Make Me Whole
Page 32
“That’s a promise I can live with.”
Nick’s thumb brushed across Galen’s cheek, and he leaned closer, touching his forehead to Galen’s. “Come home, Galen. I’ve missed you so much. Please come home with me.”
“You don’t know how much I’ve been waiting to hear those words. I can’t believe I thought you’d moved me out. I should’ve known better.”
“No more regrets. No more looking at the past. We’re just going to look forward from now on.”
Galen smiled and felt Lykon tug free. Lykon appeared next to them and crossed his arm over his chest in a private salute before turning toward the final statue. Nick tensed, and Galen held his breath as they watched Lykon go to Dexios, who reached up and pulled him down into his embrace. The statue shimmered, and Galen could see Lykon lying down and facing him, both of them so lost in each other. The outline was there, but they weren’t whole yet.
“So close,” Galen groaned, aching for them. “Have they ever been this close to being together again?”
“I don’t think so.” Nick turned Galen away, his gaze unshadowed. “But I know it’ll happen now. It’s just a matter of time.”
Galen smiled back at that certainty and nodded. He felt it too, in Lykon’s joy as he left him, in the contentment and love in the statue’s embrace. He felt it in the way Nick held him, in this confidence in their own love. “Yeah, very soon, I think.”
“I wish we had a chance to say good-bye,” Nick said softly as he looked at Dexios and Lykon.
“They’re happy, they’re together, and they intend on just holding each other until the last threads of the curse are broken.” Galen laid his head against Nick’s shoulder, content in a way that he couldn’t explain, in a way that he had not been in a long time. “I could sense it when he left me.”
He sighed and kissed Nick’s temple. “Take me home.”
Nick squeezed him hard and held him just a moment longer, conveying how much he wanted that in his embrace, and his voice was rough when he finally answered. “Gladly.”
EPILOGUE
“WE ARE gathered here today in a place that celebrates love of all kinds, to witness the joining of Nicholas Charisteas and Galen Kanellis.”
Dexios woke up with a shudder at the sound of those words as the last tie tethering him to bronze and copper snapped. He rose from the confines of his prison and looked back at the final statue, where Lykon lay permanently locked in his embrace. They had lain together just like that for the last year, ever since Galen had gone home with Nick. They had waited, content to hold each other, for the final chain in the curse to be broken when Galen and Nick made their vows to each other.
“I thought they would disappear with us,” Lykon said as he took his place by Dexios’s side.
Dexios drew a breath and picked Lykon up, swinging him around in a tight embrace as a feeling of completion, of coming alive again struck him. Trembling, he set Lykon down and stared into his flushed, beaming face.
“Perhaps they’ll serve as a reminder,” Dexios said softly, touching his hand to Lykon’s cheek. “They are almost there, and she is allowing us to witness it.”
They looked at Nick and Galen, who stood in the center of the exhibit room and faced each other with smiles on their faces and tenderness in their eyes. Their hands were linked and their voices confident as they repeated their vows to each other. An older woman with a cap of silvery-blonde fine curls smacked Galen on the arm when he pretended to look in his pocket. She handed him a ring with a shake of her head.
“With this ring, I thee wed,” Galen said as he slipped the ring on Nick’s finger before lifting his hand to give it a kiss.
“They look happy,” Lykon said in a low voice as he leaned against Dexios, moving under the curve of his arm.
“They are happy.” Dexios’s arm tightened around him. “They are a part of us, and we are a part of them. Their joy is our own.”
“I would make my own vow to you, one that I should never have broken. For an eternity, I am simply yours. Where you go, I will follow, until we are no more.”
Dexios turned and faced him as Nick slid a ring on Galen’s finger. “I have my own promise to make as well. I acted in haste. I did not give you the understanding that you needed. I will not do so again. If you need my ear, you have it. If you desire my patience, it is yours for howsoever long it is needed.”
Lykon tugged Dexios to him and kissed him hard. “These promises will not be forsaken. We should go, the Elysian Fields await us.”
“Why?” Dexios grinned as Lykon looked at him in confusion. “We have an entire world to explore, an island to make ours. That is Cythera’s gift to us.” As Lykon’s eyes widened, another voice brought their attention back to the couple who had broken their curse.
“Nick and Galen, I pronounce you husband and husband. You may seal your vows with a kiss.”
Dexios sensed the leap of Nick’s heart, and his own joined it as he and Lykon turned to face the couple again. Nick grinned and caught Galen up in an embrace, bestowing on him a heated kiss that left Galen flushed and breathless. They turned with linked hands to face their friends and families, and Galen gasped, his mouth falling open as his gaze landed on the fourth statue.
He nudged Nick, thrusting his chin toward it, and Nick’s eyes widened. They both turned, searching the room, and went still as they saw Dexios and Lykon. Nick lifted their linked hands in a salute. Dexios and Lykon did the same.
“Cythera,” Dexios called out in a silent prayer. “We are ready. Please, take us home.”
About the Author
MARGUERITE LABBE has been accused of being eccentric and a shade neurotic, both of which she freely admits to, but her muse has OCD tendencies, so who can blame her? Her husband and son do an excellent job keeping her toeing the line, though. Together with Fae Sutherland, Marguerite has found a shared passion for stubborn men with smart mouths. With her solo work she often likes to explore darker themes as well.
When she’s not working hard on writing new material and editing completed work, she spends her time reading novels of all genres, enjoying role-playing games with her equally nutty friends, and trying to plot practical jokes against her son and husband.
Visit Marguerite’s web site at http://www.margueritelabbe.com.
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