Chapter 43 #4
When I opened them, a carriage was just turning the corner, and it was the same feeling all over again—but it wasn’t my parents. The carriage continued to the other side of the cobbled street and disappeared behind another building.
March chuckled that sound I adored, and when he did, it was like the last two days hadn’t happened at all, like I hadn’t been waiting for him every second of every day like he was my lifeline. Like he’d always been right there beside me.
“Don’t worry, Velvet. They’ll understand.”
Velvet, he said, and each new time I was reminded of how much I loved it.
I smiled a little against his shoulder. “My father will cry.”
“That’s okay. Parents cry,” March said.
“Did you mother cry when you told her?” He’d preferred to go see her and his little sister, so he’d gone home instead of inviting her over.
I suspected it had something to do with his father, but he hadn’t told me yet, and he would when he was ready.
No need to rush—we would be together now.
Here, in Neverwhen. Go to school together, eat meals together, sleep together every single night.
My stomach hurt from the burst of happiness that thought always brought me no matter how many times a day it occurred to me (a lot of times). It was how I knew beyond a doubt that it was the right thing to do.
“Oh, she cried, hugged me, cried again, packed me three bags of food I didn’t ask for, cried a third time, and then told me that if I didn’t bring you home for dinner at least once a month, she’d come to Neverwhen herself and drag us both back by our ears.”
Laughter burst out of me so fast it surprised me. It was full and bright and real. It came straight from my very soul.
March watched me laugh with that look on his face—the one I’d drawn a hundred times and could never get right because you can’t capture light with graphite.
I had yet to find a way—but I was determined.
There would be time. There would be possibilities.
Everything was possible with a little bit of magic.
Or a lot.
“So, we’ll go to dinner once a month,” I said with a nod. He’d told me already that his mother knew about me, and I had yet to think about it without getting so absurdly nervous. He wasn’t nervous about meeting my parents at all, and I needed to learn from him before I went to see his mother.
“Once a month,” March repeated with a nod.
Another carriage turned in the street—and my heart all but beat right out of me. Not my parents.
I sighed loudly, fell against his shoulder. “I’m so nervous, Heartling.”
“Don’t be,” he told me.
“Why aren’t you?!”
He shrugged. “I’m just thinking about when school starts, to be honest. When Silas does his double-enrollment thing and drives every professor insane in the first week. It’s going to be fun to watch, don’t you think?”
Well, now that he mentioned it… “Yes, it will.”
“And I think about the fact that we’re here, in Neverwhen, together.” He turned to me. Took my face in his hands, thumbs on my cheekbones, fingers in my hair. “I think about how I can’t wait to go back home with you and make you a glass heart. Maybe two or three.”
That I hadn’t melted there on the stairs yet was a miracle.
“I don’t need three glass hearts.” Just one would do—where I could imagine putting all my memories of him to save forever.
“I know, but I’m going to make them for you anyway.” He leaned in, kissed my lips gently, grounded me like he made every second of me himself. “And I’m going to try to find a way to immortalize everything I feel right now, too, while I’m at it.”
“What do you feel right now?” I said in a breath.
“Timeless,” he said without hesitation, and it was like he opened up the sky for me singlehandedly. Because he was right—this transcended everything—what the queens had built or stolen, what they broke or fixed.
“We’re going to be okay,” I said, surprised to believe it so completely. Even when my parents arrived and I spoke to them—we would be perfectly fine.
March nodded, smiling ear to ear. “Whichever way the clock turns.” And he kissed me right there on those stairs, in the center of Neverwhen, under the afternoon sun of the most beautiful day in all of time.
—THE END
Thank you for reading TIMELESS!