He Chose Her, So I Refused to Become His Luna novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: Rule Four

Hester left for her neighbor's house at dusk with a bag and a straight face.

"Mrs. Aldous has a cough," she said. "I'll be gone all night. Don't wait up."

She did not have a neighbor named Aldous.

She shut the door behind her, and the cabin went quiet.

Tobias stood by the stove with his sleeves pushed up and his hands in the dishwater.

I sat at the table with the burned card in front of me.

"Ask him why the baby mattered," I said. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know."

"The morning I told Dirk I was pregnant, he didn't smile."

Tobias turned off the tap.

"I thought he was in shock. He asked if I was sure. He asked me not to tell anyone yet, not even Hester." I turned the card over. "That week he drove me to the stone to sign the ledger. It wasn't even a season turn. He said it was a formality."

"You signed."

"I always signed."

He came and sat across from me. For a while neither of us said anything.

"I'm so tired of being someone's formality," I said.

"You were never mine."

I looked up.

"I asked you to dance, the night he marked you," Tobias said. He kept his eyes on the table. "Three hours before. At the Harvest Moon. I'd been working up to it for a month."

I remembered.

I remembered a young man from Cold Creek in a borrowed jacket.

I remembered laughing, because I was twenty-five and sure of everything.

"I said maybe next year," I said.

"You said, 'Maybe next year, Hargrove.' Then you smiled at me and went to find him." His mouth twisted. "There wasn't a next year. That's what I've been carrying. That's mine, Dara."

I got up and went around the table.

He started to rise. I put my hand flat on his chest and he sat back down.

"Rule four," I said.

"Dara."

"No touching that isn't needed. You said it yourself." I put one knee on the chair beside his hip. "Hargrove, this is needed."

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