Severed Heart (Ravenhood Legacy #2)

by Kate Stewart

A love so pure, so tangible, and unconditional bouncing between us. The only safe space I have ever truly known beating inside her chest as I draw closer to it, pounding over the wood planks to answer her summons and feast on a love that blankets me. A love that protects me and brings me peace while keeping me whole. A love so mine, so ours. A love and place we made together, against all odds. Our darkness mingling and molding, pouring our foundation, and erecting the frame while we decorated the walls with the memories we made. Filling every shelf and lining every cabinet, creating our forever home within one another.

She once told me life could happen in a blink, but it’s a series of blinks that brought us together.

Because I know the difference between living your life and life happening to you, and they are distinctly different. Living life is making choices—what to wear, when to eat, whether or not to cut your hair. These are the easy decisions we get to make—to have some say or a hand in. Life happening to you is vastly different. It comes by way of a powerful reckoning force that cements your path for better or worse. It’s only in the wake of it that you realize the easy decisions are the only choices you have any real say in. The hard stuff—the really hard stuff—that’s life happening to you.

“You don’t seem to be a soldier that follows orders”—he looks down at me in my seat—“so maybe that’s why he bet you.”

“Your apology doesn’t count, Tyler. You’re not apologizing because you’re sorry—only because you got caught. If you want to be a real man, apologize when you mean it, or it never will count for anyone. And don’t think you can fool them. People know when you mean it and when you don’t.”

“Well, he says if you ever find someone that has a need you can fill, then you should fill it.”

I’m in it and waiting for the best friend I have made a life and raised a son with. I’m still in this for a man I love far beyond our physical relationship, and I’m not leaving my best friend at his worst until I know he’s safe.

A man that will break the cycle, break the fucking mold. A man to reach for. To entrust. A man that will be me. And the only fucking man for her.

It’s then I start to feel it. A feeling similar to the day we stood outside the garage just after Dom signed for the key. The beginning . . . of something more. More meaningful. Our purpose. It’s on the silent ride back to my granddad’s that I sense the last of the shift—the true end of summer. Of our lives as we once knew them. The end of our innocence.

“Si seulement tu me laissais te montrer à quel point l’amour peut être bon, belle femme.” If only you would let me show you how kind love can be, beautiful woman.

Every fucking minute of every day I’m not with you. You looked so beautiful riding passenger yesterday, that sweaterdress, your gorgeous hair blowing in the breeze as you flashed me that fucking smile of yours. I thought I was going to lose my shit.

If tomorrow is too far away from a good day with your soldier, then your soldier is on his way.

“I’ll never be anyone else’s soldier, and I think you just realized that.” “My soldier would stay,” I whisper as he lifts his hand to stroke my cheek with gentle fingers. He’s so close now that we’re sharing breath, our foreheads touching. “Soldiers don’t stay, General,” he whispers, “but your soldier will come back to you. Every fucking time you order him to.”

My eyes spill over in defeat as he forces me to realize and confront what I’ve known for some time now—that he’s managed the impossible and now resides as part of the beat in my chest.

“I’m not your problem, Soldier.” “No, what you are, is my fucking reason,” I declare, pulling back slightly to command her eyes. “My reason to fight and my reason to come home. You are home. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

But no matter how much distance or how many months and years I’ve put between that morning and this moment, the ache for her remains. Even without her aware of it, my heart kept its promise. “Ask me in a year how I feel about you, and I’ll say the same.” That I’ve loved her every second, turned minutes into hours, becoming weeks, months, and years since I started inhaling militant breaths and exhaling my way through this mission.

“It’s crazy where a day can take you”—I widen my eyes—“trust me on this. Now, I’m going to pull my hand away and see if you can keep a secret, and if you can, we’ll be in touch.”

The longing for the home I swore I saw in her eyes, the shelter I made inside her heart. And now, no matter how hard I try to visualize it, there’s no longer a door. I erased it. She erased it.

Speeding toward my reality—now convinced of what was solidified the day I left Triple Falls—that I am now and forever a homeless soldier.

“I know what I have. I’ll do what I need to do. If I can make this happen, then you can too. Show me, Delphine. Show me you want it, and I’ll move heaven and earth to be there for you, to help you succeed, and won’t ask for a damn thing in return.”

“I’ve loved you for nearly eleven years of my goddamned life, Delphine, and only had your body one night. It was never about sex for me and never will be, but I need you. I need to heal, and you’re the only one who might be able to help me do it, so please let me be your friend again, General. That’s all I want, I promise.”

“How I asked you to? You mean as the woman I wanted to build a life with and around? The woman I wanted to love and trust with every part of me? Surrender my heart to? Make love to and fuck every chance I got? Be with in every way a man can be with a woman for the rest of my fucking life? In that way?”

She screams my name as I kick rocks up and race away, my heart cracking with the truth I’ve been suspecting since I came back. That she gave up the day I lost that battle and didn’t fucking cross the street. But even so, she’s been waiting for me this whole fucking time.

“But I didn’t come to you to save you, Delphine.” I pull her tighter to me. “I came to thank you, to appreciate you, to fucking love you for the woman you are, not try and change you into some version of a woman I want you to be. I came back that day to spend time with the woman who recognized and embraced my darkness, as I did hers, and shaped me into her soldier. The woman who now and forever harbors the only place inside her that I will ever know that peace, home,” I whisper in the otherwise silent room.

“From hell, you brought me into living in this heaven with you. A dream which became so much more in loving the man in front of me with all of my heart.”

“Can I have your forever, too, baby?” I murmur. “Will you marry me?” She nods and nods. “Yes, yes, yes. Soldier, you’ve always had my forever, my miracle, my love, you are why I have faith.”

“I hate her!” “Who?” Her chin wobbles as she shakes her head. “I hate her so much!” “Who, Delphine? Who do you hate?” “The woman . . . who gets to have you after me. The woman who”—her voice cracks—“the woman who deserved you all along. Who will give you children—I hate her!” My heart splinters as she drops her weapon, which I consider useless compared to her words. “I told you long ago, there’s no woman—” “Oh, there is, Tyler, and for you, she’ll be fucking exceptional because you are . . . everything any woman could ever want . . . and, and s-she’ll be everything I wasn’t. That I’m not, and I couldn’t be for you. She’ll love you better. She’ll be far less selfish. Look how selfish I am! Look how selfish I’m being right now!” Her silver eyes pierce me as she palms her chest with both hands as if its beat is physically paining her. “I needed more time to prove myself to you. To deserve you. To convince you. So you will remember, will know just how much I . . . love you . . . I’m so in love with you. So in love with you.”

“So easy for you to say,” she counters, “you get to—” “To what?” I snap back. “I get to live? You aren’t that ignorant. I have to bury you while you’ll be completely unaware of any of that pain. God or no God, you’ll be in a perpetual state of bliss or ignorance while I reject any life without you, fucking forcing myself through every breath. So no, I don’t feel sorry for you, Delphine, because you get to die, and you won’t be the one left behind. I wish . . . fuck what I wish.” I swallow. “I have to fucking survive losing you. I have to live through it, and if I ever do pray to the God you believe in, it’ll be that it won’t be long-term.”

“You need to know, Delphine, that building a true home with you, being with you as that woman, has given me the happiest months of my life. We’ve had years together combined, and I’m going to spend the rest of my days thankful for every sunset we had. You were worth waiting for. You were so worth waiting for. So fucking worth it”—my voice cracks—“so worth it.”

“I loved you through space and time before, and I’ll do it again. I’ll do it again. I’m with you, I’m with you, always,” I croak in promise. As her last breath leaves her, I bend to whisper in her ear. “Forever,” I murmur, her weight sinking further into me as she departs.

A roar of outrage erupts from me, echoing along the hillsides as my heart cracks clear in half without an ounce of fight. No slow shatter, or slow splintering, nor resistance. As my heart starts to clang with its new beat, my front door closes and begins to dissolve before it disappears entirely, once again leaving me a homeless soldier.