Chapter 25 #3
“Come here,” he said.
“I am here.”
“Closer.”
She hesitated, then sat on the edge of the bed.
He reached for her hand. She gave it to him at once, and that nearly undid him.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No. A bruise, perhaps. Nothing more.”
“You are certain?”
“Yes.”
He closed his eyes briefly.
The moment returned in pieces: the crack of sound, the horse’s shape exploding from darkness into light, Poppy standing in its path. His body had moved before thought. There had been no nobility in it. No choice weighed and made. Only refusal.
No.
Not her.
“I thought I might lose you,” he said.
Her hand tightened around his.
He opened his eyes. “It was the worst moment of my life.”
“Hector—”
“No. Let me say this while I am still sensible enough to be believed and injured enough that you may find it difficult to interrupt.”
A faint, broken smile touched her mouth. “That is unfair.”
“Yes.”
He drew a breath. The headache pulsed behind his eyes. He ignored it.
“I have spent a great portion of my life believing silence was safer. More honorable, even. If I did not speak, I could not ask too much. If I had not asked, I could not have been refused. If I expected little, I could pretend I had chosen the emptiness.”
Poppy looked down at their joined hands.
“I made arrangements,” he continued. “Terms. Deadlines. Separate rooms. I dressed fear as consideration and called it restraint.”
“You were trying to protect me.”
“I was trying to protect myself as well.”
Her eyes lifted.
There was no judgment in them. That made confession harder.
“I love you,” he said.
She stopped breathing.
He had imagined saying it in a dozen ways, and in none of them. Quietly. Carefully. Never. But the words, once spoken, did not destroy him. They remained between them, plain and irrevocable.
“I love you,” he said again, because the first time might have been mistaken for desperation.
“I believe I have loved you longer than I allowed myself to know. I fought it because I thought wanting you would make me selfish. Because I thought you had already given enough. Because I did not know how to be near you without fearing I would ruin what peace you had made.”
Poppy’s eyes shone, but she did not look away.
“I do not want to be silent anymore,” he said. “Life is too brief for such cowardice. This morning proved that. One sound. One frightened animal. One moment, and all the careful distances I had built meant nothing.”
Her thumb moved over his hand once. A small mercy.
“The agreement about our rooms,” he said, quieter now.
“If the choice were mine alone, I would never spend another night apart from you. Not out of duty. Not because we are married and the world expects it. Because when the day ends, I want you near. Because I am tired of lying awake with a wall between us and pretending that it is kindness.”
Poppy’s lips parted, but he continued before courage failed.
“But the choice is yours. It must be yours. I will not have you feel pressed by gratitude, or fear, or pity, or by what happened today. If you wish for separate rooms, we shall keep them. If you wish for time, you shall have it. If you wish only for my honesty and nothing else, then you have that too.”
She was silent.
Hector forced himself not to fill it. He had made a vow only moments ago not to mistake silence for an answer. Now he had to endure the cost of that vow.
Poppy leaned toward him.
For one confused second, he thought she meant to speak near his ear. Then her hand touched his cheek, and her mouth found his.
The kiss was gentle, but not uncertain. It held no question that he could misread. He lifted his hand to her waist and stopped there, letting her decide the distance. She came closer.
When she drew back, she did not go far.
“You did not win my heart all at once,” she said.
His chest ached.
“No?”
“No. That would have been easier to guard against.” Her fingers remained against his jaw.
“It happened slowly. In pieces. When you listened to Aurora without making her ashamed. When you held Princess as if she had always belonged here. When you tried to be stern and failed because you were worried. When you asked instead of assuming. When you let me see the man behind all that silence.”
He swallowed.
“I was afraid too,” she said. “Not of you. Of wanting something I thought you did not want. Of mistaking kindness for affection. Of standing at a door you never meant to open.”
“It was open,” he said. “I was merely standing in the way.”
That made her smile, and the sight of it, blurred though it was, seemed clearer to him than anything else in the room.
“I do not want separate bedrooms,” she said.
He went very still.
“I do not want a wall between us at night. I do not want to count the days of a bargain neither of us wishes to keep.” She bent and kissed him once more, brief and sure. “Yes, Hector. We should share one bedroom from now on.”
His hand closed over hers.
“Forever?” he asked, the word quieter than he intended.
Poppy rested her forehead lightly against his. “Forever.”