Page 97 of Tail, Dark and Handsome: Celestial Mates
“Yeah, see, I always thought that marriage was about love or some junk.”
Marigold said nothing.
“Oh my stars, youlovehim, Marigold.”
She still didn’t answer, afraid that her voice would betray everything. She loved her alien fiancé, and she knew with certainty she loved him more than he loved her.
I never should have brought you here.
His choosing her had been necessary and convenient and tolerable, blast it all. He told her as much, which did not take the sting out of being second best to a dead woman.
“Marigold.” Joseph drew out her name, making it sound like an accusation.
“What? I won’t apologize for having feelings or junk about my fiancé.” Inappropriate and inconvenient as those feelings were. She loved Winter enough for the both of them.
“I don’t like this, and I don’t like him.”
Mari knew very well why Joseph didn’t like Winter. Her husband did not make a great first impression. Or second, for that matter.
She needed to wrap up this conversation. “Thanks for calling. I’m sorry I kept this from you but I’m doing this.”
“Even with the wife locked in the attic?”
“I mean, she’s definitely not in the attic.” Unless Winter had a habit of digging up graves.
Why did that thought even pop into her mind? It wasn’t possible. Mari had read the reports. Winter and Rebel left a diner party together. Approximately one hour later, a distress signal was sent from the vehicle. Winter had been trapped in the vehicle, his legs broken, but Rebel had vanished. While her body took six months to recover, it was concluded that she left the vehicle to seek help, got lost during the storm or ran afoul a mornclaw, who were most active after storms. It was a horrible accident.
Those were the facts. Everyone agreed.
“Mari, seriously, are you happy?” Joseph asked. Despite the light-years and star systems between them, she felt his unquestioning support and devotion.
“Yes,” she said with honesty. She didn’t know how to make her brother understand that she felt alive with Winter in a way she never had before, like she had been sleeping her entire life. “Very much, like you don’t even know.”
She barely knew herself.
They traded goodbyes, and she ended the call, feeling calmer and more centered. Things weren’t perfect, but that was okay because what she felt was more real than anything she had ever encountered before.
She stopped at a bakery for hot tea and a bag of sweet cream buns for a snack and arrived just as school let out.
“I asked Clarity out to the Harvest Festival,” Zero announced, flinging his bag into the back of the vehicle. He immediately dug into the bakery bag, shoving an entire bun in his mouth. Speaking around a full mouth, he said, “She said yes. I have no idea what to do now.”
Winter
Zero messaged that he had a late practice with the team and that he had already eaten. Winter could only assume that Marigold would have done the same, so he took his meal to his workshop, pretending to work and not, in fact, sulking at having to eat alone. When he and Zero were by themselves on the ship, they ate every meal together. Those shared moments were a touchstone for him.
Reluctantly, he admitted that he had also grown accustomed to sharing the evening meal with Marigold. She was his mate, after all, and it was not so outrageous to enjoy spending time with one’s mate. He enjoyed listening to the good-natured banter between her and Zero. She brought something out in his kit, an ease with people that Winter lacked.
She gave so much of herself, just with her presence alone, a lightness that lifted his innate gloom. Perhaps that wasn’t the correct word, but Winter knew he came off as intense with others, often alarmingly so. He felt lighter with Marigold, like she helped carry his burdens, and that made it easier to laugh and allow himself to feel something. He did not want to tempt fate and call it happiness, but the sensation came close, too close to chance.
He picked at the meal Brae prepared, tasting nothing, then poked at projects but did nothing other than move shiftlessly about the workshop. He treated Marigold unkindly. Chase made his barbed comments, got his chunk of flesh from Winter who, in turn, twisted his frustration onto his mate. It was poorly done on his part.
He needed to apologize but felt unsure how. It was not as if he could not apologize, or that he had never apologized to Marigold, far from it, but he needed to get the words correct.
Winter could count the times on one hand when his father apologized to him. The last had been when Winter lay broken in a hospital bed. Thankful apologized for forcing his son into a marriage he did not want and manipulating both Rebel and Winter into believing that a divorce would be impossible or the scandal too ruinous.
Winter accepted only the latter half of that apology.
He refused to believe that his marriage with Rebel was a mistake. It gave him Zero. Winter did not know he could love another being with such unquestioning devotion until he held his tiny kit in his arms, and he regretted nothing that brought him to that moment.
