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In the past, I’d always trusted Gabriel to find the right path, to steer the rest of us right. Now, for the first time in my life, I found myself wanting to shake him. But Rose was stepping out of the ring the other guys had formed around her, glancing toward us. So I settled for saying, “Don’t you think deciding that should be up to her?”
“Is everything okay?” Rose asked. Again, her gaze lingered a little longer on Gabriel.
“Nothing to worry about, Sprout,” he said in that easy tone that right now rubbed me completely the wrong way. “No more than you already know about, at least. Which of us do you think should head back to the manor first?”
She’d been looking for something in him that she hadn’t gotten. Disappointment flickered across her face. It made my gut clench. And I found myself saying, without having planned to, “You should go on ahead. There’s something I want to show Rose.”
“Oh, really?” Jin said, with a raise of his eyebrows.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Not like that.” I turned to Rose. “If you don’t mind…? I think it should be for your eyes only at this point.”
Everyone was looking at me curiously now. Rose slipped her fingers around my hand. “All right.”
My truck was parked over by my dad’s hardware store. Rose didn’t speak as we headed over, but she kept her hand wrapped around mine. “Is this okay?” I said, squeezing her fingers. “If someone sees…”
“They won’t,” she said, sounding a little sad. “They won’t see me at all. I’m a figment of your imagination right now.” Her lips quirked upward, but even that smile looked bittersweet.
So I guessed to anyone watching, our drive out to the house was no different from all my earlier ones: just me in the truck with some equipment as if headed out to a job. As we got closer, my heart started to sink.
What if I’d gone too far? What if this putmorepressure on Rose instead of taking some off her? It had seemed like a good idea at the time… I’d loved working on the place more than any actual job I’d taken on. But I wasn’t all that sure of my instincts these days, not when it came to all things witching.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” Rose asked lightly, peering out the windshield and the side window.
“You’ll see,” I said.
Her expression turned more serious as she watched the fields fly by. “Seth,” she said, “what would you be doing right now if I hadn’t come back? What did you want to be doing, in a perfect world?”
“I don’t think it could be perfect without you in it,” I said a little teasingly, and she shot me a look. Lord, how to answer that. I tipped my head, considering.
“I don’t know. More than just doing repairs and building sheds or what have you with my dad, that’s for sure.”
“What kind of more?”
“Well, I guess…” A twinge rippled through my chest. Maybe this wasn’t that hard a question after all. “I’ve always wanted to give something back to the town. To feel like I’m helping builditup, not just little pieces of people’s private property. Sometimes I’ve thought about donating time and supplies to fix up that old playground in Westfield Park. Things like that.”
“That’s lovely,” Rose said. “Youshoulddo that. What we have… it doesn’t have to stop you. You know that, right?”
“Of course,” I said. The truth was, I wasn’t even sure why I hadn’t done more than think about it yet. I’d had this idea that I needed to establish myself in the business more, prove myself in my own right as more than just “that handy son of Mr. Lennox’s,” but I knew what I was doing already. My most recent project had proven that.
The farmhouse loomed in the distance, the For Sale sign gone, the yard neatly trimmed. I’d ended up having to rebuild the porch pretty much from scratch, but now it was completely solid. I’d painted the boards a soft yellow that looked the way that rush of magic I’d felt when I’d sworn myself as Rose’s consort had felt to me. The glass in all the broken windows had been replaced. The rest of the exterior needed painting, and the roof could use some new shingles, but it didn’t look like a wreck anymore, at least.
Rose’s expression turned more puzzled when I pulled up the drive and parked by the garage. “Are we coming to meet someone? What’s this about, Seth?”
I got out and came around to the passenger side to offer her a hand out. “I want you to meet this house,” I said. “My first contribution to building something real.”
I fished the key out of my pocket as we walked up to the front door. Everything—the savings account I’d nearly drained, the hours of work squeezed in around my regular jobs, the aches and the splinters—was worth it for the awe that lit her face as we stepped inside.
I’d nearly finished the interior. Every wall had been repainted: the same soft yellow here, a baby blue there, ivory in the hall. With the windows unboarded, sunlight spilled all through the wide doorways of the first-floor rooms. The hardwood floors were a little scratched up but gleaming with a fresh layer of polish. Now that I’d aired the place out, it smelled of the late spring wildflowers blooming in the field out back.
“There are five bedrooms upstairs and another in the attic,” I said. “One for each of us, and you if you ever stay over.”
“One for each of—” Rose spun to face me. “You and the other guys. You’re going tolivehere?”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “I haven’t exactly talked to them about it yet. But that was the general idea when I bought the place. I thought, with it being so close to the estate, it’d make it a lot easier for slipping in and out without anyone in or around town noticing… One step closer to actually living together, until we can do that. Because I know someday we’ll figure out a way.”
Rose was outright glowing now. She grasped the front of my shirt and pulled me into a kiss. As I kissed her back, relief and a stirring hunger rising through me, her fingers teased up the back of my neck into my hair. Suddenly that hunger was everything.
“Seth,” she murmured. “It’s beautiful. It’s the best thing I’ve ever seen. Thank you.” She blinked hard, as if trying not to cry.
