Chapter 51
There’s sunlight streaming in through the trees as I sit by the river, bathing the world in a warm haze that matches the one humming in my blood.
Sated, drowsy…happy. I think I’m happy for the first time in a really long time.
I stare at the silver watch in my hand and rub my thumb over its surface, unable to stop tracing the three interlocking floral rings like I’ve been doing since he gave it to me.
Only this time, it’s different.
I’m starting to remember some things, I think. Little things. The way my mother would smile at us when we came home for the day, the way my father would laugh until his sides hurt, the way it felt to be part of something. And it doesn’t feel as painful as I thought it might—to remember.
I think they’d be happy, too. I think they’d understand. Loving someone so much that you’d follow them anywhere. Even if it takes you farther away from what you knew before. Even if it means letting go of what you’ve lost.
Beside me on the bank, Cypress is lying on his back fast asleep after we had finally stopped going at each other long enough to decide that we needed some fresh air—for our own well-being as much as the cabin’s—and I’m glad he seems as comfortable here as he had in bed.
Perhaps even more so, sprawled out with his left arm thrown above his head and his other against his chest, although it’s his face that I can’t stop studying once I stow the watch in my pants pocket.
Memorizing his dark hair in a tangled mess from my fingers, appreciating the tinge of pink on his cheeks and neck from where my whiskers had scratched his skin.
A few bite marks, too, and not just there.
I’d called him pretty earlier, but what I’d meant was gorgeous. In a way that fucking aches.
I should let him sleep for a while. I know I should.
He needs it even more than I do, but it’s so hard to resist touching him now that I’ve finally let myself.
Carefully, I lie down next to him before my fingertips dust over his cheekbones, trace the bridge of his nose, the bow of his mouth, the scar along his chin.
There’s several on his face but this one is the one I notice most. Probably because it runs closest to his smile.
“It is nice here,” he murmurs, his voice a low, raspy drawl before he starts humming that familiar song, letting me know I’ve been unsuccessful in my attempts not to disturb him.
But I struggle to feel guilty for it, so lost in the sound of it, so lost in the memory of him murmuring in my ear, over my skin only a couple hours ago, that it takes me longer than it should to understand what he means when he says, “Would’ve been a good spot. ”
Cypress cracks an eye open to see me glaring at him. “Not ready to joke about that?”
“I will never be ready to joke about that,” I growl before continuing my slow perusal.
“Do you…do you mind them?”
“Mind them?” I ask, my thumb now dragging across his bottom lip, down his throat, over his collarbone.
Brushing the outline of the bandage lying high over his right shoulder through his—my unbuttoned undershirt, reminding me of how close he came.
How close I came to not getting this. To not taking what is mine because I was so afraid. Won’t make that mistake again.
“The scars,” he says quietly, and I momentarily stop what I’m doing, looking up at his face to find him looking back at me with that rare vulnerability he sometimes lets me see. “Do you hate seeing them?”
“No,” I tell him, keeping my eyes on his so he can see I’m not lying, so he can be sure there’s not a single thing about him that I hate. “I like having the proof.”
“The proof?” he asks, surprised. “Of what? That I’m broken?”
I sigh, leaning over him to press a kiss to a thin raised line over his chest, then another, then another. “You’re not broken, Cypress. Not to me. All I see is proof you’ve got nine lives. That you survive.”
I hear him chuckle while my mouth is against his throat. “Was your own intervention in a few of those lives, wolf. At least three.”
“Three?” I shift so that I’m braced over him, careful not to rest too much of my weight on his upper body where he’s still healing, but less careful in other areas.
Neither of us are wearing more than undershirts and sleep pants, in part because getting fully dressed seemed impractical and in part because we are both running dangerously short on intact clothing.
Through the thin fabric, my eyes flutter closed at the feel of him against me, but I don’t need to see him to know he’s grinning.
I can hear it in his voice when he murmurs, “Wake up ready, don’t you? ”
I huff out a laugh, no sense in denying it, but I still try, just so I can tell myself I have some semblance of control here. “You’re the one who’s been sleepin’. I’ve been awake for a few hours.”
Cypress chuckles, lifting his head and kissing my jaw with such intensity that I don’t need a mirror to know I’m as marked up as he is. “How fortunate for you that it won’t take me nearly as long to catch up.”
To prove it to me, he lifts his hips, grinding against me, letting me know the extent to which both of us are already hard, already needy. And suddenly, I’m not so sated after all. I’m not sure I ever will be.
“What’s the third?” I ask him, distracting myself by burying my face into his neck. Right over where I can feel his pulse. Strong, but starting to race. “I only remember two.”
His pulse picks up. “Hm?”
“I remember Maddock. Then the last one.” I lift my head and stare down at him before asking again, “What’s the third?”
That vulnerability is back in his eyes, a wariness, too, as if he’s not sure he should say, but part of me is nearly sure he already has, that he’s tried. I have been in love with you to the point of madness for nearly ten years.
Ten years. Same amount of time that had passed since Dolly met him, since he wandered back to her place wounded. It’s not possible, and yet…
You ever think about what’s coming out of your mouth before you say it?
Always.
I’m not sure if that makes it better or worse.
Better. Because then you know I mean it.
“Cy,” I murmur, tracing the scar on his chin. “Why do you call me wolf?”
“Suits you,” he whispers, eyes searching my face as he gives me the same answer he did on Dolly’s rooftop. “Told you that.”
“You did,” I reply, not saying more until I’ve rolled us so that we’re lying side by side and facing each other. “But you didn’t tell me why.”
He hesitates. “Didn’t think you wanted to know.”
“I do now,” I reassure him. “You remember being on the train?”
He frowns. “A bit.”
“You told me some things. And before we left, Dolly did, too,” I say slowly, still watching him closely. “About what happened to you.” I brush some of the messy strands from his forehead, clearing my view of his stunning blue eyes. “She said you’ve never told her all of it.”
His mouth presses into a tight line. “Didn’t want to burden her with that.”
“Cy…” I murmur, inching closer so that my forehead is pressed to his as I wrap an arm around him, tight enough to hold us both together. “Will you tell me?”
“Why?” he mutters. “So you can be burdened instead?”
“So I can keep my word to you,” I tell him. “I want your future, Cypress, but I want your past, too. So when you go back to visit it, you’re not alone there anymore either.”
He takes a deep breath, lets it out. Then another. “I do go back sometimes. Even though I don’t want to.”
“I know.” I sigh. “I do, too.”
For a time, both of us stay as we are, breathing each other in and taking comfort in the fact that there are some things we don’t have to explain. Not to each other. Makes it easier then, I think, to ask for the things we do.
“Dolly said you told her there were people you lost. That you were trying to find them? People that met you in the dark. And on the train, you mentioned you see them when you sleep.”
“Not anymore,” he says, his voice quiet like a whisper even though there’s no one but us and the water running by. He shifts, somehow getting closer. “Dolly told you? About some of the young women being abducted from her place?”
My hand starts brushing up and down his back. “She did.”
“Those girls were the first ones they decided to take. But I knew they wouldn’t be the last. Over those last few months, things within the group had been…escalating, and I’d known we were heading for something. Was part of the reason I stayed with them as long as I did.”
“You wanted to prevent it. Whatever they were heading for,” I say, already knowing too well by this point that would’ve been the case with him. “How many of them were there? In your group?”
“Eleven. Apart from me.”
I pause, thinking about how hopeless it had felt when the same number had surrounded the two of us. Yet Cypress had gone back on his own.
“I didn’t realize at the time, but one of them had already grown suspicious of me,” he says, his voice a little stronger.
“And when I came back, they were waiting.” He takes another deep breath, his thumb tapping against his chest where it’s pressed between us, keeping time with another source of water that no longer drips.
“Next thing I knew, they locked me up in some small shed nearby and…they held me there for a time. Not really sure how long. They kept hoping I’d eventually admit where I took them. They…”
“They hurt you,” I say for him, suddenly having to fight off a rising tide of rage, a rising desire to hurt them back when I know I won’t get the chance. “They’re the reason for the scars.”
Cypress nods. “They would come in and attempt to get it out of me until they’d give up for a while, and after they were gone, I’d try to sleep just so I could be somewhere else. When I could, I’d have these…dreams, I suppose you would call them.”
My hand continues its path up and down his back, an attempt to soothe myself as well as him, to remind both of us that it’s over. “What kind of dreams?”