Chapter 118: BECAUSE YOU LET ME IN, LUMI

Chapter 119

Lumi

"Your what?" Ren repeated, twisting around on the bike seat to look at me, and the offended expression on his face was so perfect that I had to bite the inside of my cheek.

"Grandmother," I said, as sweetly as I could. "She drove a Volvo, and she signalled before every single turn, even on empty roads."

"I do not drive like a woman in a Volvo."

"You went thirty through the village."

"There was a child on a scooter!"

"There was a child on a scooter forty minutes ago, Ren." I swung my leg over the bike and slid down onto the gravel, still laughing.

The second my boots hit the ground I noticed the look in his eyes, that slow, dark glint that always came before he did something ridiculous. "What?"

"Nothing."

"That’s not a nothing face."

"It’s the only face I have." He climbed off the bike and set the helmet on the seat like it was made of glass, and then he straightened up and rolled his shoulders back, and my stomach dipped.

"Ren."

"Lumi."

"Don’t you dare."

"I’m only standing here." I took one step backwards, then another, and he took one forward.

My heart was already racing, and I knew he could hear it, so I did the only sensible thing and bolted down the gravel path toward the trees.

I heard him laugh behind me, low and delighted, and I heard his boots hit the ground a second later.

The wind tore at my hair and my borrowed jacket flapped around my knees, and I was running, which I hadn’t done in so long that my lungs burned with.

"You can’t outrun an Alpha!" he shouted.

"Watch me!"

"I am watching you! You’re running like a duck!"

"I’m running like a winner!"

I was nearly at the bend where the path dips down toward the river when his arm closed around my waist from behind, and the ground simply disappeared.

I yelped as he swung me up and over his shoulder like I weighed nothing, and the whole world turned upside down, pine trees and sky and the back of his jeans.

"Ren! Put me down!"

"No."

"I mean it!"

"You’ve said that to me four times this week." He started to jog, and I bounced against his shoulder with every step, laughing so hard I couldn’t even breathe properly. "I don’t think you mean it."

"I’m going to be sick on your back!"

"No, you won’t."

"Ren, put me down right now!"

"Say please."

"Absolutely not!"

"Then we’ll just keep going." He ran faster, and the trees whipped past.

I beat my fists on his back without a single ounce of force, because every bit of me was too busy shaking with laughter to fight.

He ran down the slope with me bouncing helplessly, all the way to the river’s edge, and then at last he swung me round and set me on a flat rock.

I was dizzy, breathless and flushed to my ears.

"You," I gasped, gripping his shirt to stay upright, "are a menace."

"And you ran like a duck." He caught my chin with two fingers, grinning down at me, and kissed me quickly, once, before I could think of a comeback.

I was still staring at him, stunned, when he did it again.

"That’s two," I said.

"I’m counting."

"You can’t just ambush me with kisses."

"I can, actually." He sat down next to me on the rock and stretched out his long legs. "It’s one of the perks of being the Alpha."

"That’s not how that works."

"Make me stop, then."

I opened my mouth to argue and couldn’t think of a single reason to, so I leaned against his shoulder instead and watched the river slide past, glittering and slow.

....

We stayed there for ages, talking about everything and nothing. He told me about the first time he tried to climb the big oak behind the estate and got stuck at the top for four hours, too proud to call for help, until Neve found him and made him cry by laughing so hard.

He had no idea, but Neve has told me this like a thousand times. She asked not to tell him.

I told him about my first week in London, how I’d cried in a supermarket over the price of a lemon, and he didn’t laugh at that. He went quiet and squeezed my hand until the sting of it passed.

"I love this," he said after a while.

"Love what?"

"Talking to you." He was looking at the water, but a small smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.

"I’ve been thinking about it all day. I could sit here until midnight and still have something else to ask you. What’s your favourite biscuit, or what you wanted to be when you were small, or why you hum when you’re making tea."

"I do not hum. And besides you know everything about me." I was not wrong, Ren knew till the tiny details.

"You hum every time. It’s usually the same three notes."

I stared at him. "I didn’t know that."

"I know you didn’t." He turned his head and looked at me, and the warmth in his eyes made my throat go tight. "That’s why I notice."

I didn’t have an answer for that, so I did what I’d done most of my life when something felt too big, and I pulled out my phone. "Smile."

"Lumi."

"Smile, you grump."

He gave me a smile so stiff and obedient that I snorted, and the picture came out blurry, with my laughing face half off the screen and his arm wrapped around my shoulders.

I stared at it for a moment and found that I loved it more than any careful photograph I’d ever taken.

"Keep that one," Ren said quietly.

"It’s terrible."

"It’s us." He took the phone from me, held it out at arm’s length, and pressed his mouth to my cheek just as the shutter clicked. "That one too."

....

By four we had made our way into the village, because I’d said, without thinking, that I wanted something sweet, and Ren had taken it as a command.

Neither of us was dressed for it, me in his huge jacket with a leaf stuck in my hair, and him with flour still dusted along one sleeve, and yet nobody gave us more than a friendly nod.

The baker waved from behind her counter, and an old man outside the post office lifted his flat cap at Ren, and a little girl on the pavement stared at us with her mouth open like we were celebrities.

"They’re staring," I whispered.

"They’re not staring at me." Ren tucked my arm through his. "They’re staring at the woman who won the court case."

"Oh, God."

"Wave."

"I’m not waving."

"Wave, Lumi."

I lifted one hand, red to the roots of my hair, and the little girl waved back so hard that her mother had to catch her balloon. It was ridiculous how much that small gesture warmed me through.

We found a tiny ice cream shop at the end of the high street, with a chalkboard outside and wobbly lettering and three plastic chairs, and Ren insisted on paying even though I told him I had money.

He ordered mint chocolate chip, and I ordered salted caramel, and when we sat down on the kerb outside, he looked at my cone and then at me with an expression so earnest I knew exactly what he wanted.

"Fine," I sighed, and held it out.

He took a bite, and a smear of caramel stuck to the corner of his mouth, before I could tell him, he leaned over and kissed me.

The sweetness filled my mouth, cold and salty and warm at the same time, and my whole body went soft.

"That’s three," I murmured against his lips.

"Four, actually. I did one on the rock while you weren’t looking."

"You what?"

"You were watching a duck."

"I was not watching a..." I stopped, and we both started laughing, and I hid my face in his shoulder.

He put his arm around me and kissed my hair, and a woman walking past with a pushchair smiled at us in the way that people do when they remember being young.

"Ren?"

"Mm?"

"Why do you like me so much? I am you elder sister’s friend and I’m older and I have a son. I am a single mother too."

I hadn’t meant to ask it, and the second the words were out, I wished I could swallow them.

But he didn’t tease me, and he didn’t say anything quickly. He set down his cone on the paper napkin, turned all the way toward me, and took my free hand in both of his.

"Because you’re brave when you’re scared," he said. " Because you apologise to furniture when you bump into it." His thumb moved over my knuckles.

"And because you let me in, Lumi. After everything, after everyone who should have been good to you and wasn’t, you looked at me and you said yes. I think about that every morning, and I’m so grateful that it makes my chest ache."

My eyes burned, I blinked them hard to control them but a tear escaped anyway and rolled down my cheek.