Page 25 of When Jess Wainwright’s Curiosity Was Satisfied (Wainwright Sisters #4)

Chapter Twenty-Five

J ess buried herself in her work. In her teaching and her studies. She was up until nearly dawn every morning, sketching and writing. She was nearly finished with her article, and as she looked at the pile of drawings at her elbow, the bright memory of the piece of folded paper she’d found, when she thought he was finally hers, burned in her chest.

She knew her sisters worried about the lavender circles beneath her eyes and the way her laughter faltered and died when they tried to raise her spirits. Jess knew she would be fine again. Someday. She had other things to occupy her mind against the intrusion of a gaze like the wounded blue of the sky before a winter storm. Other things to occupy her hands instead of the way the stubble of his jaw felt beneath her touch. She pushed the papers aside and rose to her feet, just as there was a gentle but determined knock at the door.

“Jess, you have a visitor,” Vin said through the door.

She tidied herself in the mirror, and braced herself to face the parents of one of her students. Because she knew the one visitor she wanted would never cross her threshold again. “Coming,” she called.

When she walked into the parlor. It wasn’t one of her students. Or their parents. It was him.

He turned to face her and he looked as bereaved and stricken with grief by things lost as she felt. His eyes, that wounded blue she couldn’t forget, roamed over her in disbelief and awe.

“You haven’t changed.”

“I have changed,” she corrected as she took the seat he gestured toward.

She perched on the edge of the chair, too afraid to lean forward, too afraid to tell him more.

He walked forward and dropped to his knees. When he laid his head in her lap, and sighed like it was the only place in the world he wanted to be, she clenched her fists in her skirts. Just as she’d done that fateful day in her classroom.

“Why are you here?” She asked around the knot in her throat.

He lifted his head and his eyes were red-rimmed. That’s when she knew sleep had escaped him too. That the dreams never left him alone, just as they crowded her.

“I’m here because I’ve been an idiot. Just like my sister said. Just as your sister told me a few moments ago. I finally apologized to your murderous sister Lavinia, and I don’t think she’s going to poison me.” His mouth quirked in a half smile and his chest expanded in a deep breath.

Jess barely dared hope he was finally going to be brave.

“You are an idiot,” she agreed. “But I thought we’d already established that.”

“I’m an idiot because I can’t stay away. Because staying away from you is making me die slowly inside. I’ll take anything, dragonfly. Even if it’s only your friendship. But I want more than that because you’re so much more,” he mumbled against her knee. “You’re everything.”

“I’m everything?” Jess wasn’t going to let him off so easily.

He raised his head again and clasped her knee through her skirts. “Everything, dragonfly,” he repeated and pulled a rolled sheaf of papers from the pocket of his overcoat.

She took the sheaf and unfurled it. When she did, the tears closed up her throat again. “What is this?” Jess hoarsely asked.

“Your dragonflies. I tore apart my library looking for references. And when I’d exhausted it, I wrote to every scientific society I could think of, asking for more. I drew every single one of them.”

“Why would you do that?” She asked as her eyes met his.

“Because I want to be part of you and this,” he gestured toward the papers she was clutching. “Because I want to be the man that strives to be enough for you and gives you the strength to become all the things I know you can become.”

“You want to be all of those things, but you still haven’t said the words I want to hear,” she confessed in a strangled breath.

He grasped her knee again. “I love you, dragonfly. I love you so much it hurts when I breathe. I love you so much I can’t think of anything but you and nothing I do banishes the thought of you. I’m begging you to let me prove how much I love you.”

“How will you do that? What if I don’t think this groveling is enough?” Jess sharply asked through her almost tears.

He tipped his head back and closed his eyes. When he opened them again he laughed harshly. “Then I’ll grovel and grovel until it is. Until you finally tell me it's enough and you’re giving me another chance. I want to help you catalog every species of dragonfly there is. I want to take you fishing and watch the sunlight in your hair, and make you laugh.”

She leaned forward and cupped his stubbled jaw and stared directly into his red-rimmed eyes. “You’re enough, Cadoc. You’ve always been enough.”

“Thank Christ,” he mumbled as he rose to his feet and gathered her in his arms.

She nestled there, in the crook between his shoulder and his neck, as her heart thudded to the rhythm of his. She laid her hand over that reverberation, to reassure herself that he was truly there and finally, irrevocably hers. “I don’t want to wait for the banns.”

He hummed in laughter, not harsh this time, but relieved. “I’ll call in every favor I have to procure a special license,” he promised as he kissed the crown of her head.

When Jess lifted her head, his lips met hers. His kiss had the same softness that had fluttered against hers when she left him at the church, when he’d kissed her farewell for the final time two weeks ago. But this wasn’t a kiss of farewell, it was one of bravery.