Loss by loss.
His.
Forever.
Chapter Nineteen
“To see evil and call it good, mocks God. Worse, it makes goodness meaningless.”—King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table
King
I have no idea what to say to her, what to say to that, so I let her fall asleep across my chest, and I ponder, I wait, I wonder, I wish.
That’s maybe what I do the most.
I wish for more, for things I’m not allowed to have. I wish for deep kisses strong embraces. I wish for soft words, scorned ones even, to set me back in place. And I wish for safety for her, for me.
And if I’m being completely honest.
I wish for more.
So much fucking more.
Because for the first time in my entire life—I wish for a kid, for someone to pass this down to, to tell stories to. A piece of me to continue on the way I’m continuing this bloody legacy for my dad.
To hold in my arms hard and close—to tell him or her or whoever they want to be that it’s okay, they can be it, and that I’ll protect them until my dying day.
But wishes. Wishes are for people who don’t see the world the way I do. The world is a dark and dangerous place. Hell, I’d be lucky to even have a wish to wish on, let alone have one come true.
I breathe in and out, and I come back from that place of want and accept my reality. The reality of knowing that this woman in my arms sleeping peacefully after calling out her desires won’t really ever be mine.
She’ll be his.
I’ll protect her from afar; he’ll hold her close. That’s my reality, that’s my world, and quite honestly, at the end of the day, it’s her happiness that matters most, not mine. Maybe I wasn’t born out of this cloth. Maybe I was meant to be the type of man who just simply protects his own and deals with the pain because that’s what it feels like right now.
I got both the short and long straw. I found my person, but I’ll forever watch her be kept by someone else.
It’s okay, I tell myself.
It’s going to be fine.
It has to be. Otherwise, how does a person survive this sort of torture and pain?
Her hair is falling against her cheek, I brush it away, and then I smell my fingertips, wishing she was there to greet me with her lips. Maybe I sound like a crazy person, but if this is crazy, what the hell would I do with being sane?
After a tiny moan in her sleep, she’s completely out, and I’m watching her eyelids flutter. She’s dreaming, and I wish the small smile on her face was for me, but it’s probably for him. I have to accept that now as I tuck her hair behind her ear again and start to sing.
I used to hate getting made fun of for liking music, for singing, but now it seems right, it seems just that at least when she’s dreaming, I can sing her a lullaby and make her feel at peace.
“Skies are always dark at night, but in the morning, there’s always light. Follow me, slip away, I’ll try to keep you in the day, follow me, slip away, there’s nothing more I want than for you to stay. Stay. Stay. Always… stay.”
I remember my mom singing this to my dad when he was sad and singing it to me when I cried at night.
Maybe, just maybe, singing it to her will bring her peace.
And selfishly, maybe it will bring me just one moment where I have her all to myself.
Seven. Days.
Now six.
Life isn’t fair.
And the devil is a liar.
Chapter Twenty
“For it is better that we slay a coward than through a coward be all slain.” —The Legends of King Arthur and His Knights
Del
I wake up in his arms, warm, protected, safe. I smile for a brief moment, then realize that I’m naked, completely naked, and pressed against his hot skin. His arms brace me tight. I’m suddenly unsure of what to do. I mean, I agreed to this, but am I supposed to pull away and tell him he only gets one chance a day? Or am I supposed to just lie there and enjoy the moment I’m not supposed to enjoy?
I clear my throat like a weirdo.
He doesn’t move.
I clear it again.
He holds me tighter.
So now I’m in a position of trying to figure out how to put space between us because that is one hundred percent what my brain is telling me to do despite what my heart keeps beating over and over again.
It was amazing.
It was our moment, and yet it wasn’t. It should have been Roman’s, right? Not King’s. I’m both confused and horrified at how much I enjoyed the minutes… hours I spent in King’s bed.
Correction. Our bed.
He exhales, his arm crosses over my body tighter, and then his eyes open, and like some creepy stalker, I just happen to be staring right at him when he does open his eyes.
His smirk should be illegal. “You been watching me all night, or am I just this lucky?”
It’s not right. It’s not even a little bit okay. He doesn’t smell like morning breath, and his muscles seemed to have someone grown overnight. Like, what the hell?
I lick my lips, suddenly self-conscious until he takes all second guesses I have from me and firmly presses his mouth to mine. “Six days.”
We have an official countdown.
My chest tightens to a painful degree as he pulls away, his eyes search mine like I have answers to the test we both didn’t even realize we were taking.
“You’re pretty,” he says softly. Lips meet mine in a soft kiss before he gets out of bed and walks like a god, completely naked, toward the bathroom.
I can’t even form words as his ass flexes with each step. It’s not normal, that kind of beauty, and it’s not normally my kind of reaction when I know full well my heart belongs to someone else. It feels like cheating. It feels wrong. My eyes are still, however, glued to his ass as he walks, and my heart decides to start pounding.
The shower turns on, and my stupid cheeky brain is like, yeah, um, you’re turned on too.
No. No. No.
I’m just tired.
Exhaustion does a lot to a person.
So does a sexy firm ass, but that’s beside the point.
I’m frozen in bed just listening to the water fall, likely on the most perfect body I’ve ever seen.
Minutes later, he returns from the shower, a white towel wrapped low around his hips. Full lips grinning at me, he runs his hands through his messy caramel-colored nearly shoulder-length hair, spraying droplets of water over the bed… and me. His eyes never leave mine.
I suck in a sharp breath and wait for him to demand something of me. Isn’t that how this is supposed to go? I marry him. I make a freaking blood oath to have sex with him until I’m either pregnant, which is ridiculous, or at least until my stupid family is satisfied that our families are tied without any worry that they’ll betray us. And that’s it. Maybe he starts cheating. Maybe he realizes he doesn’t actually want any part of this because come-freaking-on, he’s the godfather of these parts, as insane as it sounds.
He’s it.
King. Is. It. A King.
And I’m nothing but a pawn in a game my dead father couldn’t wait to use, and my stupid uncle couldn’t wait to throw into the game.
My family officially sucks.
“And so does King,” my brain reminds me.
No, no, no, no, no.