Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
W hen we return to the cabin the next day, my father and Brendan are waiting, sitting astride their horses in the clearing. My father surveys Weston and me, his mouth tight.
I swing off my mare and give him a sorry-not-sorry smile. “You’re too late. It’s already done.”
He nods, like he expected nothing less. “I don’t suppose I can talk you into an annulment?”
I laugh. “Nope. It’s too late for that, too.”
He grimaces. That was probably crossing a line, but I don’t regret it. Maybe I’ll even make this a habit. Because it’s better to cross lines once in a while than to live safely within someone else’s borders.
Weston swings down and makes his way over to me, slinging an arm around my shoulders. The gesture is clearly a warning. A staking of claims. It’s a declaration about how this is going to go, an expectation that my choice will be honored.
And I love him for it. A little more than I did this morning, a little deeper. He might still doubt himself, and I doubt myself, too, and we’ll have to navigate our ways past that somehow, but when we’re united like this, we add up into something greater than the sum of its parts. He believes in me and I believe in him and that makes us unbreakable.
“Any other questions?” my husband says.
My father sighs. Brendan winks at me, and I get the sense that they’ve already had a protracted conversation about this.
So I smile at my brother. It’s the most genuine smile I’ve given him in years.
“No questions,” my father finally says. “I don’t know that I can argue with the law. Besides, Brendan had some valid points. I think maybe…we’ve been a little short-sighted with you, Bria. A little bit…”
“Selfish?” I supply.
He clears his throat. “Yes. But you should know your mother and I only wanted the best for you. Maybe we disagreed on what that would look like, but it doesn’t mean we didn’t care. So…I hope you’re happy. I do.”
“I am happy,” I say, touched. “Deeply.”
“Good. But you.” My father fixes Weston with a glare. “You owe us a favor. An offering.”
My husband straightens, his features settling into their habitual glower. “I don’t owe you a thing. Not after what?—”
“Not money.” My father waves a hand. “Something else.”
Weston tenses. “What else?”
Brendan’s expression goes carefully blank. Quiet descends, filling the clearing.
“Go inside, Bria,” my father says.
Weston’s fingers tighten around my shoulders. “Whatever you have to say to me, you can say it in front of my wife. ”
My father matches Weston glower for glower, glare for glare. “Not this.”
I pause, but there’s something in the way he says it. A certainty that has me disentangling myself from Weston’s grip. “It’s fine,” I say, and kiss his cheek. “Just hear him out. I’ll be inside.”
He nods, his jaw set. I leave them to talk.
I swing open the door to the cabin, step inside, and?—
Stop. My hand flutters to my chest. I stare and stare and stare, tears misting my eyes. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.
Many minutes later, when Weston finally joins me, I still haven’t budged.
“When?” I say. My voice comes out rusty and tear-choked. I swallow down my emotions and try again. “When did you do this?”
He smiles shyly, then strides to the dividing wall. Which...isn’t actually a wall anymore. An archway joins the two rooms, doubling the cabin’s size. There’s only one bed now, not two, and the bookcases sit side by side.
He runs a hand over the mortared stones of the archway. “I changed it before I came to see your dad. Do you like it?”
I blink the fog from my vision. “I love it. It’s perfect.”
“Good.”
When the coil of emotion knotted around my airway uncurls, I wander close to him. “What did my dad and Brendan want? Outside?”
His features go blank, an eerie mirror of Brendan’s expression from a few minutes ago.
“Weston?” Wariness edges my words.
“I’m going to go with them,” he says carefully. “Right now. For just a little while. But I’ll be back before dark. ”
I tense. “You’re leaving me?”
He searches my face. “You’ll be safe. I promise. Safer once I go than you were before.”
I stand motionless, caught in his eyes. I know I can’t rely on him every moment of every day. And while I’m still in recovery from my experience with the duke, I have to stand on my own two feet sometimes. Bold as brass.
“Okay,” I whisper.
“But before I go,” he says, “I want you to pick a number.”
“A number?”
“Yes. Between...one and...two hundred and six, let’s say.”
I blink. “That’s very specific.”
A sharp smile slices across his mouth before vanishing again. It’s unmistakably savage. “It is.”
I hesitate. I almost consider asking for specifics, but I can tell he’s not going to share them. “Twenty-three.”
Something cold glitters in his eyes. “Twenty-three. Good choice.”
He kisses me on the mouth, squeezes my hand, and retreats. At the door, he pauses. “By the way. We should go on a honeymoon. Spend a few weeks somewhere before I have to go crawling back to the cotton mill and see if they’ll take me on again.”
“A honeymoon? Where?”
His mouth tips. “I was hoping you’d have an idea. Why don’t you think about it while I’m gone?”
I nod. And I do. And by the time he returns, many hours later, I have dinner ready, a fire going in the hearth, and the perfect destination in mind.
But Weston barely spares a glance for my efforts. There’s a crackling energy to him, one I’ve only seen a few times before, usually when he stepped out of the ring victorious.
“I made dinner,” I say.
“Later.” He comes at me like an aimed javelin, then picks me up and carries me to bed. And proceeds to love me with a ferocity that leaves me awestruck and breathless and deliciously sore.
Afterward, we eat, and he asks if I’ve come up with anything for the honeymoon.
I pause. I don’t know how he’ll take it, but there’s only one way to find out. So I tell him.
He puts his fork down, thoughtful. “All right,” he says. “I’m surprised, but all right.”