Chapter 19
Abuffalo plaid curtain fluttered closed as Stephan stepped away from the train car window.
The snow had only fallen more furiously on their drive back from town, so that by the time they reached their rental, there’d been more than a foot of new accumulation, and it deepened with every passing minute.
“Well, we’re not going anywhere else tonight,” said Stephan, clapping his hands. “At least you got what you needed, though.”
He came to settle next to her on the couch, where they’d been eating leftover pancakes off plates shaped like Frosty. The dull scrape of metal forks against hard plastic was set against the whistling howls of the storm outside.
“Hayleigh?” His voice prodded her again. “What are you thinking?”
She pushed a piece of pancake around on the plate, not lifting her gaze to meet his. “I didn’t actually get what I needed. I need the curse broken.”
“True, but you got what you needed from here, right? Naveah told us everything she knows. She even passed me the details of the spell. We can run it by the coven, see if anyone knows something she doesn’t—if there’s any other way to break it.”
“Okay.” Hayleigh continued to play with her food rather than responding in any kind of substantial way.
“Okay,” he echoed, clearly dissatisfied with the reply. He took a few bites of his food before dropping his fork with a clatter. “Why didn’t you tell me any of that stuff about your ex before?”
She finally looked up, meeting his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“When you were talking to Naveah—you said your folks were trying to force you to go back to him? And it sounded like maybe he wasn’t treating you right? Like he was controlling you?”
His voice ground out the words, and there was the feeling that somehow his presence was bigger than it had been a minute ago.
Her body heated in a flush. “No, I wouldn’t let that happen.”
“Okay,” he said, but the tension in his eyes did not ease off. “Good. Because you deserve better than that. You know that, right?”
“Do I?” A bitter laugh escaped her lips as she got to her feet and paced, like an animal in too small a cage.
“I mean, let’s examine the evidence. Who exactly is this ‘deserving’ person you describe?
The one who gave your sister and Naveah panic attacks?
The one who brought on a seasonal horror show of dead fish carcasses?
The one who tried to put your family out of business? ”
He set his mouth in a firm line. “Those are things you did, not who you are.”
“Who am I, then?” He hesitated, and she jumped back in. “You don’t know, do you? Because you don’t know me. Well, I know me. I’m vain, prideful, self-centered—”
He stood up. “Stop.”
But she didn’t, kept spitting out the words knotted in her stomach. “—irrational, difficult, incompetent. All of this is exactly what I deserve, Stephan. You’re just too much a nice guy to say it. Man the hell up.”
His eyes flashed. “You think it would make me more of a ‘man’ if I berated you? If I kicked you while you were down? That is not how men behave where I’m from.”
Tipping her chin up to stare him down, she said, “I think you should say exactly what you’re thinking for once, instead of holding back. Did I bring this curse on myself or not?”
His face set. “You did.”
Vindication cut like a knife, and she kept pushing, urging him toward familiar territory.
She’d break down this act of his and expose all the contempt she had to believe he’d been holding in check.
“By working for and with the sort of company that doesn’t care if anyone gets hurt, so long as shareholder value is maximized? ”
His voice had a sort of grim humor in it as he said, “That is what happened.”
“And has it taken this form because vast cosmic forces decided it’s what I deserve? A curse of my own making?”
He looked up and then down and sighed before settling his gaze back on her face. “Naveah had that right, as far as I know.”
She shot a finger up. “See! Was that so hard? So we agree I’m—”
And then he stepped forward and put a hand to the side of her face, running his thumb down it. Every bit of skin he touched tingled.
“So much more than your mistakes. You are strong enough to make this right, because those things you just called yourself? They’re what people say to make capable, smart, beautiful women doubt themselves into submission.
You took the track your family laid down for you—so?
Most people do. Now you’re off it, and you’ve got choices. I believe you can and will do better.”
Though there were so many more important things to what he’d said, the animal inside, which surfaced the moment he got in close and then howled as he touched her, could focus only on one.
“You think I’m beautiful?”
His voice lowered to a timbre that rippled beneath her skin. “Come on, you know you’re gorgeous, Sunshine.”
“But to you. Even though I…” She looked down, shaking her head, knowing that no matter what you looked like, a person could end up seeing only your deeds caked on your skin in lumps and bumps.
But God help her, she wanted him to say yes. She wanted to untangle this.
He tipped her chin up, and when she didn’t stop him, he swiped his hand through the wave of her hair, over her scalp, brushing behind her ear in a way that caused her belly to pitch, hot, and then let it travel down, landing at the back of her neck to rest in the crook at the top of her spine.
“You really want to know what I’ve been thinking about every other second since you walked into my tent?”
And that was when the struggle gave way.
When every bit of trained resistance and argued propriety could not hold back against the desire she had to touch and be touched by this man.
This warm, beautiful man who seemed to only see the best in her—no, that wasn’t true.
He saw all parts of her, regularly called her out on the not-so-best, but believed in her despite it all.
“I do,” she said, though she barely had the breath available to get the words out.
His hand returned to her face, cradling her jaw as his gaze flicked between her eyes and her mouth. As his thumb brushed the side of her lips, they parted for him, and he pulled his mouth to her own.
He held them there, locked, for what could have been seconds, or hours, because everything stopped for Stephan. She lost herself in the glide of his lips, on the gasping echo of her breath in his mouth as his free arm hooked around her back and pulled her in even closer.
Her fingers slipped up and over his chest, lingering on the firm rise of his shoulders before digging into the meat of his back.
Grayson had kept a close shave, and she was shocked at how much she enjoyed the way the smoothness of Stephan’s lips contrasted with the roughness of his beard as both ground against her.
Grayson had never held her like this either—like it wasn’t possible to get her close enough, like he’d always want more.
He looped his hand under her ass and hoisted her up onto his hips before falling back into a sitting position on the couch so that she was left straddling him as they continued to map each other’s contours.
Those large hands filled with her body, and if she’d assumed his smiling nature would have made him shy or hesitant, she’d have been wrong. He handled her with the same confidence he did those logs, skimming and cutting and claiming in pulsing, hot sensation.
When he finally released her, his hand trailed over every line of bone on her face, eyes sparkling.
But a knot rose in her throat as the reality of the situation, which the sweet nothingness of the kiss had temporarily dispelled, came crashing back down, and she all but jumped off the couch, retreating. “We can’t do that again.”
His eyes widened. “Why?”
“I’m cursed, remember? You don’t want to be a part of that.”
His hand flexed in obvious frustration. “What do you call what I’ve been doing for the last few days?”
She shook her head. “If the curse decides you’re something good, it’ll take you from me. The Wild Hunt will hurt you like it did Red.”
His eyes softened, and he pressed his forehead to hers. “Hey—that’s not gonna happen. Everything’s gonna be okay. We’re gonna figure it out.”
She almost believed him, almost allowed his words to slide down her spine and convince her to relax, because everything would be okay if she stayed within that aura of safety that surrounded him.
But the feeling of safety sloughed off her skin, because it wasn’t about whether she was safe with him. He wasn’t safe with her. No one was.
And she knew where to go now. Where to get answers.
“I need some air.” Her hand groped for the doorknob as she snatched a parka. When he took a step closer, she barked, “Alone.”
“Okay,” he said, with his maddening calm, “but the storm’s picking up. Be careful.”
“I will.”
She opened the door and plunged into the falling snow, knowing what she would see when she walked to the forest’s edge and yet not quite able to believe it when she found it waiting for her.
An archway loomed overhead. The branches of two Western hemlocks wound together as if they were partners lifting their hands high in a contra dance, and the way beneath them was dark but clear of the snow that the wind sent lancing in every other direction.
Gathering up the poise she’d once slipped into as easily as a tailored suit, she called out, “All right, whoever, whatever you are—I’m coming. You want to talk terms? Let’s talk terms.”
She glanced one last time back at the comforting glow of the train’s yellow lights before looking forward and stepping through the opening. Behind her, the branches shifted back into place with a creaking crunch.
This way back was closed.