The room was dim, with only the lantern in the window, and the lighthouse beam circling, cascading light into the room every seven seconds.
Anothertapand I walked to the window and peered down.
“Adora,” Stone called from below, his voice consumed by agony, arms up at his sides with hands full of pebbles. “Come down, my darling Adora. I need to see you.” He threw another pebble, and it clanked off the glass. “Lest you prefer me to climb the trellis and break the wretched window.”
My eyes bulged out of their sockets. My heart raced.
I hurried to crank open the window with my gut jumping into my throat.
Stone stood in the middle of the snow-covered garden, dressed in all black. He looked like ink splattered in the snow.
“Ah, there she is,” he said, letting the pebbles slip from his closed fists. “How befitting your window was the first one I called out to. Truth be told, I thought it would have been challenging. I must have felt you.”
“Evidently, you want to die, otherwise you would not be standing here,” I whisper-shouted.
Then all his broodiness had gone. “Come down, princess. We need to have a little chat.”
I gripped the sill, my knuckles surely white. “Stop using my heart like an Ouija board!”
He narrowed his eyes, his brows pressed together. “On behalf of 1864, I can assure you we don’t know what the blasted hell that is!” he shouted, and I blindly grabbed something from the desk and tossed it at him. He dodged the paperweight and looked up at me. “Excellent. Now, would you mind throwing yourself at me next?”
“I told you I never want to see you again—”
But Stone didn’t allow me to finish before he was ripping off his gloves and stripping off his coat, tossing each into the snow, and stalking toward the exterior wall. When he grabbed the trellis to start the climb, I jumped back.
He’s really coming up, I thought, starting to pace the room with my nails between my teeth. My feet were wearing out the hardwood, and my heart was doing somersaults in my chest.
Minutes later, he was swinging his long legs through my window.
And then he was simply standing in my room, staring at me.
I dug my teeth into my lip to hold my breath.
To try and hold me together. To not cry.
“This town is absolutely mad,” he said, breathing heavily. “People are having disagreements with inanimate objects. The smallest man in Weeping Hollow namedOceanclaims to be my protector, ironically after being stuck in one for a century. And what’s with that man, Jasper, who sits on the damned street and stares up at the clock all hours of the day?” He exhaled and wiped his forehead. “I think it’s time for us to go home, Adora, before this town becomes you.”
Silence filled the room as we stared at one another.
His nostrils flared, his chest heaving.
He was trying to hold himself together, too.
“You haven’t hit me yet,” he continued, more gentler, perhaps to fill the silence. “This is normally the part where you hit me, and my body desperately misses your hands.” He lifted a shoulder. “Whether they’re hurting me or pleasing me, they belong on me.”
My jaw clenched, and I heard my teeth grinding in my ears.
Then my chin shook as the first burn for air hit my lungs.
“Your stubbornness is stupidity, my darling,” Stone whispered, repeating the exact words I’d once told him. “Just take a breath.”
He was here, and I had done all I could to stay away and fight it and pretend I didn’t care.But he was here, not giving me or my grief a place to hide.
So, I couldn’t anymore.
My chest buckled, my lungs opened up, and heartache burst from me.
Tears rained down my cheeks, snot bubbled from my nose, and my chest heaved through each breath-aching cry. My vision went blurry, but I could make out Stone just standing there—body stiff and staring at me.
