“Bram, what happens when—”
“Stop,” he murmurs again, lips against my hair.
“Stop what?”
“You’re always worrying about the future. And right now, gods below and above.Addie.” The sound is nothing more than a choked groan, thick and heady. “I need you here.”
My knees go shaky, and part of me hates this man who turns my brittle bones to molten flame. And yet, at the same time, loves him for it. That’s what frightens me the most. The loving. Something I have not felt in so many years.
“Why?” My own throat clogs with foolish tears.
“Must you make me explain it?” He rests his forehead against mine. “Because youcame. You could have chosen to stay behind, where it was safe and warm and alive. And yet you risked it all to come here. To save me.”
I open my mouth to protest, but he presses a finger to my lips.
“I know you came for your mother. But the fact you are still here after…after everything…Adelaide, don’t you get it?”
My entire being screams at him not to say it.Please don’t say it. And yet something so deep inside my bones—it might be the most original piece of me—wants nothing more than to watch the shape his lips make when those three little words spill from them.
“Don’t say it, Bram,” I whisper, wanting with each breath to take the words back. “I can’t hear you say it, not yet.”
“When?” His voice is a gentle groan in my ears.
“When we’re safe. Only when we are safe.”
He nods, knowingly, and tucks his fingers beneath my chin, pulling my eyes up to meet his. There, in the ruddy light, he isalive. Those eyes like twin flames, cheeks rugged and filled with warmth. My fingers brush his lips, and he shudders beneath my touch.
“Then, if anything, let me show you.”
The air blazes, nothing but heat and caught breath between us. My stomach fizzes, but I don’t care about that. Don’t care about the Haunts watching us from outside or my mother’s face made from the patchwork skin of all the dead women I have buried. Even Ransom, the man who I thought only wanted to be made whole, vanishes from my thoughts, taking his rot and sold soul with him.
And all I am left with is Bram. Beautiful, broken Bram. Who tasted poison one night and never woke up. Who, for years, waited. Waited for me to find the bell, to fit all the jagged pieces back together, and to bring him home.
It was never about Mother. Never about making my family whole. It was always about Bram. This beautiful man who only deserved to live.
I reach up to tangle my fingers in his shaggy hickory curls. “Yes,” I say, voice thick with emotion. “Yes, you can do that.”
Bram needs no more encouragement. In a single motion, he takes me by the hips and spins me, pulling my body down against him on the floor. His skin burns beneath mine, and for a single moment, I feel the steady thrum of his heart through his shirt. His mouth tastes of honey, of spilled coffee on old books. His fingers dance across my back to find the laces ofmy bodice. They are clumsy things, and I almost laugh when he struggles to gain purchase.
“Is this your first time undoing a lady’s stays?” My lips tease his throat.
He pulls back, face red. “Actually, Addie, I should say this is my first—Well, I’ve actually never—”
A smile splits my lips. I nudge him gently with my nose, voice so low it barely makes sound. “Me too, Bram.”
“Are you all right with it?” His hands regain their fortitude, trailing up my back. “With you and me, I mean?”
I lean my forehead against his, brush the twitch of his lip with my finger, and study the way his shirt is already sloughing off the hard muscle of one shoulder. In truth, I don’t know if I will be all right with anything, really. But maybe this is the beginning. One gentle, brilliant falling into healing. Maybe this is how I learn how to love, even if now isn’t the right time to hear those words.
I brush a thatch of hair from his face and sit back on my heels, pulling him up to meet me.
“With you, Bram Avery, everything is perfect.”
He groans, the sound low in his throat, and it sends ripples warming me to my core. In a single, fluid motion, he rolls me over onto my back, and I am breathless there on the floor of the church. He straddles me, thighs pressed against my hips. My hands reach up, finding the brass buttons of his shirt. I undo them one at a time, the waiting sending heat to the space between my legs.
Bram maintains searing eye contact, his pupils blown wide and shadowed with a desire that damn near takes my breath away. I unclasp the last button of his shirt, laying the fabric wide, and run my hands over the hard plane of his chest, his stomach. My fingers trail down a dark line of hair disappearing beneath the waist of his breeches.
His entire body shudders. “Addie.”
