Spooked by his sudden reappearance, Tess rears, but I keep my seat even as I hold onto her neck so that I’m not thrown. A vain effort, as it turns out, because my time in the saddle has apparently concluded regardless.
Aiden is already on the ground and reaching for me in an instant, pulling me off Tess’s back to set me in front of him. “Are you out of your goddamn mind? Or just trying to get yourself fucking killed?”
He looks tired and windswept, his breathing heavy and his posture tight, and I must look the same as I struggle to remember how to speak. To remember that I’m upset with him instead of ready to fall into him.
“Answer me, Cora,” he barks again. “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was thinking—” I shove at him but he barely moves, massive and imposing while I snarl, “I wasthinkingthat I was leaving.”
“Because of this?” He pulls the ticket out of his pocket and holds it up in front of me. “This is why you up and left in the night?”
I stare at it, then back at him. Even the sight of it is enough to make me want to cry again. “I’m not going back,” I shout at him, pushing more at his chest until he grabs my wrists to stop me. “Iwon’tgo back.”
“Fuckin’ right you won’t.” He jerks me forward, and I have just enough time for a surprised gasp before his mouth crashes against mine. The force of it—of him—enough to knock me backwards, but he holds me firm. “Don’t you ever fucking run off again.” His commands are quick, muttered between kisses and the type of desperation you canfeel. “Don’t you ever leave again.”
I can’t meet his frantic pace even though I’m trying. Even though I want to, right up until he breaks from me, his hand enveloping mine as he starts tugging me toward the trees. “Aiden.” I grab at his arm, wanting him to face me again, but he keeps walking. “Aiden,wait.” I dig my heels into the dirt and it’s at least enough to get him to pivot back, although that, too, becomes fruitless when he simply bends and throws me over his shoulder.
“Aiden.” I smack my hands against his back, resorting to using my nails when it doesn’t make a bit of difference. “What are youdoing?”
“We come back, and you’re gone,” he says as he keeps going. “Been looking for you all night. Been worried you were fuckingdead. You couldn’t have just waited.”
I thump his back again with my fist before giving up with a huff, my energy temporarily spent. “What was Isupposedto wait for? For you to come back so you could drag me to the coach yourself? Why does it matter how I leave if you want me gone?”
He deposits me back on the ground as abruptly as he’d removed me from it, my world spinning until I’m staring up at him again along with the unrestrained ferocity in his dark eyes. “I donotwant you gone,” he fumes. “I told you that’s never beenwhat I wanted. I wasn’t lyin’.”
“Then why keep the ticket?” I ask him.
“Because it was yours. And I thought at some point you might want it.”
“Then why not put it with the rest of my things? You gave me back everything else. Why not that?”
“Because, Cora…” Aiden replies, crowding me with his size until my back presses against the wide base of a tree, its riot of fall leaves above us blocking out the blue sky. “Because I didn’twantyou to use it. Because no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t give you something that could take you away. Fuck, Istillcan’t.”
I bite my bottom lip, the hands that I have braced against his chest pushing at him less and pulling at him more. “You wouldn’t have kept it if—”
He holds the ticket up in front of me again and rips it decisively into pieces, letting them fall into the dirt and crushing them beneath the heel of his boot.
“But—”
I stare at the torn pieces until I start to cry, then Ireallycry when he cups my face in his hands. “Cora, baby, what have I told you about these tears?”
I laugh but it comes out as a half-sob. “You hate them.”
“I fuckinghatethem.” He rests his forehead against mine. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry I made you think I wanted you anywhere but with us. I got so caught up in thinking that…that if I took what I wanted then maybe you wouldn’t get what you needed.”
“I need you,” I say softly. “I need you and Cypress. I don’t want a different life.”
“I know.” He places a gentle kiss over each of my eyelids as they flutter closed and brushes my tears away with the pads of his thumbs. “And you have us. We’re yours, all right?”
My heart is still racing, my fingers gripping the material of hisvest as his mouth drifts its way down my cheek. “Mine?”
“Yours, Cora.” His mouth meets mine again. “Please stay with us, baby. No more runnin’. Either of us.”
“Okay.” I return his kiss with every bit of longing and pent-up emotion I can muster, and he groans when my tongue brushes with his. “Okay, no more running.”
“Fuck, I missed you.” He buries his hand in my hair so he can tilt my head back and travel down my neck. His lips skimming the mark he left before, as if reassuring himself it’s still there.
“I missed you, too. I couldn’t sleep. Where’s Cypress?”