“Use the flashlight function on your phone,” Wyoming dictated.
“Shouldn’t we go back and get our dinner?”
Wye ignored him. “Phone!”
He fished it out of his pants pocket reluctantly and turned on the light. Wye took it from him and led the way, even though he knew damn well how to reach the center. She used her free hand to lift her skirt, but it still dragged through the snow.
It was quiet out here. Clouds obscured the stars, and the air had a heavy quality to it, as if more snow would arrive soon.
“You don’t have any gloves. We should go back.”
Wye hushed him. “Nearly there. This won’t take a minute.”
She was right; one minute could dash his hopes for good. Despite having heard Wyoming state more than once that she didn’t believe the standing stone at the center of the maze was anything more than a hunk of rock, he knew she was as superstitious about it as everyone else.
Cass and her sisters believed utterly that if you asked the stone a question, you would get an answer one way or another—and that answer was unfailingly right. Wyoming always argued that the women were making the stone’s “predictions” come true themselves, but he’d also heard her say she’d seen things at Two Willows she couldn’t explain. You couldn’t hang around the place very long before you got sucked into its oddness.
It wasn’t the women’s stories that concerned him, though. Brian had been the first one to tell him of his experience with the stone. “It said Cass would marry me, and she did” was how he put it.
All the other men confessed their own strange interactions with it. “If that stone says something,” Logan had told him, using his fingers to make air quotes, “then you’d better believe it’s going to happen.”
Emerson searched for a way to distract Wyoming and get her out of the maze before the stone “predicted” she wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him. Her reaction to his kisses this morning told him she saw him as a possible partner. The stone could undo the connection he’d built with her so far.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t come up with anything other than tossing her over his shoulder and making a run for it—or rather, a hobble for it with his bum ankle—and he doubted that would go well.
When they reached the stone, she handed him his phone, and he shut it off and pocketed it. There was something so prehistoric about the standing stone it felt wrong to use such up-to-date technology around it. A slab of rock over a dozen feet tall, it stood as if it had grown here organically. No one knew who had positioned it here.
Emerson tried one last time. “We don’t need a stone to make our decisions for us. You’re right; I shouldn’t have pushed. I should have asked you out first. I’m asking you now.”
Wye rounded on him, her skirts swinging like a bell around her ankles, her curls wild in the low light. He could just make out the gleam of her eyes. “Emerson Myers, stop backtracking. You’ve got only yourself to blame for this. Five minutes ago you were trying to set a date for our wedding, so let’s just settle this once and for all. Stone?” She turned to face it and put both hands on its wide flank before he could stop her. “Am I going to marry this man?”
They both waited as a whisper of a breeze brushed their faces.
“Don’t let the stone ruin this, Wye,” Emerson said.
She turned at the roughness of his voice. Dropped her hands.
“I shouldn’t have joked about marrying you. I should have told the General to shove it when he ordered me to propose. That doesn’t mean I don’t want you. I do. Don’t let a hunk of stone get in the way of something that could be good.”
“I… ow!” Wyoming clapped a hand to her cheek. “What the hell, Emerson?”
“I didn’t touch you.” He stepped back, then leaned forward. “What is that?”
Wyoming opened her hand to reveal a folded piece of paper, her breath steaming in the cold air as she let it out. She opened the paper with shaking fingers.
“Oh… hell,” she said slowly.
Emerson’s gut knotted. He took the paper from her, afraid she’d ball it up and pitch it away before he got the chance to read it.
The stone had answered, just like everyone said it would.
What did it have to say?
He held up the paper, squinting at it in the low light. It was a photocopy of an old newspaper article. No, not an article—
A wedding announcement.
Emerson’s heart hammered as he read the headline out loud. “Couple to be wed on New Year’s Eve.” He lowered the paper. Stared at Wyoming, who was staring back at him.
“Hell,” he said slowly. “We’re going to do it, aren’t we? We’re going to get married!” He laughed in disbelief, a weight sliding off his shoulders. If the stone said it, it had to be true. That’s how things worked at Two Willows.
Wye was shaking her head. “It’s just a coincidence it was a wedding announcement. It has to be. Or you did this! Did you plan this whole thing?”
“You’re the one who dragged me out to the maze,” he pointed out.
“You might have predicted I would.”
“I’m not Alice.” Emerson got a hold of himself. He had known Wye was the one for him the day they met, but Wye still had to catch up. The way she was looking at him now made him hope that was possible. Just like he’d thought, she wasn’t immune to the mystery of the stone. “I had no idea that any of this would happen before tonight. The General told me to marry you twenty minutes ago, and I don’t believe in magic or standing stones, either, but think about it. Every one of the men the General sent to marry Cass and her sisters has had something weird happen to him at Two Willows. Why should we be any different?”
“Because we don’t belong here.”
Her words punctured his enthusiasm, and he struggled to hold on to the confidence he’d felt moments ago. She was right; neither of them were born to this property. What right did they have to the stone’s approval or anything else? “The General is going to give me a share in the ranch, just like the other men,” he told her. “Marry me, and you’ll belong here, too—forever.”
“Forever?” she repeated. “You’re going to own part of the ranch?” Her brow furrowed, and she glanced back at the stone, looming large over them.
Emerson realized that was the key to all of this. She wanted to belong at Two Willows as much as he did. More, maybe. She’d been living here for weeks and didn’t seem in a hurry to leave, after all. She hadn’t mentioned her parents in his hearing, although he had heard her mention her brother. Emerson thought he lived in town.
Did she yearn to belong somewhere the way he did? Was she searching for a family and a place to call home?
More to the point, could she ever love a man like him? He was younger than the other men at Two Willows. Not exactly poor, but a long way from wealthy. He’d been as good as abandoned by his family. Didn’t have a large circle of friends. The General was the only one who’d seen something worthwhile in him. Could Wye come to see it, too?
He needed to find out.
Emerson stepped forward, cupped Wye’s chin in his hands, bent down—and kissed her.