“Evan,” I whispered reverently, tracing a fingertip over his chest. “How’d you get here?”
He shrugged. “Had to fight off Andros because he wanted to stay with you … so I kind of shifted. But you can’t seriously think we’d leave you alone.”
“I … how’d I get here?” My last memory of yesterday was in the bathroom. Had I passed out?
Evan didn’t answer, which surprised me. When I looked up at him, I realized there were tears in his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I immediately sat up and ran a hand over the scruff of his cheek.
“I’m so sorry about your dad, Hale. Andros went upstairs to check on you. He saw you back on the mat.”
I bit my lip, not wanting to talk about it, not ready for his pity or even his own grief. But life doesn’t care if you’re ready, I reminded myself.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Evan whispered.
His voice cracked my peaceful state and gave it sharp edges that threatened to pierce my lungs and make breathing hard again.
“Like what?” I asked again, gently cupping his face in my hands, eyes studying his. My thoughts ran over worst-case scenarios. Did he regret what we were doing? Had I pulled him into something he didn’t want? Was he worried now that we’d lost my dad from the team? Was he just as broken up about it as me? He’d practically grown up at our house, so it was possible my dad meant just as much to Evan as he did to me.
“Evan, I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Sorry?” He shook his head. “No. I’m just being a selfish ass. I just … this isn’t what was supposed to happen.”
I felt lost. “Are you talking about Dad? Crossing over?”
He hugged me to him, splaying his hand against my back and tucking my head gently into the crook of his arm. He held me there for a second, tightly, before he released me. “No. Not just your dad. And that’s why I’m a selfish idiot. That’s all I should be thinking about right now.”
“You are not an idiot.” I thumped his chest to punish him for insulting himself.
He shook his head again. “I am. Never mind. Do you want breakfast?”
He started to untangle us but I locked my limbs and his, clamping down on his massive leg with my thighs, holding onto his shoulder. “Evan, just tell me what it is.” I needed to know what was making him upset so I could try to fix it.
He glanced away shyly. The silence drew out.
“Just tell me,” I repeated softly.
“We were supposed to get married,” he murmured as color filled his cheeks. “You and me. Your parents were supposed to be there. And we were gonna have a dog—a rescue, because I know you can’t stand those purebred puppy mills. And we were gonna have a little house with a garden and trellis roses.”
Evan had pictured our entire future?
When?
The detail he gave … he had to have thought about it more than once.
Evan Weston wanted to marry me.
Somehow, that made me swell with joy and sorrow at the same time. They swirled inside me like oil and water, two opposing feelings that were never meant to mix.
“Trellis roses?” My throat tightened, because I could picture everything he’d described. I could see the green shutters on our little red brick house. I could see a scruffy dog and even imaginary children giggling and chasing him through the sprinkler.
Evan mourned losing that future.
I hadn’t envisioned it, but now, so did I.
Dreams for the future had become just that, dreams instead of potentialities.
Here we were, not even twenty-one, and we’d gone down a path where there was zero hope that those fantastical wishes would ever come true.
I’d known my future had been bleak when I’d started this, known what I’d be depriving myself of, but I’d never imagined that I’d deprive anyone else of their dreams too. I’d never realized.
I stared up at Evan, and he stared back down at me, his blue eyes awash with emotion.
“Trellis roses?” I asked, unable to get the mental image of what might have been out of my head.
“Your mom and dad’s wedding picture,” he responded and instantly, I knew exactly what he was talking about. In the hallway that led to our bedrooms, there used to be a cheap gold-framed photograph of my parents’ wedding day. My mother had sewn her own dress and covered it in lace. My father’s grin had been as bright as the sun as he’d posed with her on his arm underneath the trellis of sunset-colored roses, their pale-yellow centers fading to a deep pink on the edge of each petal. That photograph had been one of those overlooked staples of my childhood, one of the many tiny things I’d taken for granted that were now gone forever.
Apparently, it had been a staple of Evan’s childhood too.
And a staple of his dreams.
Evan’s head dipped down and his lips captured mine in a soft kiss. “I wanted to marry you under a rose trellis.”
Our lips and tears smeared across one another as we kissed. Our kisses started soft and sad, but quickly grew desperate. His tongue lashed out at mine and I matched his frantic movement until our mouths were so intertwined that I felt certain our souls must have touched.
He broke the kiss, panting, melancholy painting his tone when he said, “I’ll never have you the way I wanted.”
“Maybe not.” I couldn’t lie to him. Our future was basically full of broken wishes as far as the eye could see. And there wasn’t just him anymore. My guys, all of them, meant the world to me.
They were my family now.
I couldn’t give Evan his dream, not exactly. But my eye fell on his wand on the bedside table. “But maybe we can have part of it.” I leaned across him and grabbed his wand. “Do you trust me?”
“I followed you to the Pinnacle.” His response held a hint of sarcasm.
“That was stupidity, not trust,” I teased, trying to lighten the mood as I snagged some parchment and ink off the nightstand and put the little inkwell between my thighs. “Now, shut up.” First, I used my shadow magic to create a rough outline of the shape I wanted near Evan’s spine, so that I could clearly visualize what I wanted to create without ruining the surprise for him. Then I spread the parchment across his broad back and then dipped my wand in the ink.
I wrote a simple spell; one I’d seen Tia use at least a dozen times over the years as she magically swapped out her body art. When I was finished, soft yellow sparkles fluttered through the air and landed on Evan’s left pec. A tattoo formed there—a trellis rose with sunset-colored blossoms. When his tattoo was fully formed, I wrote the spell again and gave myself an exact replica, embedding it over my heart.
After the magic had settled, I glanced over at Evan. “You may not get me exactly the way you wanted, but I’m still yours.”
His hand traced my jaw and he leaned in for a kiss only to jump backwards as the bedroom door flew open and Grayson Mars yelled, “You monster!”
I had to swallow a huge laugh that threatened to burst from my lips as all the other guys came crowding into the room, pushing Gray from behind.
“What’s going on?” Z asked grumpily.
“Is someone hurt?” Malcolm quizzed.
Andros just stomped into the room and looked me up and down, as if he could decipher what was wrong by looking at me.