Page 90 of A Star is Scorned
He nodded and met her gaze, her eyes searching his for something. What, he didn’t know. “You were right when you said I’d built myself a pleasure palace, determined not to let anything unpleasant or messy into my life.”
She broke away from him and buried her face in her hands. “No, I wasn’t. I’m sorry. I should never have said those things. It was cruel and uncalled for. It was you who was right. This whole time, Judy’s been yearning for me to stop holding on so tight, to be her sister, not her mother.”
He approached Livvy once more and wrapped his hands around her waist. She tensed at the feel of it, but as he lay his head on her shoulder, she sighed gently and relaxed back in to him. “So,we were both right then. Maybe we weren’t the nicest in how we told each other. But we weren’t wrong.”
She nodded and slid her hand back down to his, pulling him along to continue their walk.
He took a breath. “Until I met you, Livvy, I was still a scared little boy. Rebelling against my father, missing my mother. Wanting to live a life with no stakes, so that no one could ever hurt me. But you taught me that’s not possible. You fenced your way into my heart when I wasn’t looking—and you’re the one who got hurt. All I did in agreeing to marry Rhonda was try to balance the scales. To take on some of that weight you’ve carried alone for so long.”
She shot him a pained look of surprise, and he worried he’d somehow said the wrong thing. They had come to the pool area now. The tile around the edges was chipped and the water was murky, a sickening green color. But the area was peaceful and quiet, surrounded by a ring of palm trees that stood silent sentry over the watery playground.
He opened the wrought-iron gate and pulled her through with him, taking her in his arms. She made a littleoomphsound as he caught her and held her close, kissing the top of her head.
“Flynn, you don’t have to—”
“Hush.” He reached up and tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “None of this is because I have to. It’s because I want to. You taught me there’s joy in responsibility, in taking on the burdens of others.”
She pressed her face into his chest, and he squeezed her tightly. He could feel his shirt turning damp from her tears. He realized he was still wearing his tux and felt utterly ridiculous. But Livvy didn’t seem to mind as she practically blew her nose into the ruffles of his crisp white shirt.
It should have been disgusting, but he found it adorable. God, he really was gone for her.
He rubbed her back and let her finish crying. When she had, Livvy leaned back and looked up at him. “And you taught me that I don’t always have to take on that burden. That I should share it with others. That I should allow myself a full life, with joy and sorrow. Whatever comes. That taking on the weight of the world for the ones I love is not living, it’s burying myself alive.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “It seems we’ve both learned valuable lessons from each other. Well, and my mother turned up to knock some sense into me.”
The mention of his mother made her suddenly seem to remember herself, and she broke away. “We have learned a lot from each other.” She nervously smoothed the twill of her skirt. “And I want you to know that I don’t expect more from you than that.” She turned away and studied the pool, its water rippling in the winter wind. “Whatever Judy was trying to set up here, I didn’t… I don’t expect—”
He came around in front of her and set his hands on her shoulders, looking her hard in the face. Enough of this hinting at it, of this cataloging the ways she’d made his life better.
“Livvy, are you telling me you don’t love me?” He stared at her, refusing to break away. “That you did everything today out of some sense of duty?”
She bit her lip. “All I knew was you couldn’t marry her. Not for my sake. I—”
“You swashbuckled for me.” He smiled at that, remembering the glorious sight of her swinging down from that pulpit to the ground while he attempted to free himself from the morass of Rhonda’s skirts. He hadn’t known then it was Livvy. But he had thought to himself that the nun, whoever she was, was quite spectacular.
She looked down, a shy smile on her face. “I hadn’t intended to.”
He gently nudged her chin up to look at him. “But you did. And it was the most impressive thing I’ve ever witnessed.” Her eyebrows went up in disbelief. “So, I ask you again, Olivia Blount, do you love me or not?”
She nodded, one timid little tilt of her head, as if she were scared to admit it. It was all he needed, and he pressed his face to hers, kissing her more forcefully than he ever had. He broke away and pressed his cheek to hers.
“That’s good. Because I love you Olivia Blount, Liv de Lesseps, my Livvy. Whatever you choose for me to call you, I love you.” He pulled back so he could look at her. “I think I’ve loved you from the moment you pretended to have no idea who I was. Certainly since I watched you eat an enchilada like you’d discovered nirvana. When I realized that it was you swinging from that pulpit like a Valkyrie ready to ride into Valhalla, I knew any future without you would be a half-life.”
Livvy’s eyes were watery with tears. She reached out and drew his head down to her mouth, pressing a gentle kiss to the corner of his lips before offering a fuller embrace. He returned her kiss, pulling her more tightly to him, and she knit her hands together behind his neck to run her fingers through his hair. She bit his lip and tugged at it, and he groaned with pleasure.
“I love you, Flynn,” she murmured as she dotted his face with kisses. “You are so much more than what I’d dreamed you’d be.”
“You’re everything I’d told myself I couldn’t want, yet somehow better. I want to dedicate my life to your happiness, Livvy. Because without you, without your joy, there is no purpose to my own.”
She gently undid the white bow tie that was somehow stillpristine around his neck and used the edges of it to pull his face back to hers. After another kiss, she pressed her forehead to his and whispered, “You are my favorite rogue, for as long as you want me.”
“I think I can safely say that’s forever. But there’s something I have to do first.” He pulled his notorious little black book out of his inner breast pocket.
“You brought that with you to your wedding?” Livvy eyed him skeptically.
“It comforted me in my hour of need.” She rolled her eyes. “Besides, I thought maybe if I pulled it out when the priest asked for objections, Rhonda would change her mind.” He produced a small pencil from the same coat pocket, licked his finger, and flipped to a blank page.Olivia Blount,he wrote, as she watched him. Then, he tore the page from the book, folded it in half, and tucked it back in the pocket right above his heart.
“That should be the only page I need from this from now on.” He looked around for a rubbish bin and not finding one, he chucked the book into the moldering pool. She gasped, her mouth forming a perfectO, and he laughed.
