Retreat
Chapter fifteen
Mara frowned at the flower before her.
It was wilting, which didn’t make sense. She’d delved into her grief, poured it out like water upon the cactus before her, begged its bloom to return to its former lush glory. It was not listening to her.
Perhaps she was tired. That must be it. She’d been tending her garden furiously for days, particularly since Ethan had proclaimed he did not need her assistance anymore. She had nothing but time for her memorial, and she’d been laboring from before the dawn until the evening crickets fell silent.
But she found her focus diminished. She was drifting off into perplexed thought far too often.
Why did he not need her? He was still wounded. He could pretend it did not hurt to walk, but the rhythm of his steps on the ground did not lie. It did not seem possible that he no longer needed her support.
More mystifying, why did he not want her?
The man who had treated her cactus obstacles like a child’s videogame, climbing and crawling and tumbling until he had reached her, grinning like a fool, was now politely declining her company during his research and retiring to his tent before the sun had even fully set.
He was not rude to her in any way. His face still lit up like the sun when she appeared.
He still asked questions, though they were fewer.
He still clearly admired her, treated her with courtesy and interest and kindness.
But he was…distant. Like there was a glass wall between his eyes and hers.
Like he’d retreated behind a barrier of his own making.
He was giving her exactly what she had been demanding of him since their first meeting, but now she did not want it.
It was ironic. And infuriating. And above all frustrating.
She wanted him. She had admitted it. And he was ignoring her.
In all her arguments, with Ofelia and in her own head, she had never imagined that she would finally decide to seduce him and he would turn out to be as inseducible as he was insufferable.
He had been right the first time she tried. She had been trying to hide behind sex to avoid confronting her memories of Tristan. Refusing to look in the mirror and see herself for the self-centered queen of drama she was.
But they had talked. She had told him the truth, and now he knew all.
The last painful truth had been surmounted, and the way was clear for them to take the physical comfort they both clearly desired.
But she would visit him, and they would speak, and she would flirt, and he would joke, and they would perhaps laugh a little, a light touch to the arm, a hand on the knee, and then just as she was leaning in to kiss him, he would draw away.
Which was his right, of course. He was not required to want her.
But she was certain that he still did.
His eyes. His breath. The telltale bulge in his jeans.
She would bet every grain of sand in the desert that he was languishing with desire for her.
Well, she was done with waiting. She was going to speak to him with plain words that even a botanist could understand.
He should understand the importance of pollination.
Or perhaps she would dance naked. She’d lived with the humans so long that she was accustomed to being clothed, but she was not ashamed of her body.
And there was not much time. He was planning to leave soon. Even with his injured foot.
She gave the wilting flower one last pleading look, then dove into the sand, unerringly finding her way to the place where Ethan was working today.
He smiled brightly when she emerged from the sand. “Good morning.”
“It is not morning,” she snipped. The sun was already well past its zenith.
“Isn’t it?” He squinted up past his hat brim at the sky. “I guess not. Time flies when you’re taking soil samples.”
“Here.” Mara held out her hand. She’d broken the pop tabs off all the cans of mead she’d finished. “For your sister.”
His smile widened. “You remembered.”
“I will bring the cans later,” she said. “When the bees have finished.”
“Good plan,” he said with a shiver. “Bees are great but I’d rather not have them swarming my camp.”
“I have asked them to leave you in peace,” she reassured him.
He pursed his lips wryly. “Well, that’s something. I’m not allergic, but getting stung is a bitch.”
Mara tossed her hair. “I am the only one allowed to sting you.”
His hands paused in their work. “Yep. I’m yours for the stinging.”
That was promising. Mara sat beside him, peering at his actions. “What will you do with the soil?” she asked.
“Mineral analysis. Nutrients and acidity, that sort of thing.” He held the tube of soil up, shook it and frowned. “Though I’m pretty sure it’s not the soil.”
“Of course it is not,” Mara said loftily. “It is just me.”
“It is.” Ethan turned to her then, face intent. “How do you do it?”
“What do you mean? I just do it.”
“Yes, but how?” He glanced down at his hands, then set the soil sample aside. “Can you show me?”
“I…” It is too much, she thought first. I cannot grieve for Tristan while you are smiling at me. But she steeled herself. She wanted him to want her, to need her. And if all he needed her for was his quest for tenure? She wanted to give it to him.
She wanted him to win. Not against her, of course, but against the rest of the world.
So she nodded. “I will try.”
She turned her gaze to the prickly pear before him.
It was a lush specimen, paddles ranging from purple to green and back, its base well fertilized by the desiccated corpses of previous generations.
The blossoms she’d originally begged it for were a rich pink, not the sunset-tinged yellow they normally produced.
She found a paddle that was ready to bud and reached out to it.
Do you not wish to bloom?
She reached for a memory of Tristan, something full of regret, and she found it.
Lilting music in the air, bright twinkle lights above.
It was a place that served beer. She remembered it in flashes.
She was on the patio. The space was a mishmash of haphazard lights.
Two shipping containers stacked at the back fence, presumably for storage but also serving to anchor the lights, display signs and flyers for local events.
The upper container had a basketball hoop attached, but instead of a net, the hoop held dangling mirrored balls that reflected the strung lights around the patio.
She slowly turned, taking in the patio, warm human bodies—a few fae—dancing and laughing.
A flash of strawberry blond hair. Long and thick, framing an indistinct male face. The face turned in her direction and froze.
“Are you thirsty?” Tristan came up beside her, eyes warm as honey.
“For you, always,” she replied, turning her cheek to his kiss. She was happier than she’d ever been.
Tristan’s arms were around her, and she sank into them. Perhaps tonight would be the night. They had spoken of it, and she knew her husband’s desire for a family. She was not certain she was ready, but the magic would know if she was. She was not unready. She just wasn’t…ready.
The man with the strawberry blond hair turned away.
She hadn’t remembered him until now. A pang hit her in the stomach.
But that was not what she was looking for. That was not what she needed now.
There it was.
“I hope she has your eyes,” Tristan was saying.
She laughed. “And I was hoping for yours.”
“One of each?”
“One child with their eyes two different colors? Or two children, one with each color of eye?”
“Both?”
They laughed joyfully, kissed.
The man with the red-blond hair disappeared.
The night went on. Ended. They made love tenderly by the light of the moon.
She knew it was not the night. It was not time yet. They were not ready yet.
But they had all the time in the world.
Until they did not.
“Oh, wow.”
Mara opened her eyes and gazed at the blossom she had called forth. It was a pale yellow-peach, and she frowned. She had been expecting blue.
“What did you do?”
She tried not to roll her eyes, failed. “I have told you. I just do it.”
“There has to be more to it than that,” he insisted.
“I do not know.” She reached out to the flower, tried to turn it blue, tried to analyze her mind as she asked it to turn blue. “I remember things. And I give the plant the memory, and it…”
She paused.
“When the memory is joyful,” she said softly, “it blooms as it should. It remembers spring. When the memory is painful, it blooms…wrong. It imagines a different spring. Colder, warmer. Less rain or more rain. It drinks from me and becomes the color I am in that moment.”
She stared at the flower, the one that was just as it should be. Not the blue of grief. Not any color but the one it should be.
“What were you thinking of this time?”
Mara could not meet his eyes. “A memory. One that was sad, but also…also full of joy. Bittersweet.”
They’d been so full of joy. So hopeful. So in love.
It should hurt more. It should be more bitter than sweet.
The flower should have been wrong.
Why was it not wrong? Why was it not tinged with sadness?
Guilt washed over her, and she turned and scanned her garden.
It was still in bloom. Still hazy with pollen, busy with bees and hummingbirds and butterflies.
But the colors were…
“Mara.”
She started, turned to Ethan. His face was serious.
“I need to talk to you,” he said. His voice was gentle, but firm.
“Of course,” she said, though she was not paying him her full attention. Her mind was whirling with implications, with reflections. With knowledge that she did not want to admit.
Because as soon as she admitted it, it would be real.
And she would have to choose.