Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 173

Chapter 173

Jaxon

As soon as I hang up with Noah, I go in search of Skye and find her in the garden. Of course I find her in the garden. We have apparently established the garden as the location for every conversation that matters. I don’t know when this became the rule. I just know it’s true.

She’s on the bench near the roses, which is also where she always is. She looks up when she hears me coming. The expression she has before she manages it into something more neutral-tells me she’s been obsessing over something since the text exchange.

I sit across from her on the bench opposite. “Hi,” I greet awkwardly, because there is no guidebook for this situation..

“Hi.” She blushes and it;s fucking adorable. But also tells me she’s just as unsure how to act as I am, which is oddly comforting.

We’re quiet for a moment in the way we’ve learned to be quiet with each other and I find myself hoping that’s one of the things we can get past soon.

“I keep trying to figure out what I’m supposed to say,” she says finally. “We established we’re both figuring it out. But then I don’t know what that looks like day to day.”

“Neither do I,” I say, relieved I’m not alone in that.

“Which is deeply inconvenient.” She sighs.

I look at her. The woman I’ve been watching become someone extraordinary for over a year. Who is wearing another man’s mark on her shoulder-which I can’t not notice, can’t not be aware of-and is still sitting here asking if I want to figure it out.

“Can I ask you something?” I say.

“Of course,” she responds immediately.

“What do you actually want? From me. Specifically.” I hold her gaze, not letting her hide from me. “Not from the situation. Not from the arrangement or what it might look like or what makes sense logistically. From me.”

She’s quiet for a moment. Looking at me the way she looks at things she’s deciding to be honest about.

“I don’t know all of it yet,” she confesses. “But I know I don’t want to lose what we’ve built. As Benji’s parents.” She pauses. “And I know I want the chance to find out what else is there. Without pressure in either direction.”

“Okay.” I was hoping for more but I can agree to that much.

“What do you want?” She flips the script on me.

And this is where I almost say it.You. Specifically and completely, in every way. I want you.

The words are right there-have been there since the garden on her mating day, honestly, have been somewhere underneath everything for longer than that.

But the bond is warm and present and doing what bonds do, and I can’t fully separate what the bond is telling me from what’s genuinely mine. Because while the wanting her part is true, the sharing her part is more difficult to accept. And saying I want you when I’m not completely certain whether I mean it or the bond means it-

That would be another version of the old mistake. Acting on what I feel without being sure what I feel.

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“The same,” is my cowardly answer. “The chance to find out. And not making assumptions about what it is before

Know.”

She nods, and I can’t be sure, but I think I see a flicker of disappointment. But it’s the honest thing. And honest is what we’re working with.

I’m walking back through the main house when Dimitri appears in the hallway. We don’t usually have direct conversations. Our relationship has been politely transactional since I arrived at the estate-he manages things, I exist in the west wing, we acknowledge each other with professional courtesy. He’s always been, clearly, Nicolai’s

person.

But this time, he stops. So I stop too.

“For what it’s worth,” he says-no preamble, just straight to it, which I’m learning is how he operates-“he meant what he said. About figuring it out.” He holds my gaze. “I’ve known him for fifteen years. He doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean.”

I take this in. “I know,” I acknowledge. “That’s what makes it harder.”

Dimitri looks at me, perplexed for a moment. “Makes what harder?”

“Trying to deserve it.” I’m not sure why I admit that to him but it’s true and I can;t take it back.

Something shifts in his expression. Not sympathy exactly. More like-recognition. Of something he wasn’t expecting to see.

“Then keep trying.” He shrugs and walks away.

I stand in the hallway for a while considering the interaction. There’s a particular quality to being seen clearly by sømeone you haven’t been paying close attention to. Like discovering a mirror you didn’t know was there.

Trying to deserve it. That’s the thing, isn’t it. That’s the whole thing.

Nicolai built a life with Skye and is being asked to rethink everything about that life so that she can choose. Skye is trying to figure out what she wants without being crushed by the wanting. And I’m standing in a hallway in someone else’s estate trying to become the person who deserves to be part of what they’re building.

That’s going to take more than good intentions. It’s going to take the actual work.

I’ve been doing that work for a year. But I need to keep doing it, even when it’s hard.

Nothing’s ever been harder.

Cara Anderson

Author

Thank you for reading!

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