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“I wasn’t going to let him take you.”
“Zeke, there’s no way?—”
“You don’t have to marry me.” I cross the room to where the whiskey bottle is and pour myself a generous tumbler. My heart is still racing, adrenaline still coursing through my veins. “It’ll just be for show. On paper. In a few months we can dissolve it. If that’s what you want.”
I turn to face her after I’ve said what I’ve said, and my heart sinks a little. Marriage wasn’t on my radar. Certainly wasn’t on Blue’s. After our confessions last night, I was hoping for time but Hildebrand threatening to take her to The Tribunal? No. I can’t risk that. To him, she’s a loose end to tie up. If he gets her there, she may not be leaving.
“I… Can I have one?” she asks, pointing to the whiskey and dropping into a seat.
I pour her a glass and take it to her. She drinks, winces but swallows.
“You haven’t had a chance to live, Blue. I know that. You’re nineteen years old. You’ve been on the run since you were sixteen. No matter what I may want, I’m not going to steal any more of your freedom.”
She looks up at me, her eyes huge and I remember the girl from the first night when she’d given me her hand to stitch up. How she’d gritted her teeth at the pain and gotten through it. How, in a way, she’d trusted me from the beginning. It’s fucked-up, I know.
“But for now,” I continue when she doesn’t speak. I take a seat across from her. “We need to do this. He won’t let this go.”
She drinks the rest of her whiskey, gets up and walks to me. Then like she had that night in Carlton Bishop’s basement, she kneels between my legs and sets her head on my lap. I pet her hair and there’s something about this posture, her like this, me as I am, that is so perfect, so right, that I don’t want it to end.
“Do you think I’m strong?” she asks without looking at me
“You’re the strongest woman I know.”
“Good.” She turns her gaze up to mine. “What if I didn’t want to dissolve it?”
“What?”
“What if I didn’t want to dissolve the marriage?”
“You can’t make that decision now.”
“Can you?” She sits up on her heels and sets her hands on my knees. “You told me last night that you love me. Was that true?”
“What kind of question is that? Of course it’s true.”
“Well then what a stupid way to propose telling me I can dissolve it in a few months.” She shakes her head. “I love you, you idiot. And you’re not stealing my freedom because I would never let you or anyone ever do that to me. How many people have tried over the last three years? None have succeeded. Now,” she gets up, folds her arms across her chest. “If you want to marry me, you ask me properly, Ezekiel St. James. Down on one knee.”
31
BLUE
“Judge Montgomery owes me a favor,” Jericho says once Zeke and I announce that we’re going to get married.
“You’re getting married?” Angelique asks. The other kids are already upstairs being bathed by Cynthia and getting ready for bed.
I only said yes after Zeke got down on one knee. He thought I was joking at first.
“I’ll make the call. We won’t be able to get a license anywhere else and he’ll be able to perform the ceremony. If you’re both sure, that is?” Jericho says.
Zeke looks at me, eyebrows raised.
I nod.
He smiles. “It may be sooner than either of us expected but it is exactly what we want.”
I turn to Jericho who I know is still hesitant about me. “I love your brother. I’ll prove that to you,” I tell him.
“You don’t have to prove anything to him,” Isabelle says, taking my hand. “I see it.”
