“Pack business. A dispute on the northern border, I need to make a few calls.”
“Go.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Go handle it.”
He kissed my forehead, quick and hard, and disappeared back inside. I heard him on the phone again, his voice dropping into the low authoritative tone I recognized from the office when he was handling something serious. Giving orders, making decisions, being the King while I lay in his garden with grass in my hair.
I looked up at the stars, the cold spot where his wolf had been beside me, the book still on my chest, his voice drifting from the kitchen. Distant but present. I wasn’t upset. Wasn’t resentful. Wasn’t wishing he’d come back and finish the chapter. I was lying in a garden listening to a man run a kingdom from his kitchen, proud of him, wanting him to come back but not needing him to. Okay in the gap. In the cold spot. In the waiting. Because I knew he’d come back.
Something shifted in my chest. Quiet, permanent. Like a lock clicking into place. I’d told him I was falling. That had been true, in the bathtub, in the steam, with his hands on my face. But falling implies motion, implies you haven’t stopped yet, implies you could still pull yourself back up.
I wasn’t falling anymore. I’d hit the ground. I was just lying here in the crater, looking at the stars, completely wrecked, and I didn’t want to climb out.
I fell asleep in the garden with the book on my chest, his voice still coming from the kitchen. When I woke up I was in his bed with his arm around my waist, morning light through the curtains. He’d carried me inside and I’d slept through the whole thing, which told me everything I needed to know about where I was with this man. I was curled against his chest, still in last night’s clothes, grass stains on my knees, his arm tightening when I shifted like even in sleep he was keeping track of me.
I picked up my phone from the nightstand and texted Mary.
I think this might be it
She responded instantly:it being what
Him. All of it.
andrea grey are you telling me you’re in love
I looked at him beside me. Asleep, face relaxed, hair falling across his forehead, jaw soft without the tension that lived there during the day. He looked like someone who needed eight more hours of sleep and would never admit it.
yeah. I am.
DON’T JINX IT
that’s not how jinxing works mary
I SAID DON’T TEST ME. just be happy. be disgustingly happy.
you’re ridiculous
and you’re in love so which one of us is really the ridiculous one here
She had a point. Shit.
I put the phone down. I didn’t say it out loud, wasn’t ready to hand him that word yet because once I said it I couldn’t unsay it and my track record with keeping good things was not great. But I knew. Knowing filled me up until there wasn’t room for doubt.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand. He stirred, reached for it with his eyes still closed, checked the screen, and his jaw tightened even half-asleep.
“Pack stuff?” I asked.
“Yeah. Luca.”
He put the phone down and rolled toward me and pulled me against his chest.
“It can wait.”
“You said that last night too.”
“And it waited.”
