life. Once when I was born. And again when I met you.”
A vast ache opens inside me. Something is coming, so hard and fast I’ll never be the same. I’m standing in front of the avalanche as it comes careening down the mountain. In another moment, it will engulf me.
“Because...” Weston swallows hard. “You have to know, Birdie. There’s no way you don’t realize I’ve been horribly, wretchedly, agonizingly in love with you since the day we met. Ever since I was fifteen.”
I close my eyes. I wanted to believe it, and yet I couldn’t, not really. Not until this moment. Now radiance pours into me, a physical force, like rivers of light spilling through my veins. I become a star, burning away the dark. I’m incandescent.
When I look again, he’s halfway across the room. Halfway out the door.
“Weston.” It’s all I can manage. A broken whisper. An answered prayer .
He pauses mid-flight.
“I was fourteen,” I say.
His shoulders tense. “I know how old you were when we met.”
“No, I don’t mean when we met. I mean when I fell in love. I was fourteen when I fell in love.”
The tense set of his posture loosens. He pivots more slowly than I knew a man could.
“With you,” I add. Just to be sure. “And I’ve loved you ever since. Every moment.” Even when I didn’t want to.
His whole body slackens, his lips parting. “What?”
“You.” My voice stabilizes. “Are all I’ve ever wanted.”
He blinks, long and hard. “You...want my Mark, you mean. You want me to touch you. To take from you. You want to be rid of your luck.”
“No.” I grab fistfuls of my nightgown to keep from running to him. My palms burn for him, to touch him, but I can’t. Not if I want him to understand. “I mean, yes, of course I want you to touch me. But the important part is that I don’t want you to stop, once you do. Not ever.”
He stares, his breaths piling atop one another, a mess of sharp intakes and shaky exhales. I swear I see each of my words land. He blinks twice, then hauls a hand through his hair, leaving it disheveled. “That’s...”
“The truth,” I say. “No one’s ever treated me like you have. Like a normal person. Like I’m a real live woman with thoughts and feelings. No one’s ever respected me like you do.”
He doesn’t blink. Or move.
“You must realize I’m horribly, wretchedly, agonizingly in love with you, too. And it’s not because of your Mark. It’s because of the books you’ve brought me. And the milk. And the bones you’ve broken. And?—”
All at once, he’s crossing the room with long strides. When he reaches me, he takes my face in gloved hands and hauls it up to within a hairsbreadth of his. He stares into my eyes, his mouth an inch from mine.
A joyful whimper flies from my lips. Everything inside me crystallizes. I raise up on tiptoes, and it’s as easy as falling. It’s so effortless to finally, finally cross this hated distance.
But Weston pulls back from my advance, just a bit. He hovers for a moment that borders on endless, then makes a sound—purely male, infinitely frustrated—and tears himself away.
My knees nearly buckle. “No. No, what? What’re you doing?”
He stalks toward the wall beside the fireplace, where he drops his head and presses curled fists against the stone, his back tight. I think he’s shaking.
“Come back here and kiss me,” I almost wail.
“I can’t, Birdie. Curses, you know that.”
Silence swamps me, binding my tongue.
“For all the reasons I just told you, I can’t. I won’t.” He unleashes a bitter chuckle and pummels the wall with a fist.
I wince at the tender sound of leather against rock, but if it pains him, he gives no sign.
“All I can ever be to you is a liability. And I’m not going to take away your safety—your future —just so I can have one, too.”
Part of me goes dark. Just dies away between one moment and the next, the light from earlier extinguished like a shuttered lantern. “No. What? What about what I want? What if I want to give you my future? What if I want to share it with you?”
Another chuckle, this one edged in ruthlessness. “Then I guess you’ll finally find out what it’s like to not get what you want.”
I recoil. It’s a cruel thing to say, and I know why he’s doing it. To reinforce this separation. To buttress this uncrossable inch that somehow stretches across miles.
But that doesn’t make it okay.
“Don’t be mean,” I say to his back.
He raises his head, as if girded by my accusation. “I am mean, though. You say you love me, and Fortuna help me, I love you so much, and want you so badly, that I can’t see anything else, sometimes. But I. Am. Mean.” He gives the wall another punch and pushes off to face me.
I press my lips together, trying to fence in the hurt that’s piling in my throat.
“And I’m rude,” he says. “And aggressive. And violent. I’m everything your parents warn you about, and I’m not good for you, Birdie. I can’t be. No matter how much I wish I could. So don’t ask me to kiss you. You should be kissing someone else. Anyone but me.”
I stomp my bare foot against the floorboards, a weak protest that doesn’t require the heroism of words.
“I’m going to stay away from you,” he mutters, as if trying to convince the both of us. “My aunt’s almost better now, anyway. I can’t risk her again by being here. I never should’ve gotten near her in the first place. But once she leaves, you can stay. You can hide here for as long as you like. I’ll do...anything. I’ll lead the duke’s men in circles for the rest of my life. I’ll kill anyone who gets close. Whatever you want. But I can’t be here. I can’t be near you.”
With that, he turns and makes for the door, and this time, I don’t stop him.
Because I’m wrecked. Held together by nothing but the tendrils of my rapidly fraying pride.
Fortuna help me, I’m sick to death of him walking away from me like this.
This, I vow, will be the last time I ever let him.