Page 132 of The Confidant
He smiled. “You really do.”
He gave me a quick kiss goodbye. Then after opening the door and poking his head out to see if the coast was clear, he slipped into the hall and disappeared around the corner.
I closed my door again and pressed my back against it. I thought about everything coming up and everything that had happened last night.
I wanted last night to be thefirsttime I fell asleep in Hunter’s arms and not thelast.
Living with just memories of kissing him goodnight and being held in his arms wouldn’t be enough. Not when I actually wanted a lifetime of those moments with him.
A lifetime of smiles and kisses and laughs and long, late-night talks and inside jokes.
I wanted decades and not just days of building memories with my best friend.
Any sort of heaven wouldn’t be worth having if Hunter wasn’t there with me.
And if he didn’t want to be there with me, then I didn’t want to be there, either. I wanted to be wherever he was.
A life and eternity without Hunter would be its own kind of hell.
Surely God would forgive me for not being able to be the chosen vessel. Other people had found forgiveness and healing after disobeying God’s commandments. That was what God’s grace was for anyway, right? The space given to us to be human.
I just wasn’t strong enough to follow this commandment right now. It had long been said that the Lord’s work couldn’t be stopped. That he would always find a path forward.
It would just need to be a path that didn’t involve me.
Xander was the one who carried the bloodline of Samuel Williams, anyway. Not me. I was only the vessel for it. Surely he could find someone else. Someone who could actually love him like he deserved to be loved.
He was a good guy. Sweet, good-looking, and abillionaire.
It shouldn’t be too difficult to find another girl who was up to the task of raising the Chosen One with him.
I sighed, feeling the pressure in my chest relax for the first time since my dad had pulled me into his office. I knew what I was going to do.
I was going to tell my dad that I couldn’t go through with the ceremony.
And if he or the High Priest had a problem with it, I might just need to run away with Hunter and hide until they could cool off.
Because for once, I was going to put myself first instead of God.
Yes, I was choosing Hunter.
But I was also choosingme.
45
SCARLETT
I talkedto my dad on Saturday night after spending the day with Hunter and his parents. He was disappointed and sad that I wouldn’t be fulfilling my part of the revelation, but he admitted that he was also a little relieved because he hadn’t felt completely right about asking that of me, either.
“I’ll let the High Priest know about the change of plans,” he said, pulling me into a hug when our conversation was over. “The Lord will just have to provide another way.”
“Thank you for understanding,” I said, feeling relieved and so much better. Like I actually had a future I could look forward to again.
I spent the next several days catching up on assignments I’d been too depressed to do the week before and playing a lot of board games with my dad and Megan.
Hunter texted me a bunch of photos of him hanging out on the beach, and I sent him a few, much less exciting photos of me reading books or trying out the chai latte from the coffee shop down the street that he promised had the best house-brewed chai lattes I could ever have.
Even though it was a bit spicy the first few sips, by the end of my first cup, I had a feeling I’d be visiting this coffee shop a lot more when I went to Columbia next year.
