Jethro had salvaged me and brought me back.
He’d done more than bring me back.
He’d given me a new home—inside him.
I’m alive because of him.
The Second Debt had taken everything from me.
But Jethro had given it back a hundred fold.
We ghosted to a stop outside my bedroom door. Jethro was the perfect suitor, walking me home after the strangest day of all. His hand came up to cup my cheek, a sigh escaping his lips. “I will tell you, but it’s not a simple matter of blurting it out.”
I turned my head and kissed his palm, never breaking eye contact. “Whatever it is, I’ll understand.”
He smiled sadly. “That’s the thing; you probably won’t. To tell you what I am means I’ll have to tell you everything. About the debts, the reasoning, my role.” He hung his head. “It’s a lot.”
I shuffled closer, wrapping my arms around his warm body. “Tomorrow. Meet me after breakfast and take me somewhere far from here. Tell me then.”
His nostrils flared. “You want to go off the grounds? Away from Hawksridge?”
The thought excited me. I didn’t want to go back to London or seek out my old life—not anymore, but it would be nice to go somewhere just the two of us.
A date.
“You can trust me, Jethro. You know that. I wouldn’t run if you took me somewhere public.”
A painful shadow crossed his face. “I know you wouldn’t. And that’s what fucking kills me.”
My heart stuttered. “Why?”
He slouched, pushing me against my door so my back kissed the wood and his lips kissed mine. The kiss was fleeting and soft, but the emotion behind it squeezed my chest with an agonising weight.
I didn’t know what the weight was. But the pressure built and built with words dying to leap free.
I.
Love.
You.
After what had just happened between us, it was all I could think about. I wanted to scream them. Blare them. Let him know that my caring for him wasn’t conditional or cruel.
I loved him. For him. For his soul.
His lips skated over mine again—the sweetest connection.
“Jethro,” I breathed. “I—I lo—”
He froze, slamming his fingers over my mouth. “Don’t say it.” Dropping his touch, he shook his head. “Don’t say it. Please, Nila.”
“But why shouldn’t I…when it’s the truth.” The weight on my heart grew deeper, stronger. I had no choice but to tell him. The words physically suffocated me, needing to be said. “You mean everything to me.” Placing my hand over his heart, I whispered. “Kite…I’m in love with you. It doesn’t come with conditions or commands. I can’t hate you for what you did today or what you might do in the future. I’m scared and lost and absolutely terrified that I’m doing the wrong thing by choosing you over my own life—but…I have no choice.”
He sucked in the sharpest breath. “You called me Kite.”
My heart bottomed out.
His name bulldozed through the partition I’d managed to keep in place. My feelings toward Kite plaited with my feelings for Jethro.
I slammed deeper into love.
He’s mine.
His eyes squeezed closed, pressing his forehead on mine. “Nila…you—you don’t know what you’re doing to me.” He trembled in my arms, his hands bracing himself on the door. “Take it back. I—I can’t take so much from you.”
“I can’t take back something that already belongs to you.”
Tears.
I wanted to cry.
I wanted free my terror at falling in love. I wanted to beg him to be strong enough to choose me after stealing everything that I was.
I couldn’t compete with what he did to me in the spring. He’d reached inside me and ripped my heart from my chest. I didn’t fight it. In fact, I’d carved it out for him.
My hands were bloody from presenting it to him with open arms.
I.
Love.
Him.
Before, I was in a cage.
I wasn’t any more.
I could see. I was free. I believed.
“Tomorrow.” He exhaled shakily. He clasped my jaw, running his thumbs over my cheeks. “You’re mine. You deserve to know the man you’ve chosen—the man you’ve saved.”
A shooting star sliced through my soul. “I saved you?”
A soft smile tugged his lips. “You have no idea, do you?” He kissed my forehead, filling it with overwhelming feeling. “No idea what you’ve done to me.”
His delectable smell wisped around us. I wanted to fall into him and never let go.
He whispered, “Tomorrow, everything that I am becomes yours.”
I shivered at the truth in his eyes, the echoing affection. “Tomorrow.”
With a barely-there kiss, he transmitted every emotion he couldn’t say and backed into the shadows of the corridor. “Tomorrow, I’m taking you away from here. I’ll give you what you’ve selflessly given me. I’ll tell you…everything.”
Overnight, I’d turned from a supple young woman to arthritic hag.
I didn’t sleep. I doubted I’d ever be able to sleep again with the excitement of what today would bring.
Jethro will tell me.
Finally, I would know.
Last night, I’d thought about reading the Weaver Journal to see how my mother and grandmother felt paying the Second Debt. Had they made note of it? Or were they like me and saw what the Journal was—a way to monitor our hearts and minds? I wanted to see if they’d done what I did: fall for their tormentors.