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“You can’t mean that,” he pleaded. “This isus, Hannah.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” she said quietly, “but it’s clear the only part of us that matters to you isyou.”
The next day he was gone.
He’d taken his clothes, his leather, but not his bike. She assumed he’d given some explanation to his parents but none to the twins, or Cass, or anyone else. She couldn’t believe he’d actually fucking left. He hadn’t waited for her, hadn’t loved her enough or known her enough to just wait until she could get up the courage to leave with him.
He’d called her a coward, and he’d been right, and she hated him for it.
And she wasn’t sure she’d ever stop hating him, and that destroyed everything she knew about herself, her life, her past, and her future.
Chapter 20
Hannah
Hannah had, uncharacteristically, taken to her bed for a full forty-eight hours after the wedding, her legs aching and her brain empty. Delilah was off on her honeymoon, the governor was happy, and every one of their guests had checked out. She was going to sleep until her adrenaline levels normalized.
In the late morning of the third day, her phone chirped. She ignored it. It could wait.
Her room phone rang, a number no one had. She reached over for it without raising her head.
“What.”
“Come on a picnic with me,” her husband’s voice said. Her whole body shivered at the sound.
“I’m the most tired I’ve ever been, Blue,” she mumbled into the receiver. “I’m not going outside.”
“But it’s beautiful out and we need to celebrate and I’m testing the guest baskets,” he said. “Bring your helmet.”
“I thought you gave Laurence back his motorcycle?” she asked.
“I did, but did you know my dad has been keeping mine in perfect condition the whole time I was gone? That guy loves me.” He sounded very smug, although if Mr. Matthews was her dad, she would be smug about it, too.
Why did he assume she still had her helmet? She did, of course. They’d gotten into way too much fun trouble on that bike for her to get rid of it, even if she’d shoved it in the back of her closet with all her other Blue detritus. She pulled it out and hugged it to her.
For the first time in years, she climbed on the back of his bike, wrapped her arms around his waist, and let the wind whip past her as he drove them out into the woods. Her lungs felt more filled with air, her nerves more alive, than they had in all that time—and her skin, pressed to his, more on fire than she thought she could survive.
Itwasbeautiful outside. There was a riot of birds, a cacophony of small forest rodents, and a waterfall of sunshine. Levi had laid out a blanket with a picnic lunch—sous vide egg bites, pasta salad, quick pickles, salted maple hand pies. The food baskets were part of the new Carrigan’s All Year branding: Come visit spring through autumn, get a hand-packed basket to take on a rented bicycle or ATV out into the one hundred sixty acres of the farmland, and picnic among the Christmas trees.
They sat under the almost-summer sun (absolutely drenched in mosquito spray) and she reached out instinctively for his hand to weave their fingers together. Levi had his head in her lap, and the sun caught in his eyelashes. He was dappled in light and quintessentially Blue. His hair was death-defying, his eyeliner smudged, and his shirt readAbortion Is Health Care. His jean shorts were cut off and fraying, and he was wearing a silk robe like a vest that he must have stolen from Cass years ago.
He was a forest fae, for a moment angry at no one. His face at rest, when he was not defensive or snarling, was so beautiful it was difficult to process, all slashing eyebrows and cutting jawline and eyes like fog. She was mesmerized by him, which would have annoyed her, but he was looking at her like she was magnetic and also edible, so she didn’t mind very much.
The boy she’d loved all her life had been reckless, caring more about protecting his tender heart than about how his spinning out hurt the hearts of those around him. He had been all sharp edges and whip fast lashing out. Now he’d come back, grown up in a way she never would have believed, cautious and thoughtful, ready to atone for how his behavior affected everyone around him. She would never have dreamed this version of an adult Levi could exist.
She still didn’t have a fucking clue what they were going to do, now that their fifth date had arrived. He hadn’t proven to her that they could have a life together, and she hadn’t proven to him they couldn’t, so their dare was at a standstill. Their future was shrouded, and it might still destroy her, but in this moment, in this sunshine, he was hers.
“I love you,” she told him, because she could. He opened his eyes and smiled so big she thought his face would split. “I also know you brought me out here on this picnic because you want to talk about something.”
He sat up, tucking his long legs under his chin and hugging his knees. Her fingers missed his. “You know that the show finale is about to air,” he began slowly.
She nodded. “Yes. Tomorrow. Your dad has invited everyone in Advent over to watch it in the barn.” She had been very pointedly ignoring thinking about what happened after that.
“I’m going to come in second, very fairly, because the winner cooks absolute circles around me in the last challenge.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, but he waved her off.
“I’m not. If I’d won, I would have been contractually obligated to be in Australia for a lot longer, and I wouldn’t be here now.” He smiled at her, his real Blue grin. “Here is much better.”
