“Are you okay?” she asks.
Lottie shakes her head. “No. You know I hate storms.”
She walks around the room, lighting the candles, and it comes to life with a warm yellow glow. Standing by the candle closest to Lottie, she says, “Is that all?”
Lottie bites her lip. “I miss August already. A lot. I feel so alone when he is gone.”
Marigold approaches her slowly, cautiously, as if not to frighten her away. “But you’re not alone. You know that, right?” When Lottie doesn’t turn away immediately, Marigold walks closer. “I am here with you.”
There is a hint of a smile tucked in the corner of Lottie’s mouth, but it falls too quickly for Marigold to memorize all the beautiful details.
“I’ll find a way to pay you back for the room,” Lottie says, trying to change the subject as fast as possible.
“Don’t,” she says. “I have no need for it.”
“I don’t want to be indebted to anyone.”
“You are not indebted to me, Lottie. I want to take care of you.”
Lottie’s mouth twitches as she fights against her frown. “I have never known myself to be anything but a burden. Even to August and his family. Do you think they wanted to take in an aimless orphan? Another mouth to feed who was not one of their own? They are good people, and the closest thing to a family that I will ever have, but I do not truly belong with them.” She sits down in the wooden rocking chair in the corner and begins to cry. “And now that August is with his soulmate, he won’t be living with his parents any longer. I can’t expect them to continue to care for me when he’s not even there. I am not theirs. I am no one’s.Iam no one. I am nothing and no one and I do not belong anywhere.”
Marigold kneels before Lottie and pulls her hands from her face.
You belong with me, she thinks, but she does not say it, for she knows that it is not wholly true. For the first time, she thinks that she and Lottie may share a fate: They belong to no one.
They are alone.
Damn it all, why can’t they be alone together?
She curses the world, just as the world has cursed her. She knows not what to say to this beautiful, broken girl in front of her. There is no comfort that she can offer, no peace that she may give.
“You are everything that I cannot have,” Marigold says, which is the closest thing to the truth that she can confess without anyone getting hurt. Her hands are still wrapped around Lottie’s. She had not realized how tightly she was holding on until now, but she does not let go, and Lottie does not pull away.
Lottie’s eyes darken. “Shall we go to bed?” Her voice is barely more than a whisper.
Marigold shakes her head. “You take the bed. I’ll take a pillow and a blanket to the floor.” Marigold tries to stand and pull her hands away from Lottie, but Lottie does not let her. She tightens her grip around her hands, prompting Marigold to look back at her.
“Marigold.”
“Lottie?”
“Come to bed,” she says. She rises, Marigold’s hands still tightly woven between hers. “Come to bed with me.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Their rain-soaked clothes are draped over the rocking chairs to dry by the fire, leaving Marigold and Lottie in their undergarments. This, of course, is not the first time that Marigold has been in a state of undress in front of Lottie.
But this time feels very different.
Marigold’s heart pounds in her chest so much that it hurts, as if it is bruising her bones.
Lottie is lying next to her in the soft, warm bed. Her scent of vanilla and sandalwood tangles with that of fresh rain, and her red curls are spilling over the pillows, close enough to tickle Marigold’s cheek. She breathes her in, savoring the warmth of her. The softness. Lottie Burke—the real, soft, vulnerable girl who only wants to be loved, even though she will not admit it.
What she would give in order to be able to give Lottie the thing she has always wanted. What she would give to be that girl, to belong to Lottie Burke in every way that one person can belong to another.
She would give anything.
“Is your heart beating really fast?” Lottie whispers.
