I studied him, this man who had loved me absolutely, who had saved me and been forced to carry the weight of losing me anyway—and my heart broke all over again.
I stopped, turning and taking his hands in mine, his features blurring with the unshed tears clinging stubbornly to my lashes.
“I am so sorry, Nicholas. I am—“ my voice cracked, and I threw myself into his arms, hugging him so tightly that his heart beat against mine through the layers of clothing. He squeezed me just as hard, burying his face into my neck.
“Don’t be,” he breathed. “I would suffer it a thousand times to have you here with me.”
I pulled back, reaching up to adjust his ascot where the knot had shifted slightly to one side.
His breath caught.
“Does it still hurt?” I asked.
“Only when you fuss with it.”
I smiled and his finger brushed a single tear from my cheek. “Forgive yourself, Mellie. Everything that happened led us here.”
He spread his arms, gesturing around us. “If you were going to be immortal, my love, I was going to follow you anyway.”
He closed the space between us, tilting my chin up to meet his searching gaze. He bent, his lips barely brushing mine. “I cannot live without you and I certainly will not die without you either.”
His mouth came down on mine, the heat spreading through my entire body, pooling low.
Nicholas lifted his hand to my face and I leaned into his palm, savoring the touch, tasting sweetness and salt from my own tears, on his tongue.
His thumb brushed my cheek with devastating tenderness. “Are you happy?” he asked, pulling away just enough to whisper the words against my lips.
The question was so simple that I almost laughed. Happy was too small a word for what I was. Happiness belonged to ordinary marriages, to women who did not carry a garden beneath their skin. What I felt was stranger than happiness—wilder and less innocent, perhaps.
I looked past him to Agnes on the bench, still pretending not to weep while Hawthorne sat at her feet with his face turned toward the sun. I looked at the roses, and the garden full of beautifully hungry plants. I looked at Nicholas, alive because Agnes had saved him, alive because love in this house had never known when to stop reaching into the grave.
“Yes,” I said at last. “I think I am.”
His expression broke, just slightly.
I rose onto my toes and kissed him again.
His mouth was warm against mine, soft as petals at first, then edged with something rougher, something thorned and wanting. The pulse beneath his ascot answered the one beneath my ribbon, two impossible rhythms keeping time beneath velvet.
Behind us, Agnes made a scandalized sound, but was smiling despite herself.
Hawthorne tilted his head, observant as ever.
I smiled against Nicholas’s mouth before drawing back.
“I think I will be very sad to lose Agnes one day,” I said, his gaze following mine across the garden. “Do you think she would let us put the vine in her?”
Nicholas laughed, the sound deep and rich. “I doubt Agnes will let us come anywhere near her with a vine.”
The humor softened between us, and with it came the old ache. What happened would never be gone entirely, only changed by the shape of what had grown around it.
I slid my hand from his chest to his throat, feeling the faint life of the graft beneath green velvet. “I love you, Nicholas.”
His eyes searched mine, and whatever he found there made his face soften into something very close to peace.
“Never more than I love you,” he said.
The words settled around us like a vow.
