Page 60 of The Girl Who Fell Through Time
“I… I do know,” Selene tells him. “I’m just… adjusting to feeling it.”
Dorian leans back in his chair. “You know, I’ve always wondered what you girls did in the classes we took separately…”
“You were not missing much, I assure you.” She waits for a moment. “What did you boys do, in your classes?”
Dorian makes a move on the board. “Fencing,” he begins. “Alotof politics and history. Philosophy, public speaking and debating—”
“I bet you were excellent at that.”
Dorian scowls at her, but there’s a smile in the corner of his mouth. “Etiquette, chivalry and honour—”
“Now, that I imagine youdidexcel in.”
Dorian smiles properly this time. “Some military training, fencing—”
“You said that twice.”
“Did I?”
They smile together. Dorian’s grin lets up first.
“You don’t have to hide yourself,” he reminds her. “You don’t have to cower or dim your light to make others feel better. You never have to be anything other than yourself.”
Selene isn’t entirely sure she knows herself well enough not to hide, but she thinks she’d like to find out. “And you?”
“Oh, I don’t really have much of a light to dim.”
“That’s not exactly what I meant…”
“No?”
“You’re… you’re hiding too.”
Dorian looks away. “Everyone’s hiding something, Selene. Don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m different.”
Selene has already made that mistake, but she isn’t sure it’s the wrong one. She wants to tell him that they don’t have to keep secrets, but how can she? She can’t tell him what’s happened to her. He’ll think she’s a lunatic. She is, however, sure that something happened to him.
“Something happened to you, didn’t it?” she begins. “Something happened after your father’s death, when you disappeared from society—”
“Selene—”
“You can tell me, I promise I won’t judge—”
“It’s not your judgement I fear.”
“Then—”
“Selene!” he raises his voice, standing upright. Selene freezes in her chair, shrinking backwards, bracing herself for his anger. But he doesn’t strike her—of course he doesn’t—and he doesn’t yell.
Instead, he does something infinitely more surprising. He crashes down on his knees and throws himself in her lap.
Selene doesn’t know what to do, at first. She has no idea where this has come from. But she knows she likes the feeling of him against her, and much prefers being hugged to being yelled at. Slowly, her arms drift around his back, her fingers carding through his ponytail. Dorian murmurs slightly under her touch.
A year of marriage, and she’d never done anything like this with the Duke. She’d tried hugging him a few times outside of the bedroom, but he never returned it… so eventually she stopped trying.
Never once had he ever sought a hug from her, or comfort outside of the marriage bed.
“Can we make a promise?” she whispers.
