Havenfall (Havenfall #1)(21)

I look up at Brekken. I need to remind myself to blink, not wanting to stare, even if he probably wouldn’t notice. Sometimes in the dark days of winter, when I’m mired in my real life in Sterling, and my life is freezing walks to school and finals and lunch hours spent alone in the library, I think about Brekken and he doesn’t even seem real. Like maybe I’ve only dreamed him. Then I get here again and he’s larger than life.

Sometimes it feels like this—how I feel right now—is the only real thing there is.

“Maybe,” I say honestly. “I have a lot to prove first, but I think so.”

“Well, I think you’d be wonderful.” He looks uncertain, lips parted, like he’s on the brink of telling me something else. I have a crazy urge to touch his lips—to feel whether they are cool, like everything from his world, or warm, hot like my hammering chest, my raging heart. “If you took over, what would it mean for … for us?”

Us. So he feels it too. Maybe. Or else I really have lost my mind.

But I don’t think I’m wrong. Not about this.

He’s so close to me now, leaning closer, looking into my eyes. In the darkness, his are hard to read. The scent of wine edges his breath, and the stars outline his head like a halo. And I don’t know if it’s the wine buzz or tonight’s emotional roller coaster or if this is something that’s been building for a long, long time, but the impulse rises in me like bubbles in champagne. I stretch up, feeling the bale beneath us shift slightly.

“Us?” I ask softly. Our faces are so close, I can feel my breath stutter.

“Yes, us,” he whispers, his words like feathers against my skin, and with that, the gap closes between us.

His lips find mine.

The softest brush of contact. He hovers, not pulling away but not going any further either, and I think my entire body might explode.

The whole world seems to stop turning, as if everything is waiting with bated breath.

And then, all at once, we’re kissing. His mouth is cool against mine—and then warm. A spark of sensations fly through me. Something seems to wake up in me—my heart jumps, and it’s so sweet it almost hurts, the realization that Brekken is kissing me back, one of his hands coming up to cup the back of my neck while he traces my cheek with the other. It sends delicious chills down every inch of my skin. I should do something with my hands too. I move them to his waist, then his back, feeling the solid shape of him beneath his light jacket. He sighs against my mouth. I try to remember to breathe. Can’t remember, can’t think about anything except how he tastes like wine and snow—

He pulls back, looking into my eyes. I let out an embarrassingly ragged breath, trying to read his expression. My heart and mind are competing for which can race the fastest. What is he thinking? Why can’t I tell?

“Maddie.” But then he smiles, and the moon lights him up, bringing out the sharp angles of his face, and warmth floods my whole body as he leans down to kiss me again.

I shift my body closer. My foot connects with something. I register a distant clunk, and the scent of wine spreads through the air. But all I care about is the roaring of my blood in my ears and Brekken’s breathing, faster and faster, and his heartbeat even, as he drops his hands to grip my waist, knotting his fingers in the silk of my jacket. The silver scales of the coat scrape together, and he fumbles with the buttons, and the urgency is suddenly wild, like a surge of birds taking flight all at once, and I don’t care if my jacket is ruined, don’t care about the wine pouring out over the floorboards. Let my jacket tear, let wine drip down onto the horses. Right now, all that matters is how Brekken’s pulled me into his lap, how I can feel his heart hammering against mine, his body shuddering with it. The whole world—all the worlds—could fall apart outside this barn, and in this moment, none of it would matter.

Tonight, Brekken is mine.



I don’t know how long we sat there in the loft, lips against skin, pulses cresting together, breath in the dark, whispers and the startled laughter that escaped as cool air touched my skin, as my jacket and Brekken’s playing cards fell to the floor, landing right in the blooming stain of wine.

I wanted it to go further. I wanted it to be my first time. But then Brekken felt me shiver with the cold, and he—ever chivalrous—promised we’d pick this up later.

Now, lying awake in my room around midnight, too wired to sleep, I feel engulfed in an unfamiliar glow of happiness. There is no rush, I remind myself. We have all summer. We have this time, and we have each other. We have the beginning of whatever this is, blossoming and unfolding between us.

I’ve never been the giddy type, but my chest literally aches with the sweetness of it. I roll over in bed, the roughness of the linen pillowcases creating a tingling feeling against my cheeks as I replay the feel of Brekken’s lips lingering on mine, his cool, sure hands on my hips pressing me against my bedroom door as he went in for the goodbye kiss, his breath in my ear as he whispered good night, Maddie.

Eventually sleep closes in, but the feelings stay with me. Even just in memory, the sensations burn away all Marcus’s worries, all my fears about not belonging, of being unwanted. It doesn’t matter if we have to keep it a secret. I’ll happily spend all three months of summer in the barn loft if it means I get to keep kissing Brekken.

I drift off.

And then a noise cuts through the haze of happiness—as vile and jarring as the dreams it shattered were soft and sweet.