He shrugged. “Someone told me you like beauty and secrets. I thought this place ticked both those boxes.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. Had he actually gone to someone to ask them about what I might like? I wouldn’t have ever imagined him to go to that sort of effort. It almost didn’t make sense. Here it was, that gentler, kinder side I had thought long gone.
“They were right,” I finally managed to say. “This is…it’s really something, Drake. Thanks.”
He gave that self-conscious shrug again. “It was really difficult,” he said. “I had to build this whole place from scratch almost overnight just for you.”
I laughed, the sound bouncing around to come back to my ears. Drake’s lip twitched upward at the sound.
“I just brought you here,” he muttered. “That’s all.”
“It’s enough.” Then, because a strange tension lingered between us, I asked, “So, what’s in the bag?”
He slung the pack off his shoulder, unzipped it, and held it open for me to see. A bottle of wine and a variety of food. “I thought it might be nice to have lunch here,” he said.
My breath caught as my eyes flicked up from the bag and up to Drake’s eyes. What I saw there surprised me almost as much as him bringing me here and suggesting a picnic. He had put in the effort to do something nice for me. Me, specifically.
“Yeah,” I croaked, my throat drier than I might have expected.
He gave a brusque nod, but I didn’t miss that relief flickering in his eyes. I felt it drift through the mating bond, too. Before I could think too hard about it, he had already grabbed the blanket and spread it out between us.
“You put in a lot of effort,” I said as he pulled out the bottle of wine. He’d even brought real glasses.
He shrugged, not looking at me as he kept withdrawing the rest of the items. “I figured that, given everything, this might be something nice for you.”
“Given everything?” I knew what he meant, but I wanted to hear him say it.
“I know you aren’t thrilled that I got you to stay,” Drake said. “And there’s a lot of baggage going along with all of this.”
It wasn’t exactly an apology, but I would take it. I shrugged, taking a sip of wine. “I just never wanted my choices dictated for me, let alone my mate. I figured that, despite whatever else might go on, I would at least get a say. I wanted to be able to pick someone who wanted to be with me. Not have the Oracle walk in and tell me who I was going to be with.”
“What makes you think I didn’t want to be with you?” he asked.
My head whipped around to stare at him. My eyes darted across his features, looking for the sarcasm or deception. My stomach flipped and did somersaults as I searched his face, finding nothing there.
“Then I would say you had plenty of chances to act on it before the Oracle forced our hands,” I said.
“Did I? I didn’t miss the fact that you ran away from me whenever you saw me. It isn’t exactly easy to talk to someone who is that good at avoiding you.”
I wanted to point out that none of that would have happened if he had made different choices when we were kids, but I doubted that would go over well. I bit my tongue and glanced away.
All of a sudden, I didn’t want to have this conversation. It was too much. It opened up too many uncomfortable subjects. I wanted to talk about something—anything—else.
“Why are you so surly?” I asked the first thing that popped into my head.
If he was surprised by the change in subject, he didn’t let on. “Why are you so sunny?” he countered. “There’s plenty of things going on that would make people miserable or depressed. You are one of the few people who can go about with a smile on her face at all times.”
He didn’t make it sound accusatory or like a failure, more that he was genuinely curious about why I was that way. He made it sound almost like he admired it. But that barely registered as I wondered just how often he’d noticed me to make that sort of assumption.
“That’s why I do it,” I said. “Because there needs to be some happiness, especially given everything. I’m just trying to make everyone’s day a bit brighter, mine included. If I think about all the horrible things going on and don’t at least come up with something cheerful to think about, I’d collapse.”
He considered this for a moment, taking a sip of red wine that made his lips turn an even deeper shade of red. I tried not to think about his mouth any further than that, even as I pictured them trailing up my neck.
“I’ve just seen too many things that make it hard to keep that outlook,” he growled. “There are some days when it’s hard to see any brightness in the world.” He glanced over at me. “You’re one of the few bright things that I see regularly.”
My breath caught in my throat, and I couldn’t tear my gaze away from him as my heart started pounding. There it was, that softer side of him that I had always known was there but hadn’t seen in so long. All of my reservations, all of the walls I had built up between us to protect myself, began to crumble.
I could barely think of what to say. It was like the words had flown out of my head.
