“Of course. Let me run back and get you some. Give me a halfhour.”
After Jeb left, August let himself in again. Draping my hair over the ugly wound, I sank down on the bed and gathered my hands between myknees.
“Everyone’s gone,” he said, coming to sit next tome.
“Exceptyou.”
I felt his body stiffen. “Did you want me toleave?”
“You don’t have tostay.”
He crooked a finger under my chin and lifted my face. I slid my chin off its perch and dipped it back against my neck. “Why won’t you look atme?”
“It’s not that I don’t want to look at you,” I whispered. “It’s that I don’t want you to look atme.”
He sighed, a deep, rattling lungful that softened the line of his body, and then one of his arms hooked my knees and the other curved under my arms. He scooped me up and deposited me with the utmost gentleness onto hislap.
“I don’t want you to stay with me because you feel pity, August,” I said, nestling my head in the crook of hisneck.
He snorted, sliding his hand through the back of the gown and running his fingers delicately over my spine. I felt something stiff press against mythigh.
“Because that’s the reason I’m staying with you,” he saidsoftly.
“How can you still desire me? My face is—it’s . . .” Tears crept down my scars and pooled in the corner of mymouth.
“It’s the face I want to wake up to every morning and fall asleep watching every night.” August’s hand settled on the small of my back. “Besides, I’ll remind you that I’m scarredtoo.”
“Not yourface.”
“No, not my face.” He tucked me a little closer still, locking both his arms around my juddering ribs. “Your scars are a piece of you now, and I love all the pieces of you, NessClark.”
A loud sob scraped up my throat as I burrowed deeper into this man who’d always tried to keep me safe, and who, when he’d failed because I’d pushed him away, had risked his life so I could get mineback.
“You’re the love of my entire life, August Watt,” I whispered against his neck that smelled of wood and spice . . . that smelled ofhome.
Epilogue
The sunset drippedthrough the evergreen needles, showering the forest with a crimson glow that turned the rough trunks tawnier. I was still in Colorado, but miles away fromBoulder.
When Sarah had caught me crying into my pillow after I’d failed, for the fourth morning in a row, to make myself a cup of coffee—I’d poured the scorching liquid all over the countertop and down my legs instead of inside my mug—she’d booted my butt out of bed and took me on a road trip to a cabin that belonged to her father, but which he apparently rarelyused.
We’d told next no one we’d left—just Liam, Jeb, and Evelyn. Evelyn because her heart would’ve given out if she thought I’d run away, Jeb so he knew I was safe, and Liam because he could track us, and I didn’t want him to give my location away toAugust.
Sarah believed I’d taken her up on the trip to regain my footing in this new world, but that wasn’t the reason I’d gone withher.
I’d gone because I wasashamed.
The morning I spilled the coffee on myself, August had cleaned up my mess. He’d cleaned up most of my messes since I’d been home. And although he never once complained, it wasn’t fair to him. Which had been the second reason that propelled me out of Boulder . . . out of hislife.
He had everything going for him. He didn’t need to be saddled with a girl who couldn’t manage to fill a glass, who knocked into furniture, who tripped because she constantly miscalculated the distance between her feet and the raised threshold of a doorway. Perhaps, one day, my brain would catch up with my two-dimensional vision, but until that day came, I didn’t want to be anyone’s ball-and-chain.
As I rocked in the hammock hooked between two great spruce trees, I twirled an aspen daisy between my fingers, marveling at the petals’ lilac shade. I’d picked it with Sarah before she’d headed into town for some freshproduce.
Even though I could never hate you, if you break my heartagain—
When I break yours, it breaksmine.
We’d been gone three days, and I’d spent all of them thinking about August, reliving tender moments we’d shared, but then I’d close my eyes to force the memories away, because the pain of being without him made my broken heart hurt more than my brokenface.
