Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Cosmos leads me around back to a homemade greenhouse, hobbled together by a random collection of window panes. He doesn’t stop until we’re inside and the door is closed. It’s dark, but there are Christmas lights strung overhead, giving the whole place a warm, dim glow.
He doesn’t say anything right away, just keeps rubbing at his face, like he’s trying to work up to whatever it is he wants to say. He seems so uncomfortable, I actually take pity on him.
“So, does your sister always talk about sex at the dinner table like that?” I ask, changing the subject, even while my heart still aches. Maybe we both need to take a step back for a second.
“Cece?” he asks, confusion creasing his forehead. “Usually, she’s worse.” The hand that’s been rubbing his face runs up into his hair, scratching at his head.
I finger the soft petals of a rose and survey the greenhouse. Ferns grow in pots scattered across the floor. The middle row is all roses, but the edges of the greenhouse are all kinds of other flowers, many I recognize, but couldn’t name.
Cosmos breaks the silence. “This thing we can do… it’s not a complete surprise to me.”
My heart wilts at his words. “You mean you’ve stopped time with someone else before?”
“No, definitely not.” He smiles at me before walking down the row of flowers. “My parents’ relationship… well, they had magic like we do. Only it was different.” He pauses and picks a dead leaf off a plant, crumbling it between his fingers.
I want to ask a million questions, but I don’t. If I say anything, he might stop talking, and I want to hear where this is going.
“You know how people talk about feeling butterflies when they’re around someone they’re attracted to?” He turns and looks at me again, and I know exactly the feeling he’s talking about. My insides flutter like there’s a thousand butterflies between my ribs.
“My parents got that feeling every time they looked at each other, but something more happened. Real butterflies showed up. It didn’t matter whether they were inside or outside.
It was like they were the Pied Piper of butterflies.
Sometimes it was just one or two, sometimes a lot more.
You should see the pictures of their wedding.
There were hundreds of butterflies all over the garden where they were married.
Everyone kept asking how they got them to stay there and not fly away. It was like a fairyland.”
“Sounds magical.”
“Yeah.” He turns away from me, and for the first time I notice a butterfly fluttering on a nearby orchid. Cosmos slowly reaches out his finger, and the butterfly flaps its wings and lands on him. He smiles and holds it up for me to see.
“They had to put a mosquito net around their bed to keep them out.” He chuckles. “Apparently, they swarmed when my parents were… intimate.”
I have to stifle a laugh, picturing what it would be like to have butterflies swarming around me while having sex. Which just gets me thinking about sex… and sex with Cosmos.
“It’s even how I got my name,” Cosmos adds.
I look at him in confusion.
“My mom was expecting another girl, so all the names they’d picked out were girl names. They didn’t have a boy name they agreed on. When I was born, two butterflies landed on a cosmos flower in the bouquet my dad brought to the hospital. They decided it was a sign and named me Cosmos.”
“That’s… beautiful.”
“My little sister’s story is even better. My father was dead set on naming her Ivy, and my mom wasn’t certain. So, when she gave birth, he bought her a bouquet with nothing but Ivy in it.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. It’s like something out of a movie. It’s also kind of adorable.
“What was he like?”
“My dad?” Cosmos runs his hands through his hair, then scrubs them down his face.
“He was one of those people who didn’t talk very often, but when he did, people listened.
But he was always distracted. He would stare off into the distance, and I would call for him a hundred times, but he wouldn’t hear me.
I used to think he could see all the magic in the world, like he could lift the veil and see into another realm. ”
I can understand how it would be easy to believe in magic growing up in a house full of butterflies.
Another butterfly lands on Cosmos’ hair, and he gently brushes it away before moving down the next row of flowers and turning to face me.
We’re standing on opposite sides of a rosebush, beauty and thorns between us.
“I always loved their story,” he says. “I wanted something like that.”
This is what Julia meant. Cosmos wanted magic, looked for it everywhere, and now he’s found it. That’s why he’s been so interested in me.
“Eventually, my mom and sisters sat me down and had an intervention. They told me I needed to stop looking for magic and start paying attention to the person, not the circumstances. Then, I met you and—”
“You fell right back into your old ways.” I curl in on myself, feeling sick to my stomach. This whole thing makes a lot more sense. Cosmos isn’t really attracted to me. He’s attracted to what we can do. To the magic of it.
“No, Hazel. No.” He hurries back over to me and takes my hands.
“Don’t you see, avoiding you after I talked to Julia wasn’t just about hospital ethics.
She reminded me of what I’d done before.
So, I took a step back and started watching you.
” He turns one of my hands over and kisses my palm, then does the same with the other.
“I even recruited Julia as a bit of a spy.”
“What?”
“Not really a spy,” he hedges. “But she spent some time with your mom and saw you more than I did at the beginning. So, I asked her to tell me what she thought of you and whether you were someone I should avoid. She couldn’t find anything to object to. She even admitted she likes you.”
“She could have fooled me.”
He tugs me forward, bringing my hands to his chest. “She’s not the type to jump into things, so she’s not happy about how fast we’re moving. But this doesn’t feel fast to me. I would have seduced you the moment I saw you if I could have.”
“Seduced me, huh? And what exactly would that have looked like?” I try to hide my lingering insecurity behind a cage of playfulness, but I’m not sure I’m pulling it off.
He quirks a crooked grin in my direction. “I think you know exactly what my seduction looks like.”
I swallow and try to calm the pounding of my heart. It’s suddenly way too warm in here. I try to pull my hands away from his chest so I can get some distance, catch my breath, but he keeps me firmly in place.
“With most of my girlfriends, I told them I loved them within a week,” he confesses.
My jaw drops open, and I gawk at him. I can’t imagine telling someone I loved them that fast. It took me five months to tell Kane I loved him, and in all the time we were together, even after I moved in with him, he never said it back.
Cosmos is unfazed by my reaction. He shrugs his shoulders. “What can I say? I’m a romantic at heart.”
This is crazy. I know he’s trying to convince me he’s not jumping into anything, but I can see the emotion all over his face.
His eyes aren’t just glazed with desire, but something sweeter, softer.
Genuine care. Is that care really for me or just an illusion brought on by living out his childhood dream of sharing magic with someone?
“I kind of stalked you.” His tan cheeks turn the softest pink.
I look down at my shoes, unsure what to make of all this, but he doesn’t let me look away. He tilts my chin back up.
“I’ve watched you from afar for over a month now,” he says.
“I saw how kind you were to the nurses. I learned that you have a dry, sarcastic streak that you rarely let out, except with your mom, or when you’re overtired.
You make the most amazing hot chocolate.
And you crinkle your nose whenever you’re confused or irritated.
” He smoothes a finger over the bridge of my nose.
“You’re doing it right now, which is making me very nervous, since I can’t tell whether I’ve confused you or annoyed you.
Which is it, Hazel? Please put me out of my misery. ”
“I don’t know.” I feel like a match that can’t decide if it’s going to spark or sputter out. He didn’t say love, but I get the feeling that’s only because he doesn’t want to scare me. But I’m definitely scared.
He may have noticed all these little things about me, but he doesn’t know me. Not really. What happens once he does and the illusion pops?
Not only that, but now I’m worried about him, too.
Worried that eventually, when I can’t keep my emotions under control, I’ll have an outburst or breakdown that will trample all over his beautiful, tender heart.
What happens when I inadvertently hurt this gorgeous man who wears his heart on his sleeve?
He doesn’t know how emotional I can get, how anxious I always feel, how unstable I can be.
He won’t be able to handle me, and I’m going to break him.
I can see it already. I don’t want it to happen, but it feels like we’ve already gone too far.
No matter what I do now, he’s going to end up with that lovely heart bleeding all over his shirtsleeve.