by J. R. Ward
And naturally, it had been all about Sophy bringing her new boyfriend home to “meet” the family. Evidently, her sister had chosen that meal to tell the ’rents that there had been a little switcheroo on the dating landscape—and she had even maintained that it was important for Novo to be there so that everyone could feel good about the way things had ended up.
Novo had gone home and not been able to eat for three nights.
Sophy, on the other hand, had basked in a glow of I-win-the-game for weeks afterward.
“I mean, it was your decision,” he said. “I wouldn’t have stopped you. We weren’t ready to have a young at that point.”
“Yeah, ’cuz you were fucking my sister. Details, details.”
He winced at that. “I’m sorry.” He scrubbed his face. “I just…I didn’t know what to do.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to suggest that, once again, probably not fucking her sister was a good place to start. But then she stared at his face again. First loves were by definition passion with training wheels on. Sometimes you lucked out and the future was long and full of self-discovery on both sides that only brought you closer together. But more often than not, you had too much to learn about yourself.
He had been her first. On all the levels that counted.
But compared to a certain blond aristocrat? Who was a wiseass and gave zero fucks about almost everything?
There was no comparison, actually.
And come to think about it, the fact that Sophy had stepped in and interrupted the natural devolution of things really was a neither-here-nor-there. The true tragedy hadn’t been about losing Oskar. It had been more about the young and the betrayal by her own bloodline.
“I’m okay,” she blurted. “It’s all okay.”
Which was a shocking truth.
“I’m glad,” he replied.
“I didn’t say those words for you.” She touched over her own heart. “I said them for me. I am…okay.”
At least about losing him. The young? Well, that was a different story—and none of his goddamn business. If the male had known she was pregnant and left anyway? He didn’t deserve her secrets.
Truth, like trust, had to be earned.
Oskar cleared his throat and ran his fingernails over his beard like the stuff itched. Then he took off his heavy black-rimmed glasses. Placing them on the table, he rubbed his eyes like they hurt.
As the silence stretched out, Novo shook her head. “You’ve decided you’re making a huge mistake mating Sophy and you don’t know what to do.”
He let his hands flop down to the table. “She’s driving me insane.”
“I can’t help you with that. Sorry.”
“She’s…totally demanding. I mean, I never actually asked her to mate me. She took me to this jewelry store, and the next thing I know, she’s trying on rings—and I’m buying the one she wanted. It’s this diamond. With a halo, or something around it. Whatever that is.” Oskar resumed the rubbing of the stubble, like he was trying to erase his life by scrubbing off what Sophy had no doubt made him grow. “She got us this apartment. I can’t afford it. She says she can’t work because of the ceremony—wedding, I mean. There’s crap everywhere—party favors, napkin rolls, centerpieces. She starts one thing, stops, yells at me, tries to get her girlfriends to step in. It’s a nightmare, but what’s worse—”
Novo put her hand up. “Stop. Just…stop.”
As he looked at her, she slid out of the booth with her duffel. “This is none of my concern. And really, it’s not cool for you to ask me to come here just so you can bitch about my sister. Mate her or don’t. Work on the relationship or not. This is your shit to deal with, not mine.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I just don’t know what else to do.”
In that moment, the essential weakness of him was so obvious, she wondered how in the hell she had ever found him attractive. And she knew exactly what was going to happen. He was going to walk down that aisle, or whatever the humans called it, and he was going to mate Sophy, and they were going to squeeze out a kid, maybe two. And after that, he would spend his entire life wondering how it had come to pass that he had ended up with a shellan he couldn’t stand, kids he didn’t like, and a house he couldn’t afford. It would be a mystery that would never be solved, even as he walked into his grave on a path he had set himself upon.
“You know, Oskar, no one’s got a gun to your head.”
“What?”
“You’re choosing this. You’re picking all of this—and that means if it doesn’t feel right, you don’t have to do it.” She shook her head at him. “But that’s on you. All of this…it’s on you.”
“Don’t hate me. Please.”
“You know…I don’t. I don’t hate you at all…I feel sorry for you.” She gave him a nod. “Good-bye, Oskar. And good luck. I really do mean that.”
As she was walking out of the pub, the bartender called out, “Come back and see us sometime.”
Over her shoulder, she said, “Thanks. He’ll definitely be back, I’ll tell you that much.”
—
Peyton was out of the shower and getting into a monogrammed robe when his phone rang. As he answered, he didn’t bother to see who it was because he was paranoid that Novo might be canceling.
“Yeah?”
“Peyton?”
As he recognized the female voice, he closed his eyes for a moment. Then he went over and sat on the edge of the tub. “Romina. Wassup?”
There was a pause. “Listen, I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but our fathers are making an appointment at the Audience House. To see the King.”
He popped right back onto his feet. “What? Why?”
“I think a payment has been set and things are…progressing.”
“No. Absolutely not.” As it dawned on him that that was a colossal insult, he quickly said, “Listen, it’s not about you—”
“Of course it is. And I don’t blame you.”
“No, I’m…” In love with somebody else. “I’m seeing someone.”
It felt strange and wonderful to say that. And also like he was tempting fate. He’d had the sense that things were really thawing with Novo over the last couple of nights, but he wasn’t a fool. She was still on a hair trigger for trust, and come on. They hadn’t been together that long.
They weren’t even technically together.
“I’m happy for you,” Romina said. “And in which case, we really have to do something to stop this.”
“They can’t force us to consent.”
“If your father accepts the payment, mine will expect you to follow through.”
He frowned. “I’m sorry—what?”
“Your father established a price, and if what I understand is true, my father has agreed to pay it. So if the money changes hands, the deed is done. It is the Old Way.”
So he was being sold? Like a head of cattle?
Dragging a hand through his wet hair, he was so stunned, he couldn’t think. “Fucking hell, now I know how females feel,” he muttered.
“I’m so sorry. And I had a feeling you didn’t know. I think they might be trying to get the King to sign off without even a ceremony. In which case, I don’t believe we can override anything. The word of Wrath, son of Wrath, is law. We would be mated then and there.”
“Motherfucker—”
There was a rustle over the connection and then Romina’s voice dropped. “I have to go. You have to stop this. You work for the Brotherhood. Somehow, you must be able to get to the King. I don’t want this for you.”
“Or yourself.”
“I’m not worried about me.”
As the call went dead, he ran the conversation through in his head—and wondered if there was anything going on he didn’t know about. Financially for his family, that was. Except no. There was plenty of staff around and his father didn’t look worried. The price set was no doubt just a way to recoup a failed investment in a first blooded son.
&
nbsp; “Peyton?”
At the sound of Novo’s voice out in his bedroom, he spun around. Shit, he needed to take care of this. Right away. And also had to tell his female what was going on.
“In here,” he said. “Listen, I have to go out for a—”
As she came into the doorway of the bathroom, he knew instantly something was really wrong. And then he saw the tears in her eyes.
“Novo? What’s going on?”
He rushed over and put his arms around her. The sobs that came out of her were so violent, her body shook against his own and he drew her deeper into the bathroom and shut the door so that no one would hear her for her privacy’s sake.
“Novo…” He cupped her head and stroked her back. “Novo, love…what happened…?”
Eventually, she took a shuddering breath and broke away from him.
As she paced around, her arms were locked on her midsection and she was hunched over as if in agony.
When she stopped, she looked at him with eyes that were so full of pain, he could barely stare into them.
“I lost my young…” As she spoke, the emotion came out anew, sobs shaking her. “It was a little girl. I held her in the palm of my hand…after I lost her…”
Novo had thought she was tight. That she was just walking away from that pub and Oskar and all that past shit perfectly right in the head. And to that point, she had dematerialized without a problem, re-forming back behind the garage of Peyton’s family’s mansion, slipping in through the door in the library using the code Peyton had given her.
She had even laughed a little as she had dodged that butler, the one Peyton hated so much.
But sometime down the long hall to his room, an unraveling had started, some thread of her inner fabric catching on the heel of her stride, until she was naked by the time she reached the open doors of his bath.
And then he had looked at her and she had breathed in the scent of him…and the dam had broken completely—such that she had named her truth to him, shared her secret, told him that which she had told no other.
His shock and horror as he stared at her made her want to run.
“I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I shouldn’t have come—”
In a panic, she went to race out, but he jumped ahead and blocked her with his body.
“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me what happened, oh, God…Novo…I never knew.”
She shook her head back and forth for the longest time, her tears falling past her body, landing in a semicircle at her feet.
“No one knows. No one knew…” She sniffled and shivered as the images returned—and dear Lord, the memories of that old, damp, cold house. “I told no one.”
“Oskar,” Peyton said in a dead voice. “It was Oskar.”
She nodded. “He left me just after I went through my needing. I thought we’d been careful, but obviously…it was about three weeks afterward when I didn’t bleed and then I knew. I kept it a secret. I moved out of my family’s house, telling my parents it was because I needed space—they didn’t know until later what Sophy had done. That Oskar had gone with her.”
“Here. Take this.”
She stared at what he was holding out to her, not understanding what it was—oh, a Kleenex box. She snapped free some tissues and tucked the rest under her arm.
Her nose sounded like a foghorn as she blew it.
“I was eight months along when the pains started. About two weeks later, I was in this house I’d rented…I started bleeding and…” She blew her nose again and pressed the tissue wad to her eyes as the pain came back. “I lost the young. She came out of me…and she was so tiny, so perfect. My daughter…”
The image of the young was carved into her brain, deep as a ravine, never to lose its contours no matter how many times she recalled it or how many years passed.
All of a sudden, she felt a warmth around her, a body against hers.
Peyton.
The sobbing came back and she gave herself to it, fisting the thick robe he had on, hanging on as her legs went out from under her.
“I got you…” he said. “I have you.”
“I never told him. He’d guessed I was pregnant…but I never told him what happened…” Abruptly, she looked up. “He called me tonight and asked me to come see him. He wanted to…vent about Sophy. He thought I had an abortion.”
Peyton’s brows tightened. “Wait a minute…he knew? That you were pregnant with his young? And he went with your sister?”
“When he was talking tonight…” She pulled back and then had to pace around. “He asked me where I went to have the abortion. I didn’t tell him I miscarried.” She looked down at her flat belly. “I buried the young by myself. Out in the field behind the house. While I was still bleeding. I…covered the grave with stones, and planted a stupid little bush because I didn’t want her not to have a headstone or any marking.” She shook her head. “He doesn’t deserve to know what happened. That is my life, my private pain. He didn’t want her and he didn’t want me. And I don’t think he deserves…he doesn’t deserve either of us.”
Novo closed her eyes. “She’s still with me, you see. She died before she knew anything of the world—but I keep her here.” She touched over her heart. “She is here with me. Always.”
Abruptly, she looked at him. “And you are the only one who knows.”
—
There were so many different ways to say “I love you.”
As Peyton went back over to Novo and pulled her against him once more, he reflected that those three words were certainly the most common transmission of the sacred emotion between two souls. But there were other ways. Gestures, gifts, the rebuilding of a barn after a fire, the shoveling of a walkway, even something as simple as carrying groceries in from the car.
Novo was telling him she loved him by sharing this terrible truth, a loss so great that he couldn’t fathom how she had made it through the tragedy or why she had kept going afterward: By inviting him to play witness to her history, her pain, by opening herself up to him in this way, as she had done with no other, she was proclaiming she had love for him.
“I have hurt for so long,” she said when she had calmed a little. “Held this in for so long.”
He imagined her somewhere by herself, in a medical emergency, with no one to hold her hand or ease her in any way. And then she had buried the young—
He squeezed his eyes shut as he imagined what that had taken out of her.
“Come with me,” he said as he took her hand and brought her into the bedroom. “Lie down. Let me hold you.”
She crawled onto his monogrammed duvet as if she hurt all over. And when he joined her, he put his arm around her and ran into the corners of the Kleenex box, which she clutched like a child did a toy for comfort. As she shivered, he brought himself closer to her.
“What was her name?” he heard himself say.
Novo jerked against him as she looked up. “I…I did not name her.”
He stroked wisps of her hair back from her hot, red face. “You should name her. And you should go back and bring her a proper marker. She lived inside of you. She existed.”
“I thought maybe…”
“What did you think?” he whispered as he brushed her hair away. “Tell me.”
“I wondered if I should give her a name. But I wasn’t sure…I feel like I didn’t deserve to. Mahmens give names to their young. I couldn’t keep mine…I let her down, I killed her—so I am no one’s mother to give any name.”
“Stop,” he croaked out. “You did nothing wrong.” With a surge of hostility, he tacked on, “Which is more than I can say for others. And you should name her. You keep her in your heart, you are a mahmen—and that innocent little soul is up in the Fade, watching over you. Your daughter is an angel, and you should name her if only so you can address her when you’re talking to her in your head.”
“How did you know?” Novo asked roughly. “That I talk to her?”
He traced her face wi
th his eyes and wished he could hold all of her pain for her, take it as burden out of her tired arms and carry it for the rest of their lives.
“How can you not? She is your daughter.”
Fresh tears welled and he took a Kleenex from the box and dried them one by one. When they stopped, she whispered, “I am so tired all of a sudden.”
He ran his fingertips down her cheek. “Sleep. I will watch over you. You will not have any nightmares tonight.”
“Promise?” she said.
“I promise.” He closed her lids. “I won’t leave you. And no nightmares. Just rest.”
Novo’s strong body released its tension with a shudder. And then she cuddled into him.
“If I could sing, I would give you a lullaby,” he said softly. “About a place where there is no pain and loss. No worry. But I can’t carry a tune.”
“Thought that counts,” she mumbled.
Not long thereafter, her breathing became slow and steady, little twitches of a hand or a foot signaling she was deep, deep, deep at rest.
Staring at her in his arms, he knew that he would lay his life down for hers without regret. He would slay dragons and move mountains for her. He would conquer whole worlds at her command and starve to skin and bones just to ensure she had food. She was not his sun or moon, but his galaxy.
“I love you, too,” he said by her ear. “Forever and always.”
Novo woke up ten hours later. She knew this by the clock on the bed stand, which, naturally, wasn’t some digital POS you could get from Amazon, but an antique Cartier thing that seemed to be made of marble and had hands with diamonds on them.
She had turned away from Peyton in her sleep, but they were far from separated. He was tucked in tight to her back, that robe of his still on, the pair of them on top of the duvet instead of in between those incredibly soft sheets of his.
Man, she had to pee.
Okay, that was hardly the most important thing on her mind, comparatively speaking, but in terms of urgency? And the fact that it was a simple walk to the bathroom to take care of it?