Page 104 of Incoronate
“We’re not brooding, angel. We’re appreciating the gravity of the situation.”
“Well, can you not then?” I said, glancing between the two of them. “You’re kind of ruining the vibe.” I crossed my arms loosely over my chest and lifted a brow. “In case you didn’t notice, I’m not actually dead yet, you know.”
“Jesus, Jemma.” Trace’s voice came out rough and pained in equal measure.
Dominic’s jaw hardened. “If that is your idea of a joke, love,” he said, his tone low and clipped, “you ought to work on your timing and delivery.” His dark eyes were unwavering, but there was something around the edges of him tonight that wasn’t quite as composed as usual. A hairline fracture in the marble, so fine you’d miss it if you didn’t know exactly where to look. And I did. I always had.
I felt the smile slip from my face.
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” I let out a slow breath and looked between them, at the careful way they were both holding themselves together for my benefit, and felt something in my chest pull tight. “It’s just…you’re both looking at me like I’m about to walk into a firing squad with no hope of survival, and I need you to stop. Because if you keep looking at me like that, I’m going to start believing it too, and I can’t afford to do that right now.”
Trace dropped his gaze to the floor, his elbows finding his knees again, rubbing the back of his neck in the way he did when he was working through something he didn’t quite have the words for yet. Dominic still hadn’t moved from where he stood, but his eyes had found mine and stayed there, dark and full of everything he hadn’t said out loud.
When Trace finally looked back up at me, whatever he’d been hiding behind his eyes all evening was right there on the surface of them.
“We’re not looking at you like that because we think you’re going to lose,” he said gravely, his gaze dragging over me as though we had all the time in the world. “You’re the strongest person I know, Jemma. You have no idea what it’s been like to watch you become who you are. To see you get back up stronger every time you fell. We’re looking at you like thatbecause you’re the most important thing in either of our lives, and tomorrow you’re going to walk into something we can’t follow you into.”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. I hadn’t expected that to hit me the way it did. I had made my peace with tomorrow. What I hadn’t prepared for was watching them have to make theirs.
“All I keep thinking about is how bad I want to port you out of here,” he went on, almost to himself, as though the confession had been sitting in his mouth all evening just waiting for a chance to get out. “To just grab you and go. To take you somewhere they’d never find us. Somewhere none of this could touch you.” His jaw flexed as he met my gaze and held it. “I’d torch the whole fucking plan to the ground without losing a second of sleep over it.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” I said, my voice shaky enough to suggest I wasn’t entirely sure he wouldn’t.
“No.” He said it in a way that told me he’d already thought about it every which way and ultimately ended up at the same place. “But I want to,” he said as he pushed up from the edge of the bed and crossed the short distance between us, stopping close enough that I had to tilt my chin up to look at him.
He looked at me for a long moment, the way you look at something you’re trying to memorize.
“But I also know you’d never forgive me for it,” he said as he reached out and tucked a still-damp strand of hair back from my face with a tenderness that was almost unbearable. “Because I don’t have the right to make that choice for you. Doesn’t make it any easier to stand here and watch you get ready to walk into it though.”
Something in my chest cracked open along a seam I hadn’t known was there.
“If it makes you feel any better, I’m not afraid.” I lifted my gaze to Trace first, then to Dominic, who still hadn’t moved from where he stood, his eyes tracking between me and Trace with that careful, even attention he gave to things that mattered to him. “I know that probably sounds like something you’re supposed to say. But I mean it. I’ve made my peace with whatever happens, and I need you to make yours too.”
“How do you reckon we do that, angel?”
“I don’t know.” I slipped past Trace and made my way to the edge of the bed, lowering myself onto it. The lamplight was warm and low, and for a moment I just let the hush sit with me while I tried to find the words that were actually true rather than just comforting. “I think the only way to make peace with something you can’t control is to decide that what already happened is enough. That it was worth it. Everything that brought us here, every terrible, painful, impossible thing. All of it was the price of admission. For this. For you two. For the life I actually got to have.”
I looked up and met their eyes and felt something in my chest open up wide and aching. It wasn’t grief exactly. It was something more like fullness. The strange gravity of a life that had become, against all odds, worth grieving.
“And if the same road that gave me all of that leads me to tomorrow, then I think that’s just what it costs.” I held their gazes, one and then the other, and meant every word of what came next with everything I had. “And it was worth it. Every single bit of it was worth it.”
Trace pushed his hands through his hair and let his head fall back against the wall. The bond between us trembled with everything he was feeling, and then it cracked open like a fault line giving way beneath its own pressure. All of his grief and love and helpless, aching fear poured through it at once and slammed into me so hard I almost couldn’t hold myselftogether. My vision blurred. My throat closed. For one terrible moment I was right there on the edge with him, staring down into the same abyss.
But I didn’t let myself fall.
Instead, I gathered everything I had. Every certain, hard-won morsel of the peace I’d found in the bathroom, and pushed it back through the bond toward him. Warm and deliberate and unambiguous, threaded through with every last piece of the love I had for him, all the way down to the marrow of it.
His head lifted from the wall as though he’d been struck by something. A single tear cut a slow path down his cheek, but he didn’t bother to wipe it away. He just looked at me with those ruined blue eyes, chest heaving, while I held his gaze and let myself say the things I had been carrying since the day he walked into my life. The things he needed to know if I didn’t make it back in one piece tomorrow.
“You were always my home, Trace,” I said, my voice so honest it almost felt like I was giving confession. “Even before I knew I needed one. Nothing about loving you ever felt like work. It never felt like we were trying to force ourselves to fit together. We just did. Like we’d always been meant to fit.” My voice held even as my eyes burned.
Something moved through his face at that. He lowered himself to the floor, sitting back against the wall with one hand pressed to his mouth like he needed something to hold back whatever was trying to get out.
I didn’t hesitate. I crossed the room and sank down in front of him, close enough that our knees were almost touching, close enough that when I reached for his face, he didn’t have to move toward me to meet it.
“For every time I lost myself, you never let me believe I was gone for good. You kept holding on, even when I gave youevery reason to let go. You loved me through every mistake, every scar, every terrible thing I dragged to your door. Even when I was unlovable and unforgivable.” I pressed my lips together, studying his face, memorizing it. “I don’t know what happens tomorrow. But I know that whatever it is, I would choose this. I would choose you. Every single time, in every single version of this life, I would choose to do it all over again with you. Even if we didn’t get our happily ever after. Because the ride was everything, Trace. You were everything.”
His eyes closed briefly as I leaned in and kissed him, slow and full of everything my words no longer had room to hold. I felt him exhale against me, like something he’d been holding for months had finally been allowed to go.
