Chapter 58
Fifty-Eight
Glittering halls, velvet corridors, room after room after room, until finally we’re somewhere empty. Moonlight spills in through tall windows and casts pale ribbons across the floor but it’s not enough. Not when I feel like I’m drowning in shadow.
I steady myself against the door as it clicks shut behind us. “Carson…” It comes out all strangled. “What is this?”
His shoulders rise, stall, then, finally, fall.
“An engagement.”
Bated. So bated. “Whose?”
Silence stretches taut as wire. When his eyes finally lift to mine, they’re stripped of every defence, and four letters drop like a stone in water. “Mine.”
It reverberates. In my skull, against my ribs, through every nerve-ending. Instinct has me lunging for the door, but his palm strikes first. Wood slams, the echo rattling through me as he traps me between him and the exit.
His breath is hot against my ear. “Don’t do that,” he rasps. “You’re really gonna leave without hearing me out?”
He has a point, but reason is oil slipping through my hands right now.
If it weren’t, I’d see it clearly. How he almost didn’t show. How whispers of a merger were just smoke. How kissing me in front of everyone wasn’t recklessness, it was a declaration.
But my mind refuses to hold any of it.
It latches onto one word and one word only, pressing it over and over like a bruise I can’t stop touching.
Mine. My engagement. Carson and… her.
I know it isn’t what it looks like, that there’s more to the story, so it’s not really betrayal thickening my tongue; it’s more the ache of being completely blindsided. Why didn’t he prepare me? “You should’ve told me, Carson.”
“It’s not real.” The vehemence in it makes it clear he thinks this is about her.
“I’ve never looked twice at her. Never will.
I won’t look at any woman—” His eyes scrape over mine, searching my silence like he’s drowning in it.
Panic creeps in now. “I didn’t even know he was going to drop this on me.
I only found out from someone the day we went to the Bar’s Den. ”
That was the day I gave him that massage. I remember the knots in his shoulders, the strain carved so deep in him.
“This was always his plan. He staged it so I’d have no choice. Because this is who he is, Brielle. He’s cunning as hell.” His chest rises jagged with the next breath. “He started testing the waters back at Pine Oak. I told him then I wouldn’t do it. I’m not his pawn, not marrying for his legacy.”
He’s still watching me, waiting for something in me to give.
Maybe it would, if I didn’t feel so sideswiped.
I shake my head, throat aching. “No, Carson. You let me walk in blind. Didn’t even brace me for a punch you knew was coming.”
“I had to. I had to see if it was real.”
“If what was?”
“Your feelings for me.”
The floor drops. My back stays pressed to the door, but it’s not enough to hold all that’s off-centre inside. “Why would you even doubt that?” I whisper.
Now he’s the one retreating, yanking at his tie like it’s choking him. Silver spotlights the motion and that’s the only reason I realise his hands are trembling.
I push. “Is it because I said I needed space? Because I admitted I was relying on you too much? Carson, that didn’t mean I was lying when I told you how I feel. You know I—”
“Do I, Brielle?” He’s on me in a flash, all fire when yesterday there’d been nothing but hollow edges. It’s like someone found an empty tank and lit a match just to watch it explode. “It was never about you needing space. That was never the problem, not really.”
What? Is he forgetting his outburst on the deck?
But then he says it, and it all comes to a crash. “You told me it’s okay if I moved on.”
I stop. Everything slows. My pulse, my breath, time itself.
Not for Carson. He steps closer, filling every inch of space, locking down all my senses. “Like you’re just a stop for me. Like you’re not the whole damn endgame. Like you don’t see this as a forever thing the way I do.”
It breaks in my chest, this cracking sound, loud but not loud enough for him to hear. “What?”
His hands are still trembling when they cup my face. “Don’t you get it, Brielle? I’ll wait for you. However long it takes, I’ll wait. Even if it wrecks me, even if I can’t sleep, can’t breathe, can’t make it through a day without you in my head, I’ll wait. As long as I know you’ll come back to me.”
“You… you..”
God.
Up is down, left is right, but this—this—is the only thing that feels true.
I see it clearly now, how I broke something in him with that statement. How the cold wasn’t detachment, it was fear.
And in his eyes, I see it mirrored.
The same terror that’s been growing inside me.
He leans in, lips brushing mine like a vow, and every moment—bonfires, swimming lessons, whispered almosts—rushes back between us.
“Promise me you’ll come back to me, baby.” His fingers ghost my jaw before anchoring firm. “I’m so goddamn homesick.”
Who was I kidding? Not a single atom of me ever meant it when I told him he could move on. If he did… God, I know I wouldn’t let him. Pretending otherwise was the most foolish thing I ever tried.
“Yes,” I breathe. “Yes. I promise.”
It’s like something inside him completely gives. Not the bad kind, the kind that lets light finally pour through. His breath rushes out sharp, and then I’m engulfed in his arms. Not gentle, not measured, but real. Like he’s spent forever holding this back, and now he can finally let go.
I swear, the Earth could tilt, and I wouldn’t notice. Not when he’s holding me like this, like he’s trying to merge us into one.
“You have no idea. No idea what that does to me.” It’s muffled against my crown, but the gruff edge in it manages to make it through. “No take-backs, Brielle. I swear, I won’t let you.”
“No take-backs.”
His arm loosens, and for a second I think he’s going to let go. Instead his fingers slip under his collar and tug at the chain he never takes off. It snags, reluctant to leave, but one sharp tug frees it. Then it slides over my head.
I freeze. Completely freeze. Not because I’ve never seen him without it, but because this pendant is one of the last things his dad gave him. He told me that once, his head in my lap while I read to him and the ocean wind tangled through our hair.
“Carson. No.”
My hand flies up, brushing the engravings. Polaris.
It’s still warm from his skin. I go for the clasp but he folds both his hands over mine. “It’s not mine, Brielle. It hasn’t been for a long time.”
“What?”
His thumb slides to my wrist, tracing exactly where Bryce’s name rests inked there. One beat. Two. “My dad told me to give it to the person who steadies me more than the stars. That’s you, Brielle. Been you for longer than you probably realise.”
How long, I want to ask, but the world’s blurring and I have to blink rapidly to clear it.
“And anyway.” His voice lowers, softer now. “I don’t need it anymore. I already carry it with me.”
“What do you mean?” The question stumbles, a scratched record skipping on the same line.
He drops my hand and jerks his chin toward the open collar of his shirt. “Undo the top.”
I stall, but his look holds me. So I do, fingers clumsy, breath unspooling.
“Now pull it down.”
I tug the fabric aside. His Adam’s apple bobs once, but it’s not the action that undoes me. It’s the sight revealed beneath. Not for the first time tonight, Carson’s blindsided me. But this—this short-circuits my brain completely. I can’t even choke out a useless what.
There, etched over his heart, is a quiet constellation. Tiny stars scatter like broken shards of night, and in the centre, the brightest one: the North Star.
But it’s the cursive that wrecks me.
Woven so seamlessly into the pattern, so subtle I almost miss it: My Polaris.
“What do you think?”
What do I think? He’s standing here with his heart bared again—literally. Time after time, he’s handed it to me, let me hold it, shown me pieces of himself I never asked for but always wanted. So many pieces, I start to wonder how much he even has left.
It terrifies me. Because all I want to do is give myself back—just so he’s not left empty.
I think about the statement he made out there, the stakes tied to it; and before my own heart can plummet, I do the one thing I should’ve done long ago—I give him it.
“I’m thinking…” A deep breath. “I’m thinking… I love you.”
He presses my hand flat to the tattoo, his eyes keen. “Say again.”
“I love you.”
But it still feels too small. Too thin for everything he’s been. Everything he is.
“I realised it at Dugout, but I know it started long before that. How could it not? How could it not?” This time I’m the one initiating, soft, slow, hoping the tide of everything I feel can pass through the nearness of us.
“I was half-dead when I came to Grove, Carson.” My voice breaks against him.
“Looking back, it breaks me. And I think that was only the beginning of the hole I was digging.” His lips hover against mine, not moving, not breathing.
“You pulled me out, Carson. You. Not by saving me, but by showing me I could save myself.”
That’s all he needs. He crushes me into him and I don’t resist. I let him hold me tight until it feels like my ribs are pressing in, until it feels like I’ll splinter from the force itself, because I know it’s his way of saying he’s never letting go again.
Our heartbeats thrum against each other, chest to chest. Thud, thud, thud, until I can’t tell whose is whose. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe this is exactly where we’re meant to be.
I can stay in this space of joy forever. But, as always, reality creeps in, and reality is no longer something I run from.
“Carson.” He resists when I try to pull back, but relents when I try again. “What about Hannah?” The fear is there, and it’s so potent. “What’s your grandfather going to do now?”
“It’s handled,” he says, quiet but certain. “I talked to my mom. We spoke. A lot, actually. And…” His throat bobs slightly. “Whatever happened years ago that made them leave—it’s enough. Enough as leverage. And if it’s not…”
He presses his forehead to mine.
“If it’s not?”
“We’ll figure it out.” Storm-grey eyes lock onto mine. “Together.” A pause. A breath. A heartbeat. “A forever thing?”
My promise doesn’t waver. It never wavers. “A forever thing.”