Chapter 41 Coco
Coco
He made me a garden—one filled with river stones and pebbles, one that winds around trees and shrubs, one he’s building with his own two hands.
I sit in the sedan, taking it all in. Stone has already told me goodbye, and my excuse for sitting in the car for a moment is that there are emails that need sorting through.
But there aren’t any emails.
He’s finished lunch and is now laying stones atop each other, lining out the space, studying, shaking his head, rearranging his work.
The whole thing breaks me open.
Because he’s doing it for me.
This is why I couldn’t tell him the truth. I thought, reveal it to him here, on neutral ground, get it over with. But in the end, this is the truest relationship I’ve ever had, and it’s not even real.
Because my own relationship with my sister isn’t even real and it should be. This thing with Stone is more real than that.
And it feels like maybe I don’t deserve to have something actual, something that isn’t based on a lie.
My God—he’s building a space in my honor at a multimillion-dollar facility. He’s making it for me, and as much as I should be letting him go, I can’t.
What if he rejects the real me? What if the real me isn’t good enough?
A fierce lion inside me wants to grab him tight and hold on as long as I can.
The thought of ending things now makes me physically sick to my stomach. It churns at the thought of revealing the truth.
One more month.
Just one more and I’ll get the lunaria bloom again, make the potion. Then I’ll give it to him.
Besides, it’s not as if he’ll want to marry me in a month.
That gives me thirty more days to pretend this is real, to pretend that I can keep Stone Maddox forever.