The Shifter's Embrace
Page 19
It was Celia, though, who cried the most. She didn’t want to leave Jean Luc’s home. The place where she’d fallen in love.
“Celia,” Jean Luc said in exasperation, finally pulling her aside as she helped him close all the storm shutters, “I’m going with you. Don’t be so sad. This place doesn’t matter. Not really.”
She’d nodded and pressed her face to his chest; she’d needed to hear it. “Will we come back here?”
“I don’t know,” he said after a long while. “I feel, sort of, like this was my goodbye to this place. Like I came back here with nothing, but I’m leaving with you. In a way, it makes it feel like you were Claude and Hugo’s final gift to me. I don’t wanna mess that up.”
“You won’t mess it up,” she whispered into the cloth of his shirt.
She could hear the van doors slamming and knew that the rest of the group was very close to being ready to leave.
In an hour or so, the group would begin the drive from Florida to Montana. With an unconscious Arturo strapped in the back seat. Celia just hoped that they wouldn’t get pulled over.
Celia couldn’t even begin to contemplate the next leg of their journey. Not when her mind was still full of the swamps, of this place, of Jean Luc. She wanted to crawl up and lock her legs around his waist, but she was mindful of the injuries he’d healed from only two days ago. He wasn’t a god, she reminded herself. He was a man. Her man.
“No matter what happens…” Celia told Jean Luc.
“I know,” he said right away, a smile softening his face. He stroked a big palm over her silver hair. He wondered what color she’d dye it next. “No matter what happens, I’m your family now.”
“And I’m your family now.” She tugged at his shirt until he bent his head and kissed her.
He pulled back from the kiss and looked at her in amazement. “I just realized,” he told her, sweeping a palm over her back, “the map, the original one, it said that we’d find what we sought. I thought it was all a joke after Arturo attacked us. But maybe that part was right. Maybe I was seeking you this whole time and hadn’t even figured it out yet.”
“You big romantic,” she whispered, emotion in her voice even as her smile teased him.
He rolled his eyes at her and they both laughed as they turned back to the storm shutters and finished nailing them up. Together, side by side, they gently closed the doors on their pasts.
The End
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