Page 35 of Once Charmed, Twice Cursed
He bites down, cutting himself off, but I know what he was going to say.
Everyone always does.
All at once, the high peaks of my anger give way, unable to withstand the reminder of how much he hates himself.
Or the realization that Weston did all this for me. I think. And for his aunt. And for himself, maybe, in some convoluted way that tucks a seed of hope into my palm and closes my fingers around it.
“Why pretend to be someone else, though?” I say, quieter now. “Why make sure I saw that man on the roadside, before you stole my carriage?”
He looks away. “So the duke wouldn’t know where to look. So even you would think I was a stranger.”
“But why? Who was that man?”
“Just someone with hair like mine. Someone I hired to be seen.”
I make a thick sound in the back of my throat. “But why trickme? The duke…fine, but me? Was it so I wouldn’t turn you in, like you said? So you wouldn’t have to answer to the law?”
“No.” An angry line wrinkles the bridge of his nose. “I don’t care if you tell the police. Go ahead. If they end up hanging me for this, it’ll probably be no more than I deserve.”
All the blood dives out of my cheeks. “No. What? I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I can’t stand the thought of a world without you in it.”
He laughs, sharp and quick and cold. “You’re going to have to, Birdie. We both know I’m on borrowed time. If it’s not the hangman’s noose, it’ll be something else. I’ll probably walk under a window just as someone tosses out something heavy. Or I’ll step on a nail and get tetanus. I’ll eat the wrong sort of mushroom while everyone else at the table lucks out with the edible kind.”
I can’t help myself. I grab his forearm and squeeze. Hard.
He doesn’t flinch, like he would have a few weeks ago. He doesn’t even move. His arm is like corded steel in my grip, his skin hot through the fabric. He watches me so intently that I feel the force of it in my toes.
“That’s so...” I swallow the fresh horror pooling in my throat. “...easily avoidable.”
“No,” he says. “It’s not.”
The fire cracks and snaps, begging for attention, but we both ignore it. In the pause, Weston’s gaze slides downward.For the first time in my life, he traces a path from my eyes to my chin, then downward further still.
He settles on my Mark, which peeps through the neckline of my nightgown. “You want to know why I couldn’t let you know? It had nothing to do with the law. It was so you wouldn’t ask me to touch you again. So I wouldn’t be tempted. Becausethat”—he rests a gloved finger against my chest—“is what saved you tonight. That man had a knife to your throat, and I couldn’t help you, Birdie. I couldn’tdo anything. Not without putting you at risk. But that Mark could. So call it stifling if you want. Hate it if you want, but this is your insurance. And mine. It’s the thing that lets me know you’re protected, anywhere you go, all the time. And if I have to buy that guarantee with an early end, so be it.”
I cease to breathe. So many things are happening inside me at once, Weston’s words crashing over me in waves. All he seems to care about is keeping me safe. The revelation kindles a fragile dream in my heart, even as his bleak outlook breaks it.
He lifts his eyes from my Mark. Anguish flickers there, quickly shuttered away.
“Why do you...” The words tangle on my tongue, so I try again. “Why do you care so much?”
The firelight plays across the hard planes of his face. His hand falls from my triquetra. “You don’t want to hear it. Trust me.”
I press a splayed palm to my chest, as if I can trap the memory of his touch against my skin. The space beneath feels hollow, just waiting to be filled up. “I do, though. I want to hear it more than anything.”
“Why?” An edge of despair slices through the word. “Whybother? I mean, I’ll admit, I thought...that there was something in the way you looked at me, maybe. You’d do it for too long, sometimes. Too often. But I get it now.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” His mouth twists. He yanks at his collar, wrenching his shirt open to bare his triquetra. “You see this and it looks like an opportunity to you. It looks like a way out.Thatwas why you asked me to touch you at the mill.”
The absurdity of that makes me sway on my feet. That’s not it. At all. I mean, his Markdoeslook like a way out, but that’s entirely beside the point. I crave Weston because he’s Weston. Because when I stand in front of him, I’m safe. Because here, under the force of his glare, is where I feel most at home.
“That’s ridiculous,” I say.
Resignation etches grooves beside his mouth. “It’s not.”
“It is. And I want you to say it. Whatever you’re not telling me.”Please, I silently amend.Please let us be talking about what I think we are.
