Aaron hung up his cell and tossed it aside, not caring where it landed. For the first ten minutes of the drive, his sole focus had been on sending a ripple through the newswire. Wanting to give Grace some time to leave her house—and himself some time to think of a better idea—he’d called and pushed the televised interview with Grace back two hours. Thank God they’d recognized his name and assumed he held the proper authority with the Pendleton campaign, because he hadn’t even been questioned. They’d even been grateful to have the later flight arranged on their behalf. A flight Aaron had booked on his own credit card without hesitation.
With the task completed and his focus no longer diverted, Aaron’s head was back on fire. That had to account for the crackle and burn of every thought that tried to germinate as it went up in smoke. He could only see Grace. The tears in her eyes, the redness of her nose. The cold climbing up her feet like red ivy. The confidence she’d retained in him before he’d taken a machete and hacked it to pieces. Fuck. Fuck. Hoping to numb himself or put out the flames engulfing his skull, Aaron rolled down the car window, allowing freezing air to whip through the interior, icing his skin, slowing the rush of blood.
Turned out, being cold was worse. Far worse. It gave him too much clarity. What had he done? What had he done? Left her standing there, looking devastated. Crying as he drove away. Oh God, he’d been right last night. He was going to die. The rupture happening inside his rib cage was not something a person could survive. It was too malicious, and yet he welcomed it. Kill me. Finish me.
Who got to continue living after laying a blow on someone so forgiving? One final blow so she would do them both a favor and finally, finally, stop believing he could be something other than the morally corrupt prick that performed mind tricks. His mother’s journal might have given him hope, but then again, Miriam hadn’t known how low her son could stoop, had she? Grace had found out, though. Why the hell hadn’t she turned away from him? The revelation of what he’d done to earn the boot in California obviously hadn’t been enough to damage her faith, but it had reminded Aaron she could be misplacing it. And he loved her too much to let that happen.
So he’d tried to drive her away. He’d insulted their relationship by calling her easy prey. And apparently he’d even lost the ability to lie effectively, because she’d seen right through his bullshit. Still believing the good in him. God.
His leaving would take care of that error. His flight to New York would be rescheduled as soon as he reached camp. He’d be back to business and even more ruthless than before. Whatever humanity he’d been holding on to had been left at Grace’s feet back in the snow. The world hadn’t seen the half of what he could do.
To Aaron’s left, the red notebook full of his mother’s thoughts caught his eye and he scoffed. Falsehoods. Lies. You weren’t as brilliant as you thought, Mom. The silent insult toward his mother resulted in a flash of shame, but he flipped it the bird and moved on. No time for any more thinking. Or feeling. He’d done too much of that lately and look what it earned him. A ticket to mental hell. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t feel.
Aaron could see the newly erected entrance for YouthAspire ahead, one he’d watched cause Grace to flush with pleasure just yesterday, and a roar poured from his mouth, vibrating straight down through his thighs, his toes. No way to keep the thoughts out. No way to do it.
He braked hard just inside the swaying, wooden overhang, noting absently the scheduled volunteers hadn’t arrived yet—too early—and fell from the driver’s side, landing on his knees. Gravel dug into the heels of Aaron’s hands as he stood, bones aching, head splitting with a vengeance. His stomach pitched under the nausea, but there was nothing there to expel, resulting in a dry heave.
“Aaron?” His sister’s voice sounded like it came from a mile away. “Aaron? Jesus!”
“Where’s Bel?” Was that him talking? He sounded deranged. His fingers felt along his lips to confirm the strangled shout came from his mouth. “Where’s my fucking brother, huh? Where is he?”
“Here.” Aaron spun around to find Belmont leaning against the rental van, suitcases stacked at his feet. Arms crossed, blue eyes narrowed to slits. “Need something?”
“Yeah.” Aaron pounded his chest with a bunched fist, images of Grace moving across his vision like a never-ending reel of torture and joy and torture and joy. “Hit me. Knock me out.”
Belmont remained unmoving. “No.”
“Do it,” Aaron bellowed, enjoying the raw discomfort it caused his throat. “I’ve never asked you for a goddamn thing in my life. Have I? I’ll never ask for anything else. Just stop me from thinking of her. I can’t do it when I’m awake. End it, please, just fucking end it.” Aaron lunged forward, delivering a two-handed shove to his brother’s chest. Belmont’s arms uncrossed, irritation coloring his expression as he rebounded off the van, but he didn’t give Aaron the knockout he desperately needed.
“She’ll still be there when you wake up,” Belmont said.
The truth was like nails sliding down a chalkboard. “I’ll deal with it then. Just not now.” Another brutal shove, harder this time. Another. “Do it. Knock me out. I’m begging. Is that what you want—”
Belmont moved so fast, Aaron didn’t have time to prepare before his brother’s arms were wrapped around him in an unbreakable steel hold. Instantly, Aaron’s limbs turned useless, along with his mouth, both paralyzed by shock. His brother was hugging him? Why? Aaron allowed himself to register the sense of…solidarity. Or support. Or something…welcome. And good. Until he realized the rage and self-disgust toward himself had quieted in his mind and that was bad, that was bad. Grace rose once again, twirling up out of the misty ground like a fairy, her smile dazzling in the moonlight. Shhhh, she said, holding a finger across her lips.
Aaron breathed long and deep through his nose, hesitating a beat before placing an arm across his brother’s shoulders. Just in time for another figure to crash against his back—Peggy—if he recognized that muffled, feminine cry correctly. And because it felt right, he reached back and used his free arm to draw his sister close, feeling her cheek nuzzle his back.
Aaron had no idea what the fuck was going on. But the pressure bracing him from both sides was holding him together like glue, and he wasn’t sure if he would have survived otherwise. “I don’t know what to do,” he rasped. “I always know exactly what to do.”
Belmont grunted. “What do you want?”
The answer to that question required zero thought. “Her.”
“Who’s stopping you?” Peggy murmured.
“Me,” Aaron answered, his tongue feeling heavy, lethargic. “I’ve seen and done too many shitty things to be good like her. Good for her.”
“Maybe you’ve seen and done enough shitty things to know you never want to do them again,” Peggy said, her hold tightening.
Aaron sensed Belmont’s nod, the rumble in his chest going off like distant thunder, unfamiliar when up close. “The things from the past…they make you the best one to protect her against them in the future.”
Grace clutching her robe around her neck inside a circle of suits almost collapsed him. If he hadn’t come back, she would have faced that situation alone. Correction, she was facing it alone. Right now. He might have stalled the process, but the senator was a determined man. Tomorrow would be another day, another tactic. Aaron knew the game better than anyone. How to chop at someone from ten different angles until they toppled like a tree. The notion of Grace going through that threatened the relative calm his sibling sandwich had foisted on him.
“I can’t—”
Sage cut Aaron off by joining the group hug, suctioning onto his side with a gentle humming sound. “Stop saying you can’t, Aaron.”
His sigh was heavy, but he was shocked to feel hope trickle into his aching chest. Not yet. He couldn’t hope yet. Not after leaving her crying in the cold. Fuck. “I can’t bring her to New York. Not with this job.” His mind raced for a solution but, for once, came up empty. “My only option is to quit and then what the fuck do I have? What do I offer her?”
“Ask her,” Peggy said. “You should be asking her.”
“I left her.” His legs tried to buckle, but the group held him up. “Twice I left her. Christ.”
Aaron felt a figure weave through his legs, a wet nose slipping up his pants to snuffle at his ankle. He leaned back to find Old Man watching him from the ground, head tilted, but very still. Then the animal turned, trotted toward the Suburban, and waited by the driver’s side door, his usual state of boredom intact.
Sage and Peggy’s giggles shook the group, as if they were sharing one body. “I think he just offered to be your wingman,” Peggy said.
Maybe it was ridiculous, but finally having the dog’s faith got Aaron right in the damn throat. Everything about the moment did. Despite years of being an asshole, he still had his family and their vote of confidence. His mother’s was there, too, shining down from the Iowa sky and warming his neck.
Grace’s faith was there, too. The best person he knew was positive his best was yet to come. He wanted to believe her. So much his lungs burned. His misdeeds had come out of the shadows this morning, but she’d staved the demons off for both of them. Could he join her? Could he be better, forever, for her? God, yes, he could. He needed to be a better man for Grace—and himself—with every inch of his soul.
“I don’t know where she is,” Aaron rasped, hating everything about that statement. “I told her to take her sister’s car and leave—make sure she did without being followed—but I have no idea where she would go.”
“Yes, you do,” Belmont contradicted. “You know.”
Needing some space to think, to pick through the wreckage the last hour had created of his mind, Aaron eased free of the four-way embrace, shoving a hand through his hair, steeling himself against the sudden loss of unexpected support. “Jesus, Bel.” The brothers looked anywhere but at each other. “You couldn’t just knock me out?”
“Next time.”
Peggy and Sage shoved at Aaron’s shoulders, but there was no heat behind the gesture. No, their hearts were all in their eyes, so concentrated, he couldn’t handle it. Not with so much at stake. “I know her. I just…” Moving toward the Suburban, Aaron braced his elbows on the hood, capturing his head in his hands. “I just need to think.”
Which wasn’t easy, because it meant letting the endless footage of Grace flood in, the opposite of what he’d been attempting on the drive to camp. Letting her in was agonizing. Seeing those beloved images while unsure if the damage he’d done could be repaired…it hurt like a motherfucker.
Like a motherfucker. Grace saying those words to him the night before came sliding in on a deluge of longing. Aaron could feel her legs wrapped around his waist, hear the catch in her voice, so telling in terms of the way he affected her physically. The way they affected each other. Aaron pressed his thumbs into his eye sockets, seeing Grace sway into his tent, eyes bright from drinking wine and having an adventure. So alive, so ripe. So Grace. A sliver of light crossed over her naked back as he warmed her inside the sleeping bag…and that’s when he remembered the tattoo.
Coordinates.
I wear them so they can’t wear me, Grace had said.
Oh my God. I love her so hard. No one has ever loved this hard. And it’s mine—I want it. I covet it. I never want to let it go. Never let Grace go again.
Aaron’s hands shook as he turned, facing the south edge of camp. “I know where she is.”
* * *
Grace picked through the forest, climbing on top of a tree stump to look around, judging her location. She hadn’t been back to the site of the burned-down cabin in a while, and after so much time passing, growth continued to creep in, covering up the spot as if it had never happened. The hike, the search, were serving to occupy her mind, but they were doing a terrible job. The tip of her nose hurt and her eyelids felt heavy, but crying wasn’t an option. If she let the tears start, she might sit down and get overtaken by branches and roots, just like the ash-covered earth where the cabin had once stood. Where her friends had perished.
This isn’t how love is supposed to feel. It was such a stupid thing to keep repeating in her mind, but it was solid. It was something she could say without wanting to scream up at the sky, startling the birds from the trees. They were words she could meander through while waiting for Aaron to reason everything out.
Because if she let herself consider the other option—that he’d actually left for good—lying down on the forest floor would be too tempting to resist. Animals could make their homes in her hair, hikers could use her body as a landmark or a bench. At least she would be useful in repose. Right now, she felt anything but.
Whether her father’s motives had been self-serving, she’d let him down. She’d walked away instead of seizing her one chance to be the well-oiled cog in the Pendleton machine. No going back now. Or if she did go back, the option of being useful to her father would probably never present itself again. Moreover, she didn’t want it to. She wouldn’t allow what had happened eight years earlier in that forest to be exploited, along with herself. Especially when her heart was already so exposed, so fresh from Aaron’s rejection.
No, not a rejection. Just a delay. He wouldn’t leave. He would figure it out.
A dreaded sob wrenched from Grace’s mouth and it moved from head to toe, giving her no choice but to plop down, into a mix of snow and leaves. Her palms landed on her knees, face up, and she watched in a daze as white flakes landed on them, dissolving as soon as they touched down.
“You’ve gone and done it now,” she whispered. “Now you’ll never get up.”
Even as Grace said the words, she attempted to stand, knowing the snow could get worse and she couldn’t be stuck in the woods in nothing but the thin leggings she’d thrown on in her haste to leave the guest house. Using a tree and the tread of her boots for assistance, she rose, feeling like the fall had aged her ten years. She needed sleep. She needed…what? Right now, she could only focus on reaching the tragedy site. After this morning, after the suggestion had been made to use the horrific event for political gain, paying her respects seemed vital.
Feeling pretty confident she would find the spot over the next rise, Grace squared her shoulders and climbed over a log, continuing on the overrun path.
“Grace!”
Euphoria crackled in her veins with such exhilarating intensity, Grace lurched forward, clutching the center of her chest. “Aaron.” Her voice emerged as a croak. No way he would hear her. She tried again, but only a whisper emerged.
It didn’t matter, though. Didn’t matter, because he burst through the trees a moment later, looking like an escapee from hell. His eyes were red and bloodshot, shirt untucked, hands outstretched in her direction. So different from the cool, indifferent man she’d met…how many days ago? Hadn’t it been at least a year? Wouldn’t feelings like the ones churning and pumping inside her take a millennium to develop?
Aaron’s gaze raked over her, a choked sound punctuating the air between them. “Oh…God. Baby. I hate when you’re cold. What are you doing out here?”
Grace swallowed, tugging Aaron’s jacket—the one he’d given her back at the house—tighter around her body, sighing as his scent wafted up. “I could ask you the same question.” She wanted to run to him, get caught up in his heat, but not yet. Not until she knew he wouldn’t leave again. That his head had finally caught up with the heart she’d fallen in love with. “How did you know where to find me?”
He crunched forward a step, hands balling and flexing at his sides. “The numbers on your neck…the coordinates.”
“Oh.” A twist beneath Grace’s breastbone stole the breath from her lungs. “You remembered them? After only seeing them once?”
His humorless laugh sent a plume of white into the air, obscuring his face. “I remember every mark on your body,” Aaron answered gruffly, coming closer. “Everything you’ve ever said to me. The way your lips moved saying it. Everything about you is written in stone—” He broke off, chest heaving. “Written in stone somewhere I didn’t think existed. In me. On me. All over me. You wrote yourself there.”
Grace reeled from the joy and the relief that tried to follow, but she forced them to wait. Wait. She’d known that she and Aaron were bonded, but that didn’t mean he would accept it. Accept her. Forever. Because she wasn’t taking any less.
When panic flared in Aaron’s eyes, Grace knew she’d been silent too long after his speech, but couldn’t speak what he’d written on her stone yet. So soon after he’d driven away, the risk was too glaring.
Aaron gave a brisk nod, his eyes never leaving Grace, as he came forward slowly and reached out, asking without words for her hand. “Do you trust me enough to follow me? Please say yes.”
Her response was immediate and honest. She joined their hands, sucking in a gulp of frigid air when electricity zapped straight to her elbow. “Yes.”
“Okay,” he breathed. “That’s something, at least.”
Grace watched Aaron’s profile as they walked, a burn igniting in her belly every time he glanced over, his expression anxious. All Grace could hear was her own breathing, rushing in her ears like a waterfall. They moved in slow motion—or so it seemed—flakes coasting down from above, falling at their feet. She was so distracted, they stopped at the cabin site without her taking notice. Not right away, at least. But Aaron’s subtle head incline at what lay before them forced Grace’s attention outward.
The world seemed to crystallize around them, the air stopping to regard the sight along with Grace. Her pulse eased up then, like a roller coaster, shooting into an upside-down loop. Wedged into the ground were five sanded pieces of lumber. They rose out of the ground, standing approximately two feet high. Without a conscious command from her brain, Grace released Aaron’s hand and drifted closer. Was it a…sun? Yes, the five smooth portions of lumber were arranged in the shape of a sun. One component was round, stuck right in center, with four longer, leaner strips extending outward like sunshine rays. Each ray had a name carved into its surface, and when Grace recognized those names as belonging to her friends, her vision blurred. Blurred so much, she could barely read her own name, carved right there on the center piece.
“I know, if you’d been given a choice, you wouldn’t have wanted your name in the center,” Aaron said behind her, his voice low, gruff. “But you’re the center, whether you like it or not. You’re the center of me. The center of everything, Grace.”
Tears mixed with snowflakes on her cheeks as she remembered Aaron’s absence yesterday, into the evening. “You did this for me.”
“I had help. It turns out…turns out help isn’t so hard to come by if you ask.” She heard his feet scuff the forest floor. “It’s only half finished. The plans I drew up had a moat.”
“A moat?” Grace wondered in that moment if a human being could take flight, if they just wanted it bad enough. Or if two people could hold tightly to each other’s hands and accomplish the impossible feat together. She turned to find Aaron mere inches away, his raging storm gaze trained on her. “This…it’s all I ever needed. Just this quiet, perfect thing.”
“Good replacing bad,” Aaron whispered.
Grace’s laugh came out sounding watery. “You really were listening.” She sniffed and swiped at her cheeks. “Do you honestly think, Aaron, that a man capable of this doesn’t have a heart that could capsize the world?”
“Only because it’s full of you.” Vehemently, he shook his head. “That’s it, Grace. That’s all I know anymore. You’re in there and you’re never coming out. And I don’t have a plan, baby. There’s no plan, except Grace.” He loomed closer, grasping the sides of her face, sliding his thumbs over her cheekbones. “So I’m begging here. I’m begging you to let me be a part of your plan. Could you do that? You want to go where help is needed and brighten the whole damn world like you’ve brightened mine? I’m coming, too.” His breath wheezed in and out. “If you’ll let me, I’ll stand beside you and watch you fucking shine. Will you. Will you let me?”
“Yes. Yes. Oh my God, yes.” She leapt into Aaron’s arms, holding tighter when he grated her name, over and over, his mouth frantic in her hair.
“I love you.” He sank to the ground, cradling Grace on his lap, rocking them back and forth. “I love you, Grace. I’m sorry. I love you. I’m sorry.”
Battling the urge to shout her happiness was paining Grace’s throat so badly, she gave up the fight and let it rip, sending a falcon winging into the sky. “I love you, too.”