Chapter 12 Riley #2
“A very sturdy wall. Multiple times.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I have anger issues.”
“Do you now.” I couldn’t hide my smile.
“Terrible ones. It’s very concerning. I should probably see someone about it.”
Well. If he ever did then he definitely needed to share the contact with me.
We stared at each other. “He had a key,” I said quietly. “I forgot he knew where I hid them. I should have changed the hiding spot. I’m so dumb-”
“Stop.” He stepped closer, and his hand came up to cup my jaw, tilting my face up to meet his eyes. “This is not your fault. The only person responsible for his actions is him. And he will never touch you again. Do you understand me?”
I nodded, my throat tight.
“Say it.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“Again.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“Good.” His thumb stroked across my cheekbone, gentle despite the intensity in his eyes. “I need you to believe that and stop blaming yourself for trusting someone who didn’t deserve it.”
I didn’t know what to say. So I just stood there, leaning into his touch, letting myself feel safe for the first time in years.
“Do you want to spend the day with me?” he asked suddenly. “I had plans. For us. If you’re free.”
“Yes,” I said immediately, fuck nonchalance. I wanted out of this apartment for the day.
It was the right choice, because his whole face lit up like a Christmas tree with a real smile, one that made him look younger and softer and completely, devastatingly beautiful.
“Give me ten minutes. I need to grab a few things.”
I nodded and bit my lip as he turned and literally ran downstairs. The moment he was out of sight, I sprinted into panic mode.
I brushed my teeth, splashed water on my face, applied mascara with shaking hands, poking myself in the eye twice. I changed out of my ratty pajamas into a sundress, the green one that made my eyes look good. Switched my underwear for a nicer pair.
Not that I was expecting anything to happen. But…Just in case. I felt like a teenager getting ready for prom. It was ridiculous and wonderful.
I was waiting by the door when he knocked again, my heart beating too fast and my palms slightly sweaty. I didn’t know where we were going or what we were doing. I just knew I’d said yes, and I didn’t regret it.
Caelan returned with a basket and led me to a car parked on the street.
It was a nice car. Newer, expensive-looking, the kind of vehicle that suggested money without screaming about it, nothing like my old piece of metal that sometimes passed as a car.
He opened the passenger door for me like a gentleman, and I slid inside, inhaling that new-car smell.
Then he got behind the wheel, and it became immediately clear that Caelan had no idea how to drive.
The engine stalled before we even left the parking spot.
“That was intentional,” he said, restarting it.
It stalled again at the first intersection.
“Also intentional.”
By the third stall, in the middle of the road with cars honking behind us and someone yelling profanity out their window, I was laughing so hard I could barely breathe.
“Do you actually know how to drive?” I wheezed.
“I know the theory.” The engine turned over, sputtered, died again. “Execution is... developing.”
“Where did you learn? A demolition derby?”
“I grew up somewhere with very few cars.” He finally got the vehicle moving, jerking forward in a way that made me grab the door handle and say a quick prayer to whatever deity watched over passengers of terrible drivers. “We had other modes of transportation.”
“Like what? Horse-drawn carriages?”
The look he gave me suggested that was more accurate than I intended.
“I’m an excellent rider,” he said defensively. “This machine is just... uncooperative.”
“The machine looks new. Those are the most cooperative cars on the market.”
“Then it’s broken.”
“It’s not broken. You’re just bad at this.”
“I am not bad at things.”
“Just admit it. You’re bad at this.”
He scowled at the steering wheel like it had personally offended him. The car stalled again.
We made it out of town eventually, the car stalling only four more times.
I stopped being scared and started finding it endearing.
The way he muttered at the gearshift, the way he white-knuckled the steering wheel like he was wrestling a bear.
How he looked so genuinely frustrated at this human technology that refused to cooperate with his obviously superior will.
He drove us into the woods, down a winding dirt road, until we reached a clearing.
My breath caught.
It was beautiful. A meadow filled with wildflowers, purple and yellow and white, stretching in every direction like someone had spilled a paint palette across the grass.
Trees surrounded us on all sides, creating a private little world.
A stream bubbled somewhere nearby, the sound of water over rocks.
The afternoon sun filtered through the leaves, dappling everything in gold.
“Jade told me about this place,” Caelan said, cutting the engine. The car died with a grateful-sounding wheeze. “She said you’d like it.”
“I love it.”
He smiled. That real, unguarded smile that made my heart stutter and my brain go fuzzy.
He pulled a basket from the backseat and we spread a blanket in the middle of the flowers. The basket was packed with food, cheeses and bread and fruit and little sandwiches with the crusts cut off. There was wine, chocolate, and tiny pastries that looked delicious.
“Did you think of buying all this?” I asked, incredulous.
“Thessa helped.” A pause. “Thessa did most of it. I supervised.”
“You supervised.”
“Very thoroughly. I was essential to the process.”
“What did you actually contribute?”
“Moral support. Also I carried the basket.”
“Truly invaluable.” I smiled.
“I knew you’d understand.”
We ate, and the conversation flowed easily. I told him about the guy who brought his mother to our first date. “She ordered for him. Cut his steak and called me ‘adequate.’”
“Adequate?”
“Her exact words were ‘well, she’s adequate, I suppose.’ I excused myself to the bathroom and climbed out the window.”
“You climbed out a window?”
“Second story. There was a dumpster. I made it work.”
He was laughing now, the sound warm and rich. “What else? Tell me the worst ones.”
“There was the guy who tried to sell me a timeshare. On the date. Pulled out a presentation and a financing plan.”
“No.”
“I wish I was joking. He had graphs.”
“Did you buy it?”
“I told him I was allergic to vacation properties and left.”
I told him about the one who cried when I didn’t want to see his comic book collection on the first date.
“That seems harsh,” Caelan said.
“It was a comic book collection about Nazi conspiracy theories.”
“Ah. Less harsh.”
“Much less harsh.”
He told me about his home, and I watched his face as he spoke. His eyes went distant, nostalgic, describing stone walls that had stood for centuries. Towers that overlooked valleys of snow. A great hall where his family gathered for meals, voices echoing off vaulted ceilings.
“That sounds like a castle,” I said.
“It’s a family home.”
He ended up telling me about the expectations he’d grown up with, the responsibilities he was trying to figure out, the life he wasn’t sure he wanted.
His voice got quieter when he talked about being the heir to whatever his family was heir to.
The pressure of everyone expecting him to be a certain way, do certain things, marry a certain type of person.
“What type of person?” I asked.
“Someone suitable from a good family. Someone who understands our ways.”
“And what do you want?”
He looked at me, his gray eyes intent.
“I want someone who makes me laugh. Someone who challenges me, who doesn’t care about my family name or my responsibilities or any of it. I want someone who sees me. Not the title. Just... me.”
“That’s very romantic.”
“I’m a very romantic person.”
That was proving to be true. Then we proceeded to debate which romance tropes were superior.
“Enemies-to-lovers,” I insisted. “The tension, the banter. The eventual surrender is exquisite to read.”
“I prefer friends-to-lovers,” he countered, looking at me meaningfully. “The slow build, the trust, the realization that what you were searching for was beside you all along.”
Ha. “That’s very specific.”
“Is it?”
“You’re not subtle.”
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
Hours passed without me noticing. The sun moved across the sky, shadows lengthening, the air growing cooler. We lay back on the blanket, shoulder to shoulder, and watched the sky turn pink and orange and purple.
“The stars will be out soon,” Caelan said quietly. “We could stay. If you want.”
“I want.”
Night fell. The stars emerged, more than I’d ever seen, away from the city lights, scattered across the sky in infinite pinpricks of light. Caelan pointed out shapes and constellations, though the names he gave them didn’t match anything I’d heard before.
“That one,” he said, tracing a pattern with his finger. “It looks like the Two Wolves back at home.”
“I’ve never heard of that constellation.”
“It’s from... where I grew up. Different stories about the stars there.”
“Tell me.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he began to speak, his voice low and rhythmic, like he was reciting something he’d heard a thousand times.
“There were once two wolves who loved each other more than the moon itself. But they were from different packs, and their love was forbidden. So they ran. Across mountains and valleys and oceans. Across the very edge of the world. And when there was nowhere left to run, the Moon Goddess took pity on them. She lifted them into the sky, where they could chase each other forever. Never catching up, never stopping. Eternal and endless and always, always together.”
I stared at the stars he’d pointed to. “That’s beautiful,” I said. “And sad.”
“Why sad?”
“They never catch each other. They’re always chasing, never reaching.”
He turned his head to look at me. In the starlight, his eyes were silver.
“But they’re together, always running in the same direction. That’s not sad. That’s devotion. That’s love that refuses to end even when the universe says it should.”
“You really are a romantic.”
“I told you. Very romantic. Romantically terrible at driving.”
I laughed and he smiled at the sound. Warmth filled my chest.
“Do you believe it?” I asked. “The story?”
“I believe in a lot of things I didn’t use to believe in.”
“Like what?”
“Like fate, destiny. The idea that sometimes the universe puts exactly the right person in your path at exactly the right moment.” His hand found mine in the darkness.
His fingers were strong, certain. “The idea that you can meet someone and know, immediately, that they’re going to change everything. ”
Holy fuck.
“That sounds like a romance novel.”
“Maybe romance novels have it right.” He murmured as my heart squeezed inside my chest. I didn’t ask what he meant.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to know or if I was ready yet.
I just lay there, under the stars, next to this strange, wonderful man who drove terribly and packed sandwiches and told stories about wolves in love.
I might be in love. And that was the most terrifying, exhilarating, life-altering realization I’d ever had. The stars wheeled overhead, the wolves chasing each other across the sky. Maybe I was ready to let myself be caught.