The Unexpected Everything - Morgan Matson Page 0,181
. . I was wondering if you were committed to their ending,” I said. I heard the guy on the aisle scoff loudly again. “If . . . maybe there was any way it could be different.”
“Thanks so much for that question!” the bookstore lady said brightly, clapping her hands together, and my heart sank. Was I really going to be stopped by a random employee in an apron? Without even getting an answer?
“No, it’s okay,” Clark said, not looking away from me. “I’ll answer that.” He took a deep breath, and I could see his eyes searching mine, like he was looking for an answer. “I had thought that was the ending,” he finally said. “But I might have been wrong.”
“I was just thinking,” I said, sure that the rest of the crowd could probably hear how hard my heart was beating, since it seemed deafening to me, pounding in my ears, “that maybe Marjorie realized she was in love with Karl. And told him that. And said she was sorry for being scared.”
Clark nodded and glanced down at his papers, and suddenly a terrible fear shot through me. What if I was about to get rejected, here, in front of all these people? Was I about to be turned down in an incredibly public way?
“Well,” Clark said, after a pause. When he looked up at me, he was smiling, both dimples flashing. “I think that would certainly change things.”
I smiled and felt tears spring to my eyes. “Oh,” I said, my voice coming out wobbly, and I could feel that I was torn between laughing and crying and on the verge of both. “That’s really good to hear.”
Clark smiled at me, and from his expression, I could see that he was feeling pretty much the same way.
And then Clark was stepping out from behind his podium and walking toward me, and I was running toward him and into his arms, and Clark was picking me up, and I wrapped my legs around his waist and we kissed, and it was like I was blocking out the commotion all around us, the people yelling and talking and laughing and trying to figure out what was happening, and the bookstore lady clapping her hands and trying to get control of the situation.
“Hi,” I murmured when we stopped to breathe and Clark set me down to the ground on legs that felt wobbly.
“Hi,” he said, running his hand over my hair and cupping my face in his hands. “I missed you.”
“Me too,” I whispered. I knew that this couldn’t last—that there were people waiting and he had things to do and this couldn’t go on forever. But in that moment it was like everything else faded away and there was only me and Clark and the possibility of us—whatever we might become—stretching forward in a hundred different directions, all of them unexpected, each one better than the last, the ending not yet written. And with this thought in mind, and Clark’s hands in my hair, I stretched up to kiss him once again.
Jack looked around at them—the five who would be accompanying him on this journey. “Are we met?” he asked, dreading the answer. These were the comrades-in-arms who would help him avenge his sister’s death and find the message he knew for certain Tamsin had left behind in the castle for him? This collection of rogues and misfits?
He looked at them one by one, realizing as he did that most of them weren’t even paying attention, despite the fact that he was (technically) now the king. There was Lord Thomas, who was sulking on a nearby stump, still in the player’s costume he’d been wearing when the king’s guards had pulled him out of the performance. “I had a matinee today,” he said petulantly, shaking his head. “I’ve been rehearsing for weeks. My accent’s finally perfect. But I suppose you don’t care about that?”
Next to him were the ladies Sabrine and Hannah, who were, as usual, laughing together at something the rest of them weren’t included in. He knew he needed them—Lady Sabrine was the best tracker he’d ever encountered, able to pick out the spot where a deer paused for a second and changed direction. And Lady Hannah had a way with horses that was unmatched. But that didn’t mean he wanted to feel like they were giggling about him behind his back, like they’d been doing since he was a boy of fifteen.