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FOR THOSE AFRAID TO BE WHO THEY ARE
An electric hum made the hair on her arms rise. Like being caught in a storm right before lightning strikes.
Every time Gideon looked at the young heiress, she reminded him of the sea: steal-your-breath beautiful on the surface, with the promise of untold depths beneath.
And the Moth was intelligent. To go toe-to-toe with Gideon, to outwit him, she had to be.
As their gazes clashed, the ballroom went quiet. The lights, the voices, and the fashions of her guests faded to nothing as an unexpected thought struck Rune. Gideon Sharpe is the missing name on my list.
He’d spent the last two hours making it for her, feeling slightly ill as he sewed every petal.
With it came a heady scent, not only of gunpowder, but something stronger, like freshly cut cedar. It was so pleasant, she wanted to lean into it.
he didn’t have to hide who he was. He didn’t have to pretend to hate the things he truly loved.
If she didn’t loathe him so much, she might envy him.
“I have more stimulating conversations with my horse.”
“Your laugh is like a fuse,” he said. “It lights you up.” Rune’s heart thudded. No one had ever told her that before.
People like him were damaged. Dirty. People like him didn’t belong in the ballrooms of people like Alex and Rune.
Fighting with Alex made her feel unbalanced. Like a ship they’d been sailing smoothly on for years had suddenly plunged into stormy waters.
You have no idea what the real world is like, Rune. You live a pampered, privileged existence and always have. I’m not saying that’s your fault. I’m simply stating facts. If you don’t want to look at ugly things, you don’t have to. You can pretend they don’t exist.”
“You are not the things that happened to you, Gideon.”
His body buzzed at the lack of her. As if Rune in his arms was the only true thing in the world, and until she was there again, everything was wrong.
“I remember the sound of your laugh,” he said as the back door of the house came into view. “It pulled me like a magnet toward the beach, where I found the most beautiful girl in the world standing on the shore.”
But it wasn’t only her physical attributes that had him spinning. It was her kindness. Her thoughtfulness. Her wildness. It was her willingness to argue with him. If he wasn’t careful, he might fall in love with her.
What if he doesn’t come at all? What if he’s changed his mind about me?
wall. Rune was a bright light burning in a long, dark night.
It felt like the air had been sucked from the world.
“Gideon, the thought of you inside that building … it felt like being held underwater.” She lowered her gaze to the pulse at the base of his throat. “Like being starved of air.”
“Every night after dinner, we’ll take a long walk through Wintersea, and I’ll pick you a bouquet of wildflowers, and we’ll talk … or be silent. I don’t really care, as long as you’re next to me.”
Rune stood in the frame, her face pale, her hair a tangle. The look of shock and hurt in her eyes was like an axe splitting open his chest.
I look at the men you choose, notice the ways they don’t deserve you, and wonder why you don’t see what’s right in front of you. But you can’t, can you?”
“Be my wife, Rune. Come with me to Caelis. Let me give you the life you should have had.”
Why did it have to be Gideon who knew how to speak to her soul?
For someone who’d been hunting her so relentlessly for two years, he should be more triumphant, she thought. Gloating and preening. Instead, he looked … destroyed.
Only fools believed in happy endings.
Even in his anger, he was tender with her.
She tore her gaze away from Cressida, unable to deny the Gideon-shaped hole in her chest—like a bullet wound.
He walked in her dreams every night.
When she woke, her cheeks were wet from weeping in her sleep. Crying out for him and the life—the partnership—she’d been deluded into thinking he wanted with her.
