“Maggie’s gonna throw a fit if you don’t get home soon.”
Bear glares at me in a way I haven’t seen in years. “Little brother, my wife knows exactly where I am,” he grumbles.
I fight my grin. When I notice that Stella does too, I feel a ridiculous sense of gratification that she likes my brother. I want her to like—to love—all of my family.
Most of all, I want her to love me.
I take in the sight of her. She’s the one who has barely sat still all night. Cleaning the cut on my chin, making me ice packs for the bruises, coming outside with me to get the pies, slicing them up to make serving easy.
Getting in Nina’s face when she wanted to run.
She’s got to be completely wiped out. I push myself off the floor at the foot of her bed where I’ve camped out since eating my own two pieces of pie.
“Stella’s right. It’s time for bed.”
And that’s all it takes. Pen wakes Livy gently, but Maisy doesn’t stir as they leave the bed. Which is fine. I have a feeling Stella wants to keep her in arm’s reach. I would too. If I had my way, I’d keep them both in arm’s reach.
Bear gets to his feet, turns, and inspects the boarded up door one more time. As if making sure that nothing—not even the tiniest ant—could get through.
Nothing can.
I slap him gently on the back, my gratitude for his help—and for more than that—passing between us. Of course, it’s not enough for Bear. There has to be a Bear hug. I only hiss a little as my aching body protests. I still squeeze back.
As I walk him through the house to the front door, I note Tyler leading Nina to his room, and I’m glad he’s staying downstairs and close to Stella and Maisy. Livy and Pen climb the stairs. I’m not surprised when two sets of footsteps creak all the way up to the attic.
“I like her,” Bear murmurs, eyes glinting.
My heart squeezes painfully because I like her too, and I don’t know where we go from here. If there’s anywhere we can go.
Bear must read the doubt on my face because he scowls. “You haven’t already screwed this up, have you?”
I run a hand through my hair, wishing I could yank it by the roots.
Bear rolls his eyes. “Man. You’re a piece of work.”
“Tell me about it,” I groan.
He sets his hands on his hips and glares at me expectantly.
“What?” I glare back.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” He nods his head in the direction of Stella’s room. “Go fix it.”
I scoff. “Right. It’s just that easy.”
My big brother arches a menacing brow. If I hadn’t already been beaten with a crowbar tonight, I have a feeling he’d whale on me. “Don’t be a chicken shit. If you can stand up to a murderous lunatic, you can go face the music.”
I snort. He has a point.
But tackling Kaleb Doucet seemed a lot more straightforward. I was never afraid for myself. Only for Stella and Maisy.
But facing Stella and confirming that I have no hope of keeping her?
The thought terrifies me.
Bear must be able to see that fear on my face. “You get points for saving her, you know.”
“Saving her?” I gape at him. “You were listening, right? She saved me.”
He waves a dismissive hand. “You showed up and took that asshole down. Where would she be right now if that hadn’t hap—”
“Enough,” I grind out. That thought is unbearable, and I refuse to go there.
Bear’s mouth curls into a satisfied smile. “There he is.”
I narrow my eyes. “Who?”
“The man who isn’t gonna let his woman slip away.”
Bear slaps a hand on my shoulder—none too gently—squeezes once, and is out the door.
I shut it behind him and lock up, wishing I had an extra deadbolt or a sliding bar or a medieval portcullis.
I turn away from the door but can’t even take one step. Straight ahead are the stairs that will lead me to my room. But I know I can’t bring myself to climb them.
It doesn’t matter that Tyler and Nina are downstairs, close enough if Kaleb Doucet decides to come back.
I need to stay near them. Stella and Maisy. The only way I’ll have any peace tonight is if I’m within earshot of them.
The house darkens when I flick off the foyer lights. But the light over the sink in the bathroom upstairs and the one over the stove in the kitchen offer a glowing comfort. No one who gets up in the middle of the night will be in total darkness.
I rub the back of my stiff neck and drag myself to the living room. Exhaustion seems to triple the weight of each of my limbs. I’m not sure if I’ll sleep much, but I don’t think I can stay up right any longer.
But as soon as I reach the living room entrance, movement to my left catches my eye.
“Stella—”
She’s pressing a hand to the hallway door frame as if using it to hold her up. She looks tired. She looks broken. And I can’t stop myself from closing the distance between us.
You showed up and took that asshole down. Where would she be right now if—
I don’t care about how I fucked up on Sunday morning. I don’t care that Stella thinks the worst of me now. I don’t care if I have to spend the next fifty years proving to her that I love her. I take her in my arms because nothing else is possible.
As soon as I have her crushed against me, my arms locked tight around her, she lets go. Tears and sobs and full-body quaking.
I just hold on. We can stay like this forever for all I care.
The feel of her in my arms is the only antidote to the awful what if and the memory of her facing down that creep.
At first, Stella’s arms are tucked into her chest, and I encircle her completely as she cries. But then, as her sobs crest and wring themselves out, she slips her arms around my waist and holds me just as tight, her tear-streaked cheek pressed into my chest.
Kissing the top of her head, I breathe her in, memorizing her. If this is all she needs—a chance to let go and be held while she falls apart—I’m glad I’m the one she clings to. I also don’t harbor any illusions. Given what she’s been through tonight, of course she needs to be held. It doesn’t mean she’ll still want me in her life once the storm passes.
But while she’s here, pressed against me, I’ll do my level best to comfort her.
“You’re okay,” I murmur into her hair. “You’re safe.”
She sniffles and sobs again.
“You’re safe.”
“Wh-What?” she squeaks and nudges back to look up at me.
I smooth my hands up and down her back, hoping this isn’t it. Hoping she’ll let me hold her a little longer.
“I’ve got you,” I promise. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
She blinks, looking stunned. “Lark—” She swallows thickly, staring at me mystified. “You think that’s why I’m crying? Because I don’t feel safe?”
“It’s understandable. After what you went through—”
“Lark—” Her voice breaks on my name, pain pinching her eyes. “He almost killed you.”
I frown because if someone was going to die at Kaleb Doucet’s hands, that someone being me while Stella and Maisy escaped, was the best-case scenario. Surely, she sees that.
Besides, that didn’t happen.
“But he didn’t,” I argue.
Her eyes bug. “But he was going to.”
I grin at her. “You stopped him. And the police might have gotten here soon en—”
“Or I could have lost you!” Her voice is a shrill whisper, pulled tight with anguish.
I go completely still.
“Do you know what that would have done to me?” she asks, almost accusingly.
This time I blink. Because, no, I don’t. I’ve lived with Stella for two months. Long enough to know that she is strong. Independent. A survivor.
She certainly doesn’t need me.
Scowling, Stel
la balls one hand into a fist and thumps me on the chest. “Don’t look at me like that, you dummy! It would have destroyed me.” The scowl cracks and she breaks down again, but not before catching my face between both of her hands. “It would have destroyed me.”
The second time she says it—her voice both soft and rough, broken and whole—I glimpse more than she’s ever shown me.
“Stella?”
Before I can form a question, she pulls me down into her kiss, and it finally sinks in. I’m right where I belong.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
STELLA
I kiss Lark. And kiss him. And kiss him again.
Until the dread I’ve felt since I left him fighting for his life loosens its hold on me.
Everything has changed in the last six hours.
Before, when I soaked in my warm bath and sipped my wine, I had made peace with losing Lark.
Well, sort of.
Honestly, maybe all I had managed was to make peace with making peace with losing him.
But facing the prospect of losing him completely? Of living in a world without Lark Bienvenue? Peace doesn’t exist in that world. There’s nothing there but regret and agony. I know because I stared into that black hole, and I’ve never felt worse in my life.
I pull back to let just enough air in between our mouths to tell him how it is. “You made me feel things, Lark. You didn’t mean to do it, and I didn’t mean to fall in love with you, but I did, and I’m not going to stop just because it might not work out for us.”
“Stella—” For the second time in two minutes, he speaks my name like a question, but I’m not finished.
“If you don’t want that—if you don’t want to try, I understand. I—”
“I do.” His breath leaves him like he’s been struck hard a second time. “I do want to try. I just don’t want to let you down the way I—”
He shakes his head and rakes his fingers through his hair. “My whole life, I’ve been told I needed to change to fit in. In my family. In my faith.” He glances up to the shadowed ceiling. “This is the first place where I’ve felt accepted—where I feel like we’re all accepted to be who we are.”
He brings his gaze back to me. “That’s because of you. You make everyone feel safe, feel seen. Feel at home.” His eyes lock on me. “And then there’s how you make me feel.”
I swallow thickly. “H-How do I make you feel?”
Lark reaches down to my left hand, curls his finger around mine, and raises them to his lips. He kisses my knuckles.
“Like loving you is the most natural thing in the world.”
I suck in a breath. Did I just hear that right?
“R-r-really?”
Lark tips his forehead to mine, never breaking eye contact, the look in his blue eyes vulnerable and uncertain. “I really fucked up with you this morning. And Saturday night.”
I can’t argue with that. I just want to understand how we got here.
Pulling back just enough so I can read his face, I lick my lips. “Tell me more.”
Lark lets out a weighted breath, and I’m not sure if he’s daunted or relieved. Maybe both. He squeezes my fingers again.
“I want to be with you.” The uncertainty he carried a moment ago is nowhere in these words. The conviction in his voice makes me feel more wanted than I ever have. “I should have told you that before Saturday. I should have told you a lot of things.”
“Like what?” I ask, squeezing his hand with encouragement.
Another weighted sigh. He shakes his head. “I don’t know if I can make this make sense to you.”
“Try me.”
Lark bites down on his bottom lip and frowns in concentration. “When you are raised a certain way—” His frown deepens and his focus goes somewhere else. Somewhere old. “It’s hard to picture the world being different from what you know—even if you hate what you know.”
I trip over a mirthless laugh. “I know all about that.”
“You do?” He blinks in surprise.
I nod. “Maybe not the same way you mean. But my childhood shaped me just as much as yours shaped you,” I say, telling him what I hope is no surprise.
Still frowning, he studies me. “Yeah, except I’m not sure if my childhood shaped me as much as it repelled me.”
I give him a lopsided smile. “What’s the difference?”
“Because,” he says on a long exhale. “When you are repulsed, you fight against the source, and when it’s your whole world, you expect to have to keep fighting.”
“I get that,” I say gently.
His smile, something I feared I’d never see again, even before this terrifying night, eclipses his whole face. “You would.”
“What does that mean?” I ask through a startled laugh.
“You’re very accepting.”
I wrinkle my nose.
“You are,” he says again. “Just look around you. This home? Our band of misfits? You understand and accept all of us.”
I shrug. “Taking people as they are doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to me. Nothing else makes sense.”
His laugh is full of irony. “You have to know you are in a paper-thin minority.” His expression sobers. “I should have trusted that about you.”
“H-How so?”
He shakes his head. “Told you that I carry around a shitload of baggage.” His grin is rueful. “That I’m the black sheep. A rebel in a family of Catholic rule-followers.”
He’s trying for a light tone, but I hear pain in his admissions. With my hand that’s not in his, I reach up and touch his face. Lark shuts his eyes and leans into my touch.
When he opens them, he doesn’t try to hide the sadness. “I should have told you that, my whole life, I’ve failed at being who other people want me to be.”
My heart squeezes so tight it might burst.
“I love my brothers and sisters. I love my sister-in-law Maggie. I love my parents,” Lark says, and I don’t doubt him for a moment. “And please forgive me for saying this to you, but I loved my ex-girlfriend Zoe.”
I blink, taken off guard, but I very clearly heard the word loved. Loved. As in past-tense.
He watches me closely for my reaction.
I clear my throat. “A-and how do you feel now?”
His brows draw together as though he doesn’t understand the question. “About Zoe?”
I bite my lip and nod.
His expression clears. “Oh, I mean, I care about her. I feel guilty that I hurt her.” Then he shakes his head. “She wanted more than I could give.”
“She wanted to get married,” I say, the pieces falling into place.
Lark swallows hard. “Yes.”
Just looking at him tells me that he’s suffered over this. Pain. Guilt. Shame. I knew Lark had recently ended a serious relationship. I didn’t know why it had ended.
“How did your family take it?” I ask even though I can guess the answer.
His eyes bug. Whatever he was expecting me to say next, it wasn’t this. “They all thought I was making a huge mistake.” His brows draw together in bewilderment. “My mom told me to go to confession.”
“What?”
He nods.
“Holy shit,” I mutter.
He nods again. “Yep.”
I frown. “No one told you that you did the right thing? Breaking it off with her?”
Lark rolls his eyes. “No. That’s not how things work in the Bienvenue family.”
“Lark, listen to me.” I sweep my thumb along his cheek. “You did the right thing.”
An exhale rushes from him, and I wonder how long he’s been holding his breath, waiting for someone to say those words.
“You did the right thing,” I say again, keeping his gaze. He holds mine back for a long time.
His chest rises and falls. “I know.” He nods. “I know that.”
“Of course you do,” I whisper.
“Yeah, but, it feels good hearing it from you.”
I smile gently up at him.
His hands cup my face as his smile warms. “It means a lot.”
Lark leans in to kiss me.
“Wait,” I tell him, catching him by both wrists.
He frowns. “You don’t want me to kiss you?”
“Oh, I do. I definitely want you to kiss me,” I say nodding.
“What’s wrong then?” Tension narrows his eyes.
“I need to tell you something.”
“Tell me what?”
I shift my weight on my feet. “Two things, actually.”
“What are they?”
Butterflies launch in my stomach. “I just don’t know which one to go with first.”
Lark’s frown tightens. “Stella, you’re making me nervous.”
I nod rapidly. “Yeah, I get that. Sorry.”
“Just say it.” He licks his lips, bracing himself. “Whatever it is.”
“O-Okay.” I swallow hard, wondering if I’m doing the right thing. Wondering if he’ll think it’s the right thing.
I shut my eyes for a moment and think about Nanna. And I’m immediately smiling. She would approve. I totally know she would. I open my eyes and gaze into Lark’s. “Lark, I never want to marry you. So don’t ask.”
His mouth falls open. “Wh-What?”
“You heard me.”
He blinks and then side-eyes me. “Never?”
I nod. “That’s right. Never.”
“Wh—Can… Can I ask why?”
I can’t help my smirk. I might actually burst into giggles. I can’t remember the last time I felt this good. “You need to ask why?”
My barely restrained laughter must be contagious because a smile breaks over his mouth and grows wide and tall. All the way up to his eyes. “Yes. Tell me why.”
“That’s actually the second thing...” You’d think telling someone you never want to marry them would be about the hardest thing you’d ever have to say out loud. Turns out, not so. I take a deep breath. “I love you.”
I’ve never said the words to anyone outside of family and Pen, and they seem impossible to utter right up until I actually do.
And then it’s easy. So easy, I giggle like a child. “I love you.”
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