How It Will Be by T. S. Joyce

Chapter Thirteen

 

Bron re-read the note.

 

Bron,

I can’t do this.

Maybe someday, but not right now.

If you care about me at all, you won’t come looking for me.

I need space and time to clear my head.

You’re not the one.

Ren

 

He didn’t believe it. He leaned forward and clenched the paper in his fist, crumpled it and chucked it in the general direction of the kitchen trashcan. He didn’t believe it, because she’d taken the marble. He’d watched her set it right here last night, and now it was gone. If she was sincere about leaving, why take his token?

Something was wrong, and he needed to find her.

He dressed in a rush, barely had his T-shirt on as he shoved open the front door to the crisp dawn outside. His boot-steps made two hollow thuds against the porch floorboards before he skidded to a stop.

She was there. Ren was sitting in her car, staring at him with her heart in her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded, his urge to hurt whatever had flustered her at war with his need to console her.

Slowly, Ren opened her door. Her voice cracked when she said, “I tried to go, and I couldn’t bring myself to drive away from…from…you.”

He exhaled his relief and jogged toward her, caught her up in his arms and crushed her against his chest. She was okay. Whatever was wrong, he was going to make it okay.

“Tell me,” he demanded, gripping the back of her hair as he swayed her from side to side. “Tell me what made you scared.”

“You.”

He didn’t understand, and Ren was a slow open. Always had been, so he did what he knew how to do and waited.

And after a couple minutes of her clutching his shirt and melting against him, she did open. “Losing you scares me. There’s a war building, and Manning said I could stop it. He said if I come back and take Trina’s place, they won’t hurt you, or the Crew.”

He made a clicking sound behind his teeth. Fucking Manning. “And you thought about going without me?” he asked.

She just nodded against his chest.

“That isn’t your life anymore, Ren. You aren’t by yourself. It isn’t you against the world anymore. Do you know what will happen if you go back to Manning alone?”

She didn’t answer.

“The war will still happen. The war was always going to happen. Krome and I started building this Crew knowing what we were getting into. Those shifters pledging? They know too.” He eased back and cupped his hand under her chin, lifted her full, piercing blue gaze to his. “Ask me if we’re afraid.”

Her little nose flared and her eyes rimmed with tears. “Are you afraid?”

Bron shook his head slow. “Not of war, Ren. But if you put yourself in their hands without me at your back? That’s the only thing I can think of that scares me.” He ran his thumb along her jawline and let honesty flow through his tone as he told her, “It’s me and you now. We fight together. Your loose ends from your old life are my loose ends now too.”

“He said I took his amulet, so I’m his.”

Bron clenched his teeth and tried fight the rage that boiled his blood. Slowly, gently, because Ren deserved gentle, he ran his fingertips down her waist to her thigh. When he felt the marble in her pocket, he reached in and pulled it out with two fingers. He lifted it up between them.

“You didn’t accept his token. You accepted mine.”

Her pretty eyes went wide, dipped to the marble, then back up to him. “What?”

He twitched his head toward the woods. “Those pledges get the alliance with the bears. They get to fight. The get a Crew. They don’t get pledge tokens. Do you remember this?”

She stared at the marble and shook her head jerkily.

“I was sixteen. Your parents had just told you your grandpa was sick, they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. Crow Blooded aren’t supposed to get sick, but he was withering away. Laken asked me to come over, and when I showed up at your house, you weren’t there. I asked where you were, and no one else had seemed to notice you were gone. I found you back behind that barn losing it. Just…fuckin’…sobbing.” Why did it gut him just to remember the tear tracks that had been on her little face?

Her expression went slack, and she gasped. “We used to play marbles. I had my lucky ones in my pocket. My grandpa had given them to me.”

He nodded. There it was. There was the painful memory she’d probably blocked.

“You won this one.”

“I tried to give it back, because I knew your grandpa had given it to you, but you wouldn’t take it back.”

“You won it fair and square,” she whispered. “My grandpa wouldn’t have liked me taking it back. He was fair.” She lifted her tear-filled eyes to him. “Why did you keep it?”

“Because it’s the only piece I had of you. You and Laken had that horrible fight right when you were moving out, and I didn’t understand. You left him…” Bron shrugged his shoulders up to his ears. She should know. She should know about what kind of loyalty he was actually capable of. “Ren, you left me, too.” He set the marble on the palm of his hand and offered it to her again. “I didn’t know what you were back then. Now I do.”

Her chin quivered as she stared at his offered token.

“Your loose ends are my loose ends,” he whispered.

A single tear fell to her cheek, like all those years ago when he’d won this marble. Only this time, she didn’t fight taking it back.

She picked it up from his hand and clutched it to her chest, and fell into him. He caught her and held her together, like she’d held him together last night. She was magic and could drag him from nightmares, and now it was his turn to repay her.

He clenched his fist around the amulet around her neck, and broke the chain as he yanked it from her. “You aren’t his, Ren. You belong to you first, and to me second.”

Her shoulders were shaking, but that was okay. She’d tried and failed to run.

It was his favorite failure.

“Where is he?” Bron murmured.

Ren shook her head. “He has so many War Birds. I don’t—”

“Ren.” Bron cupped her cheeks and kissed her lips, stopping her denial. “Where is he?”