Page 74 of Between Heart and Stone

“Silver or gold?”

Unbidden, my eyes dropped to the signet ring Wolfe wore and the thick golden band.

“Gold, please.”

The clerk fit me and then let me select my ring from a handful of options. I opted to forgo the stone, choosing the plain golden band instead.

“Now, the way you wear it has a different meaning,” he explained. “On your right hand if the heart is facing outward, it means your heart is open. Turned inward means your heart is taken.” He rotated the ring around. “On your left hand, an outward heart means engagement. Inward means you’re married.” He handed me the ring and waited expectantly. “Which way will you wear it?”

“Yes, Avery,” Wolfe crooned. “Which way will you wear it?”

Why was I hesitating? Wolfe and I weren’t—we could never be. Even as I thought it, my heart revolted. I didn’t want to spend time with anyone else but him. Didn’t want to hear another’s laugh or voice.

I just wanted him.

“What about ‘it’s complicated?’”

Wolfe chuckled low and rough.

Even the clerk laughed. “Perhaps heart open is the best for now until it’s been properly claimed.”

I nodded, sliding the band on my finger. “Maybe.”

The truth was that my heart was already claimed.

That I’d given it to a ghost, a walking memory.

That it was being healed by a man who no longer existed and, in the end, it would be broken by him too.

Chapter 21

Wolfe

“This is silly. Why am I so nervous?”

Wolfe leaned on the doorjamb to the en suite bathroom in what used to be his old bedroom. He hardly recognized it now. The walls had been painted and decorated with wallpaper tattooed in thistles. Gold frames hung in intervals, pretty watercolors of the sea and cliffs suspended inside. One giant gold mirror took up the corner propped up against the wall.

Avery’s stuff was everywhere, strewn across the bed and over the rugs like she’d torn through her suitcase. He stared at her now, his own reflection hazy in the mirror like it was trapped in steam.

She looked beautiful. Tight jeans that hugged her waist. A pretty, billowing shirt in dark blue that brought out the dark spots in her eyes. Her hair was down and loose, curling around her shoulders.

He watched her do her makeup like an artist studying his canvas—wholly and completely, mesmerizing the lines and colors that made her up.

Time was slipping through his fingers.

As it always was.

In a few short weeks, Kilmorran would return to dust and darkness and he would be left here alone, cursed to watch an unchanging horizon line. He was not so selfish as to ask her to stay but Christ, he wanted to.

He only felt real when she looked at him, said his name.

He ached to give it up now.

“Wolfe?” Avery said his name softly, head tilted.

He did his best to sweep those thoughts away, to focus only on the here and now.

Here, when she was saying his name.