Page 91 of Blood from the Marrow
“I should want more time,” Marisol muttered as if to herself. “This probably should feel as natural as breathing.” She smiled like she couldn’t believe what she was about to say. “Shouldn’t feel like I’ve been holding my breath my entire life until I met you. Like you brought music and light and life and all I want is more of that.” She bit her bottom lip. “Knowing what’s possible has made me greedy and selfish, and honestly? I don’t care if someone else thinks it’s too soon. I want to belong to both of you. For you to belong to me.” She reached out for Zuri, circling her arm around her. “You’re my home. My heart. And if there is more of you to have, then I want that.” She looked between them again. “I want that for as long as I breathe, and maybe even after that too.”
“Magically bound for eternity? What’s the worst that could happen?” Zuri’s teary gaze belied her nonchalant delivery.
“Do you have doubts?” Elena swallowed hard, preparing herself for rejection.
Zuri looked at her for a long time before her gaze darted to Marisol. It was Zuri’s turn to join the unabashed crying. For her lips to shake and chest to flush hard.
“Words are cheap,” Zuri replied, voice so fragile it nearly broke when it hit the night air. “If either of you has to guess what my feelings are….” She shook her head, but her chin wastrembling and her words split apart. “Then I’ve been pretty shit at showing you.” She laughed, eyes on the moon. When she looked at them again, she was crying. “Every moment since our first night together has been terrifying. I keep feeling like I’m only hanging on to you by my fingertips. Like I’m constantly trying to outrun my fear of losing either of you.” She glanced between them. “And so much of me is scared of this. Of you. Of wanting you and letting myself believe that I can have this. That I deserve?—”
Zuri’s sob interrupted her words and Elena and Marisol pulled her in. Elena held them close enough to crush. Two halves of her own beating heart together. “I love you,” Elena said with the wholly insufficient words. “Both of you. Irrevocably.”
Shaking against her, Zuri let herself cry while Elena and Marisol held her tight. Held her with the promise of a forever foundation. Of never-ending love and support and always.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Despite not having saida word to anyone, news of the impending nuptials spread like wildfire over the weeks leading up to the ceremony. Marisol had barely slept and suddenly her wedding night was just hours away.
It should probably feel scary, but all she could summon was exhilaration. She wanted this. Wanted more than anything to be bonded with the two women who’d given her everything she’d wanted but never hoped to have. Love. Family. Community. Safety. There would never be an emotion more profound than the intense affection Marisol held in her chest.
They’d decided to get ready separately. Well, Marisol had decided and Zuri and Elena had begrudgingly agreed. Elena with her daughters and Zuri with her sisters. Hel had offered to help Marisol get ready, but she’d declined. Not because Elena’s gorgeous face had flared with jealousy while she made breakfast for her and Zuri.Thathad been fun. But it would only feel lonelier with someone she wasn’t close to the way Zuri and Elena were with her people. Lib and Avani had both tried to bully their way into her room, but Marisol had barred them all and threatened to call off the ceremony if they didn’t respect her wishes.
There was something right about getting ready on her own. She’d done so much on her own, but this would be the last moment of solitude. It felt symbolic or maybe even poetic, and for the first time since her grandmother died, she didn’t resent being alone. She could play music at full blast and sing her heart out on the happiest day of her life so far.
Marisol had just come out of the shower in one of the small guesthouses when someone knocked at the front door. She chuckled to herself and wondered who’d broken first: Zuri or Elena. It was really fifty-fifty. Zuri might not be able to stand the idea of Marisol being alone, and Elena was terrible at following anyone’s rules but her own.
She ignored the door and pulled on the sweats and T-shirt she’d wear while she did her own hair and makeup. An unexpected voice followed another knock.
“Marisol, it’s, um… me… Clara.”
She froze in the small living room with the blow-dryer running in her hand.
“I’m sorry, I don’t want to bother you. I just wanted to give you something,” she called through the door. “I wanted to explain what it is, but I can just leave it on the front step here. Maybe it’s self-explanatory.”
Unsure if Clara could see her through the gap in the living room curtains she’d only haphazardly closed, Marisol didn’t move a muscle. She stood there for several pounding heartbeats until she remembered Clara wasn’t a freaking bird of prey and Marisol wasn’t a field mouse. She couldn’t avoid detection through stillness.
Deciding it was better to get any awkwardness over with, Marisol dropped the dryer on the couch and opened the door. Clara stood on the other side, holding a small plastic planter that had once been a 2-liter soda bottle with a piece of woodcoming out of the dirt. A single bright green leaf had sprouted precariously at the top.
“I brought you something,” Clara repeated.
“A stick?” Marisol asked with a smile, hoping for a joke because her mood was still at meteoric heights.
Clara chuckled and Marisol was relieved that she’d heard the levity she tried to infuse in her tone.
“It’s a fig tree.” Clara looked down at her offering and back at Marisol. “Well, it will be a fig tree. Right now it’s a cutting.”
Marisol waited for more of the explanation locked behind Clara’s thin lips.
“We don’t have a ton of traditions,” Clara said. “But, um…”
“Do you want to come inside?” Marisol asked after a beat, surprising Clara as much as herself.
Watery hazel eyes stared back at her for several seconds until Clara nodded. Until Marisol stepped out of the way and showed Clara to the couch.
Sitting across from Marisol, Clara gripped the plastic vessel in her lap like it was a shield. A lifeline. “The way we live, we rarely get legally married,” she explained. “Some of us think paper trails matter. Others don’t.” She shrugged. “We always err on the side of caution.”
Marisol nodded, brow furrowed to match the tightening in her chest. The more she learned about the Aglion, the more she understood Clara had tried to spare her. Even if she’d never agree that it was better to be left behind, she couldn’t see it as a selfish, callous act anymore.
“So, we developed this way of commemorating unions.” She handed Marisol the plant. “The tree with the deepest roots ever recorded was a wild fig. The internet also says that it represents peace and the cycle of life. I don’t know if that’s what it was meant to symbolize at first,” she rambled half to herself before meeting Marisol’s eyes again. “But for us, now at least, it feelsgood to leave something that will take hold and won’t move. When a couple—” Her eyes widened and her face flushed hard. “When members of our little group want to join together as a family, they plant a fig tree somewhere it will thrive. Then it will establish the roots we can’t.”
