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I’d never felt so alive.
“I love you,” I rasped once I’d caught enough of my breath to speak. They were the only words my brain could conjure up or string together, and that suited me just fine. “God, Felicity, I love you so much.”
“I love you, too,” she whispered back to me. I glanced down at her and found her face aglow with the light of her smile.
I grinned back at her, thinking of the second gift I had waiting for her. It was there in the pocket of my jeans still, abandoned in the middle of the room.
If all it had taken to prompt this kind of delight from her was a piece of paper, I couldn’t wait to see how she’d react to a ring.
Chapter30
Felicity
Over the next two weeks, we continued to fortify, readying ourselves for attack.
On the best days, the threat of war was a distant and evasive thing, like a weird, faint smell you only noticed when you opened the fridge, then forgot once the door was closed. Other days, the frenzy of preparation and worry consumed every hour, and all I could do was take the boys into their nursery to draw them away from it all. Sometimes, with Nana or Gena, or with Macy and baby Nora. Sometimes alone.
On those days, I rocked them in the chair Xander had built for us. I sang them every song I knew: “American Pie” and “Jungleland” and even “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”—at least, until Xander overhead me and mentioned that it might be a little too on the nose. I stared down at their little faces, mapping every feature, every expression, imagining what they might look like when they were older, when all the bad was behind us and there were only clear skies up ahead. Memorizing them so I would never forget.
It was a balmy day near the end of September, and the gravel drive at the front of the lodge was full of vehicles. There was a buzz of activity at the lodge, inside and out.
In the kitchens, Gena and Nadia were under Nana Jordan’s wing, prepping supper for a small army while Connell and Kingston hovered around in hopes of flirtatious smiles and treats. In the backyard, Dylan and Denny tested out their new dart guns, shooting blanks at straw dummies sewn into the shapes of wolves.
I sat with Xander on the back deck, watching the darts fly. Rylan and Ryder were in their bouncers by our feet. Xander’s toe rocked Rylan while I rocked Ryder.
“I wish this could last forever,” I whispered, shifting to lay my head in his lap. The sun was already sinking in the sky. It had been setting earlier and earlier lately. Soon, we’d be starved for daylight. “We won’t get many more days like this.”
“Yeah. Autumn’s here.” Xander took a deep breath and released it. “I can smell it in the air.”
“I’ll miss the summer,” I admitted. “But I mean… these peaceful days. Days where we can do this without worrying about being attacked or ambushed. Days where we can just enjoy being a family again.”
“Yeah, s’pose that’s true as well.” Xander snorted and stroked my hair. “It’s almost funny, you know.”
“What is?”
“I spent so long trying to prevent it,” he explained. “We both did. We tried diplomacy, we tried reason, we tried ignoring it all and waiting for better days to come.” He sighed. “But it takes a lot of people to stop a war. Only takes one person to start one.”
His face twisted with concern. It was a look I’d grown accustomed to lately. Whenever I glanced at him, there was always a good chance I’d catch that same hard line in his lips, that same furrow in his brow.
“At least you know it’s not your fault,” I said.
“Maybe. Maybe not.” He gazed off thoughtfully toward the tree line. “I play it back in my head sometimes, you know. There are so many moments where, if I’d done just one thing differently, it could have changed everything. If we’d come back to Evergreen sooner, or if we’d never gone to Portersmith in the first place. If I’d put Quincy down when he showed up at Macy’s mating ceremony. If I’d just sat and talked to Ma instead of pushing her away.”
“If you’d never asked me to be your fake girlfriend?” I kept my tone light and teasing. We’d been over this before.
“I should’ve asked you to be my real girlfriend,” he scoffed. “Should’ve asked you that eighteen years ago, the day we first met.”
“You didn’t know me back then,” I reminded him.
“I didn’t need to. I was a sixteen-year-old boy.” Like a blessing, his lips shifted into a smile as he turned his gaze back down on me. With the tip of his finger, he tapped the tip of my nose. “And you were hot. That’s all I needed to know.”
“I wasn’t hot.” I smiled despite the way his words made my eyes roll. “Not back then.”
“You were,” he insisted. “Still are. You always will be.”
Somewhere between Xander’s certainty and my unwillingness to challenge him about it again, silence settled between us. Xander stroked my hair idly, and I closed my eyes, relishing his touch. It was a more comfortable silence than those we’d shared after the boys were taken. There was a relaxation in it, an acceptance woven from understanding and love.
I knew Xander’s inability to change the past often weighed heavy on him. Sometimes, I wondered if that was how all leaders felt.
