“Always so dramatic.” She yawns and pulls her hands under her cheek. “Can I stay for a while? I… I don’t want to leave you yet.”
My chest squeezes. Looking away from her to hide the anguish her words stir inside me, I nod my head.
“I’m going to take a short nap, and then we can get to work breaking the curse.”
I continue to run my fingers through her hair. “Of course.”
She slowly scoots to the foot of the bed, sighing contentedly when she brings her head to rest on my pillow. I curse knowing itwill be a sick form of torture I put myself through counting how long her scent will last on that pillow before it fades entirely.
I stand from the bed, but her next words stop me.
“Will you hold me?”
I freeze and turn back to her, contemplating whether she meant to say that or if she’s talking in her sleep.
“Braxton?” She cracks an eye open. “Don’t make me beg again. Will you stay?”
“I’ll always stay, Wildflower.” I crawl into bed next to her, and she molds her back to my front. Before long, I can hear her softly snoring next to me, and I don’t move from this spot. Not when my arm falls asleep. Not when my stomach growls with hunger. Not even when the sun begins to sink in the sky.
I don’t move. I brand every second I get to feel her body against mine to my memory. To see her in such a peaceful state is something I haven’t gotten to experience in far too long.
It’s not until she begins to stir, and I fear that she’ll wake up confused about how she ended up in my bed, that I lift her into my arms, and with the heaviest heart I’ve had to endure in a while, I carry her back to her room.
My slow descent back to my own bed chamber is filled with melancholic thoughts of what tomorrow will bring. The hatred I will have to endure from her once again. Her words of disbelief that I’ve been unable to break the curse, to get her to fall in love with me, ring endlessly in my ears.
I can’t help but think that maybe the reason I can’t get her to love me again is because of what I’ve become. I’m not the same man she loved all that time ago. I’ve hardened. I’ve become hateful. I’m a monster. That’s what the world will see me as if I ever am able to reemerge into it. Maybe all of those truths make me unworthy of love, least of all hers.
32
Azalea
Myheadispoundingas I stir awake. I blink beyond the blurred haze that coats my eyes before I rub the sleep from them.
The echoes of my dream ricochet through my head.
I was standing at the edge of a cliff, wearing this gorgeous red dress that was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The wind whipped through my loose curls as I turned, and my eyes settled on a pair of unmistakable dark eyes. Braxton looked back at me almost lovingly, and though I was confused, in the dream, I felt nothing but bliss.
“Do you love me?”I heard my own voice echo in my head with the question. Braxton answered without hesitation.
“Until my last breath.”He bent his head toward mine, and just as his lips, softer than I would have imagined, slid across mine, I woke.
After a moment of running my fingers along my lips, I blink myself back to reality and sit up in bed. Crossing my feet at my ankles, I tuck them underneath me as I scratch my fingernails along my scalp, as if that will dull the persistent throb still pulsing in my mind.
I’m unable to determine what’s real and what’s a dream. I know I couldn’t have possibly stood at the edge of a cliff with Braxton because there are no cliffs that line the castle grounds, and I can’t leave the castle grounds. But why would I ever dream about the man who trapped me in this castle? Why would I spare Braxton a second thought at all?
Regardless, I know with undeniable certainty that the feeling of his lips molding themselves overtop of mine is not just a vivid dream or a figment of my imagination.
The truth is foggy in my brain, but I have no doubts that last night Braxton kissed me, and for reasons I can’t quite recall, I let him.
33
Braxton
Itossthequilldown on my desk and lean back, my fingers tugging at the roots of my rumpled hair.
I can’t believe I was stupid enough to believe that she didn’t have the skeleton key, or that she wouldn’t figure out that it would be able to open the trunk with all of her journals tucked neatly inside.
I curse the day I bought her those journals. It was before the curse ever took form. She loved writing so much, and I was trying to be a thoughtful, doting husband.Fucking stupid. I then couldn’t bear to rip them away from her after the curse took shape and she lost her memories.Fucking stupider.Every time the curse restarted I had no choice but to go in and take away the journals with entries in fear that if she found and read them it would cause her memories to reset again. But of course, like the sad sap I am, I didn’t have the heart to get rid of them.Fucking stupidest move of all.
