The bedroom door swings open, and Henry walks in. He stills when he sees me, studies me for a long moment, but he does not ask me how I am. He locks the door and removes his jacket, tie, and vest.
“I can’t apologize enough for today. I grossly miscalculated and I’m sorry,” he says. He looks genuinely contrite.
“You didn’t know. How could you? I didn’t know,” I say.
He studies me for a long moment before he speaks. “It’s the shock when you realize you cannot quite picture their face perfectly, when you can’t remember the pitch of their laugh, when you see something beautiful and all you want is to run home and tell them all about it, but instead, you’re left to whisper it to the wind.”
I swallow thickly. “We spent our whole lives wanting to leave the city walls. Now she’s gone and I finally left and all I want to do is tell her about the way the stars look over the fort at night.” I don’t know what possessed me to share it. It’s just comforting that he knows what I mean.
He crosses the room and sits down on the window seat beside me. “Holly was an early riser. No matter how early I woke up, she always managed to beat me and she loved to gloat about it. She slipped a note under my door every morning. After the attack, we were stuck in the caves for a while, but when I was finally able to move back into my room after a year, I woke up every morning looking for it. It took me almost two years to stop. I still do it sometimes.” He rubs a hand over the back of his neck. “Waking is the worst. For a few blessed moments, you don’t remember, and then you do and it’s like reliving it. I don’t blame you for seeing her everywhere. This world can be cruel. You were just trying to survive.”
I stare into his dark blue eyes. “I’m so tired and this is such a Divine-damned mess. I think I could lie down and sleep for a year.”
“Is your grief so gentle?” he whispers.
I clench my hands in my robe, afraid and exhilarated that he can see me so clearly.
“No,” I rasp. “It’s not. I am sick with rage. My grief is monstrous.”
He reaches out, tentative at first. When I don’t flinch, he tucks my hair behind my ear and cups my cheek. “What do you need, Harlow?”
I can’t remember the last time someone asked me that and meant it. I’ve been asked so infrequently, I’m unpracticed at even assessing my own needs.
The temptation to let go and fall into this—lose myself, my purpose, my desire for vengeance—is so strong. And all for what? Some good sex and sweet words. Men lie. It’s what they do.
It would be nice to trust him with this—withme—but I’ve never just had fun. I’ve always had to think about consequences.
Maybe I could this one time, as a treat for surviving this day and every other one that came before it.
I kiss my husband. Not to shut him up, or to try to kill him, or even to taunt him. I kiss him because I want to.
Henry tastes like whiskey and cherries and a hint of sugar, and it’s all I want to taste.
He wastes no time. He breaks the kiss for a moment, pulling me to my feet and then down to straddle his lap. Then, he kisses me again more urgently.
His fingers tangle in my hair, and he tilts my head back, and even though I have never kissed anyone else for longer than a second, I know it doesn’t get better than this.
I feel myself plunging into some deep dark water.
I’m afraid of the ways we are alike—Henry and I. It’s terrifying to be understood. He knows what it means to turn a grave into a home—to live inside this hollow like a hermit—to fumble in the dark, but still crawl out the other side of the pit and rise to demand blood for your blood. I’m afraid of the way he understands the empty places in me like halls he’s been haunting for years instead of weeks.
In the deepest, darkest corner of my heart, I have always wanted to be known. But now that he knows me, I want to run.
This is something uncharted. I stopped wanting to be understood so long ago—made myself into a tight bud that only Aidia could coax open.But the more Henry challenges me, the more I feel myself unfurling into something new and more natural.
This will end poorly. I’ll be forced back into the old version of myself, and it will feel like trying to squeeze back into skin I’ve shed.
I can’t forgive myself for the weakness of irrevocably changing.
I know the way Kellan scours the entire city to bring Libby a new book every week, then takes the children out for a full day so she has time to read it. I’ve watched the way Bea and Josie sit behind the counter at the end of the night, heads bent together as they laugh and kiss in the empty pub.
I’ve seen good examples of love, but I’ve never seen a good example of someone loving me.
Not like that. Until now.
For so long, I felt certain I wouldn’t recognize love even if it slapped me across the face. Then, I worried that was the only way I’d recognize it.
But now I see that love is not letting the person you care for be caught with their guard down. Love is someone who helps you put your armor on, who knows how and when to help you take it off.
