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“I’m not afraid of hard,” he told her, his eyes blazing gold once more. “Or hills. But I could not live with it if we do to each other what my parents did. If we even come close.”
Delaney lifted her hands to cover his. “We get to decide. We get to choose. Destiny might have brought us together, Cayetano, but it doesn’t get to decide how we stay together.” Her voice was fierce. Her gaze was steady on his. “We get to choose how we live.”
He made a low sort of noise, like something in him was broken. And then he was kissing her, all the heat and dark glory, all that raw desire.
But today it was so much more.
Today, it was laced through with hope.
“I will make you happy,” he told her, resting his forehead on hers as the setting sun finally made it to the sea. “I will do my best, every day. And I will love you, Delaney. I love you now—I think I loved you at first sight, overalls and all. I promise I will love you with all that I am. And I cannot promise you that it will always look the way you wish it to. I cannot promise you that it will be the way you imagine it. But I do promise you that I will always try. So that somehow, between us, we will achieve something I have long thought was nothing more than the story. A silly little fairy tale.”
“But you and I are made to do impossible things, Cayetano,” Delaney said, and her tears fell freely even as she smiled. So wide she thought she could rival horizons. “You found a lost princess who shouldn’t exist. You took back the throne of Ile d’Montagne after all these years. What’s happy ever after next to that?”
He kissed her again, all that heat, and all of it hers. Then he held her close as if he would never let her go.
She believed, at last, he never would.
“The happy ever after is everything, Delaney,” he told her, the way some men said vows in churches. But this was their church, so high above the island they would rule together one day. This was who they were and who they would become, as long as they had each other. “You will see.”
“Everything,” she agreed, and the word felt like a brand, stamped deep into her skin.
Cayetano held her close as the sun sank below the horizon. As the old day ended so a new day could dawn.
But first, the riot of the stars, inside them and out.
Tonight it felt like they were filled with them.
“Everything,” Cayetano repeated as the rest of their lives began. “And I promise you, my little farm girl, it will be ours.”
And then, together, in the kingdom they cared for and the children they raised, they made it happen.
Until forever seemed like not nearly long enough.
CHAPTER TWELVE
CAYETANOARCIERIWASa man of his word.
They never made it to see Queen Esme that day. Instead, Cayetano took his wife back home, marinated in her, and the following day, set off on a long honeymoon that in no way made up for the first stretch of their marriage.
But he hoped it was a harbinger of the joys to come.
And as months became years, and hope became truth, he liked to think that they’d built the foundation for all that would come in those eight weeks.
Because with such a foundation, anything was possible.
Delaney and Queen Esme met, and while no one would describe them asfast friends, they found a way forward. Eventually, their way forward involved Catherine, too.
And years later, when time began to dull the edges of old memories, he found his way back to his own mother, too. Therese left Ile d’Montagne and married her long-lost lover, and Cayetano could see that truly, they loved each other.
Though even when his mother and he found ways to sit in peace together, speaking of soft and uncomplicated things, he made sure to make it clear that their love was better blooming off the island.
“I am far too old and tired to play games with your throne, Cayetano,” Therese would tell him.
“Good,” he would reply.
And the more time passed, the more they laughed.
But none of it would be possible if there hadn’t first been those two sweet months, just Cayetano and Delaney.
