She shudders. “I sure hope not.”
Probably not the most romantic endeavor to be snowed in with her parents anyway. “Next Thursday through Sunday is relatively free. We can plan for then.”
“ThursdaythroughSunday?” she asks.
I watch her as the red drains from her cheeks. “Well. Yes?” I pocket my phone and touch her soft bottom lip. “I’d like the chance to get to know my parents a little bit. And they’d probably like to know that their other daughter is in good hands, too.”
Morana gulps.
She’s so anxious. Poor thing. Kissing her forehead, I murmur, “Why did you want to see your parents all of a sudden if not to introduce them to your husband?”
“Repentance,” she whispers. “I plan to fall prostrate in the snow and plead forgiveness.”
That is certainly an option. One I’d like to avoid, if possible, but an option for sure.
“How about,” I start slowly, “for right now, we just focus on getting you settled into your new home?”
She looks past me, at our brothers and her sister as box after box comes up the hall to fill a fraction of the space in her new room. My room lies ajar, closer to where we’re standing now, and she turns her attention toward the sliver of cotton candy pretty within.
Gradually, her shoulders loosen, and she rests her cheek against my chest. Letting her eyes close, she squeezes me once, then separates us. “Yeah, okay.” She swallows, breathes. “One thing at a time.”
One thing at a time, we spend the rest of the afternoon bringing boxes in and the rest of the evening unpacking them until one little corner feels and looks like what my wife knows to behome.
Chapter 21
?
Forever beginsnow.
Morana
This room is way too big. Way toonew. Way too…far away from everyone I know who lives here.
Right now, Maelin and Zakery are all cuddled up together. Lukas and Clara, too. Yet I lie here, alone, in solidarity with Viktor and Kaleb—assuming Viktor hasn’t gone to Crisis’s house. He sometimes heads out there and sleeps in her “fish room” because that’s “normal,” I guess.
I’ve given up on trying to figure out what is or isn’t normal to these people.
I roll over, facing the wall toward Kyran’s bedroom, just two doors up.
I guess I’m also lying here in solidarity with him.
My eye twitches.
Imagine springing a marriage on a girl, dragging her home with you, and then leaving her all alone and cold in an unfamiliar bedroom the size of her entire previoushouse. Imagine having thataudacity.
Nose scrunched, I forget about trying to bebetteror moreagreeableor lessannoying, mean,anddifficult. I throw my blankets off, march the mile to my bedroom door, trek up the hall, and invade my husband’s room.
Halting a foot inside his bedroom, I freeze as the black streak of his cat darts off to hide.
Crushing my dumpling bear in his arms, Kyran—beautifully tragic—lies in bed, fairy lights agleam around him. His face rockstoward me, and his ice-blue eyes blink. With ethereal elegance, he unwinds a single arm and drapes it beyond the gauze of his glowing sheer canopy. Palm open, he beckons.
Helpless, I close his door behind me as softly as I can and go to him.
It’s like entering a fantasy world when he welcomes me in to him, fingertips featherlight against my cheek as he sits himself up and makes room for me in his lap. Voice low, he murmurs, “Trouble sleeping?”
I force my attention off his lips, to his eyes. “We’re…husband and wife. We shouldn’t have to sleep alone anymore.”
He smiles for me, and I get stuck with my attention fixed on his mouth again. He says, “I like that plan. It’s not scary here now, but I feel your absence so acutely, it’s still impossible to sleep without you.”
