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She slapped her hand over her mouth, but it didn’t hide the loud burst of laughter.
“You know it’s true.”
“I suppose.” She sighed, dropping her hand into her lap. “I’m happy with the life I’ve built for me and Sage. Her disappointment doesn’t change that. But it still makes me question, I guess. Because it’s not like there aren’t still things I want. Things I … yearn for.”
I wanted to ask her what that yearning was like. What was on the other side of such a powerful word.
Where could I apply that word in my own life? Yearning tugged on a string wrapped tight under your ribs, hooked directly onto your heart. Something you couldn’t quite reach on your own, something you wanted so desperately that you felt it deeper than your blood. It was the kind of want settled in the marrow of your bones, painful to extract and intrinsic to who you were.
I didn’t ask that, though.
That was the wrong step, and I knew it. So I asked something else instead.
“Makes you question what?”
Her smile was sad. “Everything.”
“That why you came over here? Because they’re making you feel like shit about what you want from life?”
Her eyes were unwavering. Searching, searching, searching for something.
What was she looking for?
“No.” Her chest rose and fell on a deep breath. “I came because you’re always the person I want to be around when life feels unsteady.”
There was no way for her to know what that did to me, or how the responsibility of that was the easiest weight I’d ever carried in my life. I’d shoulder it with ease, no matter what else I had to juggle in the meantime. My heart expanded dangerously behind my ribs, and I ignored it, because I wanted to give her all my attention, all my focus.
There was only one reason her happiness would matter this much to me. Why I’d face down everything that came her way.
Not because I was the prince or the knight in her story—but because I was the dragon wrapping itself around the thing it loved most. Breathing fire and providing armor and ripping down every stronghold with the snap of jaws and fueled by the fierce way she’d embedded herself into me.
“That okay?” she whispered.
With my gaze fixed on hers, my thoughts racing a million miles a minute, all I could manage was a nod, and even though a blaring warning siren went off in the back of my head, I slid my hand over the top of where hers sat on the table. My fingers curled around Harlow’s, her pinky edging around mine. We both stared down at where they tangled.
My heart raced from that single touch, and I couldn’t find it in me to drop the big, black wall back down into place.
When I finally dragged my gaze away from our hands, she was smiling. A secret, pleased little smile too.
“What?” I asked.
“Holding hands,” she said quietly, plucking hers out from underneath mine so she could study my fingers with a shrewd look. “I just had an idea. Do you have to work tomorrow night?”
With a slight shake of my head, I watched as she eased herself off the table, swiping at the sawdust on the back of her leggings. “Free as a bird.”
“We’re taking Sage somewhere fun after school. It’s exactly what we need right now.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Care to elaborate where that is?”
“Nope. I get a great thrill from that look of apprehension on your face.”
I sighed slowly through my nose. Her eyes gleamed, and fuck if I didn’t feel them like a slice to my skin.
“You’ll love it,” she promised.
Chapter 22
Ian
