Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
B y the time I locate the hollow where Weston stopped the carriage—the place where we first kissed, even if I didn’t realize it at the time—my heart is a tornado in my throat.
I don’t know what I’ll do if the cabin is empty. Track down Helena, maybe. Ask her where her nephew might have gone. If she can’t tell me, I’ll try Ravenfell. And if I don’t find Weston there, I’ll check the next town. And the next.
I guide my horse through the hollow and into the trees, not wasting a second on walking. Branches nip at my face as the mare carries me along the path to the cabin.
Fortuna help me , I internally beg. Let him be there, please .
It’s the last favor I’ll ever ask of the goddess, I vow it.
The trees part. The clearing unfolds before me.
And my chest seizes. Because there he is, in the October sunshine, facing away, shirtless and with an axe in hand. I haul the reins hard, jerking my mare to a stop.
Then I just stare, my ability to breathe forgotten. “Beautiful” is a word that can’t even touch this man. As I watch, he sets a log atop a chopping stump, then takes aim with the axe and brings the blade down, splitting the wood into halves. One skitters across the withered grass toward me. Weston chases it, his head down, the axe gripped by the haft.
When he reaches the log, he catches sight of the mare’s hooves and freezes.
He looks up.
My world cranks to a halt. Those tawny eyes widen. Then Weston’s brows snap low, drawing a cruel line across his features.
My pulse wobbles.
Weston straightens. Slowly. Despite the chill, he’s slicked in sweat, and he is...not happy to see me.
In fact, he looks downright angry .
“Bria.”
I flinch. This isn’t how I imagined our reunion. At all. “Um. Hi.”
His gaze peels away from mine, fixing on some distant point across the clearing. “If you’re here to tell me about your engagement, I already know. So. You shouldn’t have bothered. Congratulations, though.”
The forest goes quiet, the burble of birdcall fading. I pore over his words, again and again, but they don’t make any more sense the fourth time than the first. “Engagement? What’re you talking about? I’m not engaged.”
His eyes flick to my left hand. “Oh. Already married, then, I guess.” He sniffs and resumes his study of the treeline, despite the fact that my ring finger is bare.
I shake my head, trying to clear the fog of confusion, but it does me no good. “Weston? Will you look at me? What’re you talking about? ”
His jaw hardens, taking on a mulish cast. “Your marriage. To Calder Hawthorne. You don’t need to be gentle about it, or anything. I’ve known for a while. And I’m happy for you. Really. Calder’s a good man. He was one of the only ones who would actually set foot in the ring with me. He’ll be good to you. Your dad and I agree on that, at least.”
Shock makes my vision fade at the edges. “My dad? When did you see my dad?”
He scowls. “When I came to see how you were doing. And to propose to you. Again. Which was...what, three times? Four? You’d think by the time I lost track, I’d have realized it wasn’t going to work out for me. But you know what they say.”
I don’t know what they say. And I am...so lost. So I try again. “I’m not married, Weston. Or engaged. Calder Hawthorne did propose, but I turned him down.”
He blinks. His gaze slides to me.
“And what do you mean, ‘you know what they say?’ What do they say, exactly?”
He hesitates. He runs a hand through his gilded hair, which takes the opportunity to spring every which way. “You know. That proverb you always hear.”
“ What proverb?”
Color seeps into his cheeks. “Hope springs eternal,” he finally says.
A shiver coils at the base of my spine. Something about that answer feels so violently appropriate that I drop the reins entirely. “So...you’re saying you came to my house? After the last time I saw you in this clearing? And you proposed to me, via my father?”
He squints. “Didn’t he tell you? ”
Wingbeats erupt inside my chest. “No. Did you honestly expect him to?”
“Well, I thought...” He looks taken aback by my father’s duplicity. “I mean, I guess he didn’t say, one way or the other. But he told you were already promised to Calder Hawthorne. And that you’d been struggling ever since... Since...”—he swallows hard—“Since I did what I did to you. And that you’d be better off never seeing me again. Because if I’d been the sort of man who deserved you, I never would’ve?—”
“Stop.” I wave a hand. “Just stop. You realize that’s all horseshit, right? Everything you just said.”
His mouth clicks shut. He peers at me, his golden stare lancing through the dark fringe of his lashes. “It’s not. He was right.”
“No,” I say. “He was dead wrong. Because I’ve been waiting for you. All this time. And maybe I was struggling, a little, but only because I hadn’t realized the extent of the gift you gave me. I didn’t understand the losing my Mark meant that Fortuna doesn’t control me anymore. That I control myself, now. That, for as much as I wished my triquetra away, the important part wasn’t losing it, but learning to stand on my own. But I get it now. And I have you to thank.”
He narrows his eyes, skeptical. “You shouldn’t be thanking me for anything. I betrayed you. I did something awful to you. The one thing I’d always promised not to do.”
I heave a sigh. “Weston... You didn’t do anything to me, you did it for me. And even if I’m different now, my feelings aren’t. I still love you. I still think about you every second. I still touch myself at night and pretend it’s you. I think I love you even more, now, actually, because that night we had together was the truest, most honest one of my life. And you should know there’s no world in which I want to marry Calder Hawthorne. I’ve only ever wanted to marry you. That’s why I’m here. To fight for you. For us.”
He stares at me. The axe handle slides through his fingers, the head thumping into the ground.
My longing for him sharpens, becoming nearly unbearable. I want to leap from this saddle and straight into his arms. “I’m just sorry it took me so long to come. I should’ve done it right away, like you did for me. Better yet, I should never have left. I should’ve fought to stay. But I’m going to, now. No one’s ever going to come between us again. Not my parents, or Brendan, or anyone.”
He blinks. And stares. For so long that my scalp prickles. The only other time I’ve ever seen him hold so still was when my brother accused him of defiling me.
“Weston?”
He draws a long breath. “Birdie,” he murmurs.
The nickname floods my insides with warmth.
“I think maybe you should come down from there now,” he says. “It’s not safe.”
A glow brightens inside my chest. If he’s worried about me, then he still cares. At least on some level. I grip the pommel and swing my leg over, then hop to the ground. “Is this better?”
“No.” His jaw flexes. “That’s not completely safe, either.”
“Where, then?” I step closer to him. “Here?”
He shakes his head. Bright silver mingles with the gold in his eyes.
Another step. “Here?”
He presses his lips together. Another shake of his head.
I stray closer, until I’m standing squarely within his gravity, looking up into the same face I see when I close my eyes at night. “Here?”
“Not quite.” He reaches for me. Pauses.
I hold my breath.
But then his arms settle around me, one at the small of my back, the other at the nape of my neck. He pulls me close, and I burrow against his sweat-slicked chest. I inhale until I can’t anymore, then hold the tang of amber and salt in my lungs for as long as possible.
“Here,” he says. “You’re safe right here. For as long as you want to be.”
I wrap my arms around his waist and squeeze, certain I’ve never heard such beautiful words before. “I don’t ever want to be anywhere else.”
We stand like that for long minutes. And, when I finally look up again, he isn’t angry anymore.