Page 119 of Lavender Lake
He chuckled, brushed my hair away from my face, and pressed a kiss to my brow.
“Thank you for showing me the tree.”
“No one else has seen it,” I said.
“No one?”
“No.”
“Not even Hadley?”
“Not even Hadley. It was a me and Mom thing. Hadley has things that are just between her and Mom too, I’m sure of it. It’s nice, actually. We’re twins, you know? And people call usthe twinsand sometimes it feels like we don’t have a separate identity. Mom always made sure we felt like individuals.”
His hand stroked up and down my arm. “So, you never showed Gideon the tree either?”
“No. Gideon’s never seen the tree.”
I placed my hand on his heart, loving the steady pulse of it. Reminding me that he was alive. We both were. And that I was no longer scared of the future or what it looked like.
“He sent letters,” I said quietly. “One a week from the moment I left and went to New York. I returned them all to him. Unopened. He stopped writing after a year.”
“Why?”
“Because he finally understood that I wasn’t coming home.”
“No, not why did he stop writing. I meant, why didn’t you open them?”
“Hadley was the only person, the only connection I could stand from home. Everything and everyone else . . . it was too painful. Too much of a reminder. Gideon was everything I was trying to forget. I hurt him, deeply. When I left and when I didn’t answer him.”
“Self-protection.”
“Something like that. I didn’t want to hurt him. But I was hurting too much to even be able to think of anyone else’s pain.”
“You were young.”
“And I’m not young anymore? Old at the ripe age of twenty-three?”
“You’re not even close to old. Not like me.”
“Right. You’re thirty-four. What was it like during the Civil War?”
“Brat.”
I giggled. And then Cas rolled me over so I was on my back, and then he attacked me with tickles until I was gasping for breath.
“Surrender!”
“Never!” I fired back.
He clasped my wrists, held them above my head, and pinned my lower body with his.
Cas peered into my eyes. “You’re a fighter. I love that about you. And I love you, Salem.”
I swallowed. “You love me?”
“Yes.”
No flowery words. No poetic delivery.
