19. Magnolia
19
MAGNOLIA
W hile Garrek and Killian were out procuring dindins, I retreated to the hidey hole of my tent to finish work on Garrek’s vest. I’d only gotten it partly finished last night, and had given up when my hand was cramping and my eyes had started drifting shut.
I wasn’t in much better shape tonight, unfortunately. My hands were tired after holding the reins all day, and the lack of sleep was catching up with me. But I really wanted to get this done as soon as possible. Garrek was going to be out in the sun bent over building fences. He was going to need it.
I snipped and stitched in the quiet, working by the light of a small, solar-powered portable lantern. The longer I worked, the closer I got to finishing Garrek’s vest, the more something came into focus. Something I’d been avoiding looking at head-on for a long time, now .
With each push and pull of my needle, each stretch of the thread, I knew I couldn’t do it anymore.
I couldn’t marry Oaken.
Marrying him had been all I’d dreamed of for weeks on Elora Station. It had been what I’d looked forward to so desperately while staying with Darcy on Fallon’s ranch.
But today, when Garrek had let me know how close that reality had finally come, I’d felt trapped by grief so thick I wasn’t ever sure that I would be able to fight my way out. He told me that it wouldn’t be long until we found Oaken now, and I hadn’t been able to breathe.
There was only one thing for it.
I had to call it off.
Guilt poked at me, just as my needle did to the fabric. But despite that, there was also a clear-eyed realization that marrying Oaken wouldn’t be good for anyone now. It wouldn’t make me happy. And it wouldn’t make Oaken happy, either. Oaken deserved a wife whose heart was free to love him.
Mine wasn’t. Not anymore.
Because mine, it turned out, belonged to a quiet, white-eyed child and the hard-jawed, scar-backed rider who took care of him. When I closed my eyes to picture my future, to picture my own happy ending, it wasn’t the wedding I’d once spent so many hours imagining in painstaking detail.
It was putting Killian back in his bedroll with Garrek. It was talking to Garrek late at night, seeing those eyes shift from purple to white and then back again. It was the rough char of his voice. The calloused touch of his hands. The way he’d had no idea what a hug was but then he’d gone and hugged me anyway.
But that hug, that night, felt very far away from now. Garrek had made it spectacularly clear he didn’t want a human wife – or any wife. He’d talked to me more this afternoon than he had all week. There was no indication that, once I broke things off with Oaken, there would even be a place for me here anymore.
Maybe I could at least keep travelling with them until they returned to their ranch.
And then…
My eyes filled with tears at the thought of leaving Garrek, leaving Killian. Leaving this world entirely. I doubted I would be allowed to stay if I weren’t participating in the bride program.
And Garrek didn’t want a bride.
The tears blurred my vision, and my needle slipped. I yelped, then cursed, shoving my bleeding thumb into my mouth.
“Magnolia?”
Startled, I looked up to see Garrek standing at the entrance to the tent, the flap pulled to one side.
And it felt so good to see him. Scary, good. Scoop-of-your-favourite-ice-cream, good. First-sunny-spring-day-after-winter, good.
I will never love anything like I love the face before me now, good.
I should have put my big girl panties on and sucked it up. But in that moment, I just couldn’t.
I burst into tears.
Garrek’s face spasmed with alarm. In an instant, he was in the tent and on his knees. His hands dove to cup my face, stroking along my cheeks, my jaw, searching for an injury.
“Magnolia, cursed Empire, what? What is it?”
I gave him a thumbs-up. Then shoved the thumbs-up in his face.
“I hurt my thumb!” I bawled. Like an idiot.
Garrek’s glowing eyes focused on the thumb I was frantically waving in front of him. Blood beaded there. He stared at that tiny speck of blood as if it were as ominous as an approaching storm.
When that bead of blood finally overflowed its tiny banks and rolled down, he lost it.
“Where’s your med kit?” he snarled. His fingers closed around my wrist in a vise-like grip. His tail thrashed around on the ground. It found the vest. “Here, use this for now,” he said, clumsily pressing the white fabric to my thumb.
“Not that!” I screeched. “I don’t want to get blood all over your new vest!”
I swatted at him, then yanked the vest away, putting it somewhere where he wouldn’t try to use it as a bandage for me. We were both panting. Garrek’s brow collapsed in bewilderment.
“I’m alright,” I said shakily, sniffing hard, embarrassment flooding through me. “I’m just… having a lot of big feelings right now.”
Ending an engagement to a man who wanted you because you’d fallen in love with a man who probably didn’t would do that to a girl, I guessed.
“Sorry for crying and… bleeding at you,” I said pa thetically, sniffing again, fully expecting him to leave.
He didn’t.
“Zabrians bleed,” he finally said, “but they do not cry. Forgive me if…” He swallowed and rubbed his jaw. “Forgive me if I don’t know what to do.”
Forgive him. As if he’d done anything wrong at all.
In the ensuing silence, Garrek turned to look for my med kit, a little less hectically this time. He found a self-adhesive bandage there, and with excessive, focussed care, he peeled it apart and then looked at me expectantly.
“Give me your thumb.”
“I can do it myself.”
A muscle in his jaw ticked.
“I did not ask if you could do it yourself. In fact, I did not ask you anything at all. I told you to give me your thumb.”
Feeling thoroughly scolded and scoured raw by the unforgiving steel wool of humiliation, I raised my thumb without further argument.
“Good.” Garrek grasped my wrist once more. The tips of his fingers brushed the place my heart beat. My pulse ramped up beneath his calloused touch.
“There,” Garrek grunted, releasing my hand with its freshly bandaged thumb. “Now what’s this I hear about a vest?”
“It’s not quite finished yet. It’s nearly there,” I murmured. I grabbed it and held it up for him. “It’s to replace the one you lost. ”
Garrek took it carefully, as if it were something breakable.
“This fabric,” he said quietly, running his claws along the lace at the edge. “I’ve never seen it before. You brought it here?”
“Yeah. Um…” Might as well just get it out now . “It was supposed to be my wedding dress.”
“Magnolia…” There was a hint of reproach in the way he said my name, but also something deeper, something aching. “You should not have done this.”
“I wanted to,” I said quickly, worried that I was going to start crying all over again. “You’ve done so much for me. Given me your tent and your bedroll and I just… I just couldn’t think about you being in pain when there was something I could do about it.”
“You are kind.” He bit it out, like each word cost him something dear. “But your wedding dress…”
“There’s not going to be a wedding.”
He went utterly still. The only thing that moved was his eyes, bright white and slicing up to mine.
“I’m not going to marry Oaken, Garrek. I can’t.”
“Of course you can,” he said tonelessly. Like something had numbed him. Or that maybe he’d numbed himself. “All you’ve wanted this entire time is to marry him.” He huffed out a breath. “You aren’t thinking clearly. You need to eat something. I’ll get the fish we cooked.”
He turned as if to leave. And I felt suddenly, terribly desperate. Like if I let him leave now, then I would never get him back.
I grabbed his hand and squeezed it. Just like I had that very first night we’d met. He hadn’t known what to do when I’d stuck out my hand for a human-style handshake. I’d gone ahead and reached for him anyway.
“Thank you for the offer,” I said quietly. “But I’m not hungry. And I’m not crazy. Honestly, right now, I’m just so, so tired. And…” Garrek’s fingers spasmed against mine. “And I really don’t want to be alone.”
I stared at Garrek’s scarred back as he stared at the flap of the tent. It was within his reach.
With my free hand, I turned off my lantern. The tent was plunged into darkness. Garrek must have shut his eyes, because even that glow was gone.
Something fell against the top of the tent and rolled down. It sounded like someone dropping dozens of glass beads down on top of us.
“It’s raining,” Garrek finally said. He sounded very far away.
“Please don’t go out there in the rain tonight,” I whispered. He didn’t even have his tent. How could I send him to spend the night out there without a tent?
How could I let him spend a single night out there at all now?
“Just stay with me.”
All the strength seeping out of my body, I lay down on the bedroll. I relaxed my fingers to let go of Garrek’s hand.
His fingers clamped down on mine.
My heart trilled like a caught bird when he lowered his big body down beside me. Humbled and grateful and overwhelmed with a piercingly tender need to take care of him, I set about flinging the bedroll’s cover around in the dark. Because I wanted him to be covered and I wanted him to be warm.
Once that was done, I couldn’t stop myself from burrowing forward. Garrek was lying on his side and facing me. His breath shuddered out when I curled myself into his front.
“Is this alright?” I hummed.
He was so rigid in the dark. And I was so scared he’d say no.
But he didn’t say anything at all. Not with words, anyway.
Slowly, slowly, like the last of winter’s ice melting away, his body began to relax and move. First, the rustle of his tail, coiling itself around my calf. Then, the heavy weight of his arm falling over me, wrapping tightly ’round my back, drawing me closer, his fingers finding the sensitive place at the base of my skull. He guided my head cautiously but purposefully against the warm hollow of his throat, a spot that seemed like it had been designed just so that I could bury my face there.
Every nerve in my body briefly turned to gold. Glittering euphoria, to be held like this by him.
I succumbed to the way that happiness flowed through me like syrup. Within moments, I was asleep.
Later, somewhere in the space between sleep and wakefulness, dusk and dawn, I became aware of him. Our positions had shifted. His tail was still wrapped around my leg, but higher, now, the end of it tantalizingly close to my sex .
And all at once, arousal poured through me like liquid silk, pooling at my core. I gasped, arching, and Garrek’s body reacted to mine. It was instant. Instinct. His hand brushed my hip, then slid back and beneath the hem of my pyjama top. He splayed his fingers on my bare lower back, tentatively at first, then rougher, a hard stamp of his skin on mine.
Delicious triumph sang in my blood when I felt the unmistakable stab of his stiff cock at my belly. A moan escaped me, and that cock gave a delirious spasm, growing so hard I wondered if it hurt.
I didn’t want him to hurt.
Heart pounding, clit throbbing, I reached down to cup him through his trousers.
He groaned, a guttural, primal sound.
Then he froze.
“Sorry,” I panted as he pulled away. “Did I do something wrong?”
What a ridiculous question. I could see it in the glow of his eyes.
I could feel it in myself.
I’d done something wrong. And so had he.
Shit.
I knew we should have waited until we found Oaken. God, I was technically still engaged to him. Somewhere out there, he could be hobbling around on his broken foot, trying to find me. And here I was, on the verge of humping his cousin into oblivion.
“Sorry,” I said again, even though I knew the one I should have been apologizing to was Oaken. And I would. As soon as we found him .
“Stop saying sorry,” Garrek croaked. He was breathing like he’d just chased Killian up another tree.
“I… I don’t know what else to say.”
Garrek raised his hand towards my face. My eyes fluttered shut, and I leaned forwards, seeking his touch.
It never came.
When I opened my eyes he was gone.