“No.” My heart ached for him, for his past, for those obligations that had been heaped on his shoulders. Our fight seemed insignificant in comparison.

“Yes.” But Simon wouldn’t let me put myself second this time. “I did. I put all those shoulds ahead of you, and I deserved it when you walked away from me. But you still told Chris I needed help. You knew what I needed when I didn’t even know what to ask for. I hoped that meant there was still part of you that cared. That I could get a second chance to tell you how much you mean to me. Not for what you can do for me, or for Faire. But for who you are. And for who I am when I’m with you.”

“But . . .” This close, his clean scent surrounding me, it was hard to think. “Are you sure about this? I know how much you love Faire.”

“I do.” He nodded in agreement. “I love Faire. But I don’t need Faire. I need you, Emily.” He reached for me then, his palms cupping my face. “I love you.”

I caught my breath at his words, my throat closing in a sob. My heart was so full I was sure my love shone in my eyes, but in case he couldn’t tell I whispered the words back to him. “I love you, Simon.”

He closed his eyes, and relief smoothed across his features. Then he cleared his throat. “So . . .” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a length of golden cord.

I let out a choked laugh. “We did that already, remember? I think it was good for a year and a day. We’ve got a while till that expires.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I mean, you’re right. We were bound once before, but it was fake. It doesn’t count. I want you to understand everything I feel for you is real. Will you start this new life with me, for a year and a day? Not as Captain Blackthorne and Emma. But as you and me. Simon and Emily.”

The words were an echo of what I’d said in his kitchen that night, when I’d come to his house with a bottle of rum to proposition a pirate. What he offered me now was ten times better. A new start. A real start. I drew in a shuddering breath and reached for the cord. We each held on to an end of it, winding the golden cord in our fingers, letting it connect us. But that wasn’t the ceremony, and my mind went blank. “I don’t remember what we’re supposed to do.”

“I know this part.” Caitlin suddenly appeared between us and took the cord away. “You have to join hands.” Her accent had slipped, but whatever. It was the end of Faire and this was an unorthodox handfasting. She took my hand and placed it in Simon’s. His hand closed around mine, and we both let out a small sigh of relief. I remembered the first time we’d done this, how I’d felt a sense of peace. That peace was back. For good this time.

Then Chris spoke, in her lovely lilting voice as Queen. “Groom and Bride, I bid you look into each other’s eyes. Will you honor and respect one another and seek to never break that honor?”

Groom and bride. I’d been horrified when she’d said those words at the beginning of the summer. Now the peacefulness expanded. This wasn’t a wedding, not even close, but it was the beginning of something very real. Very right. I looked up at Simon and as he looked down at me I could see the same reflected in his eyes.

“Yes.” I answered the Queen’s question but addressed Simon as I did so. He did the same.

“And so the first binding is made.” Cait followed directions, wrapping the cord loosely around our joined hands.

“Will you share each other’s pain, and seek to ease it?”

“Always,” he said immediately, but I was too full of emotion to speak. His hand squeezed mine, and I squeezed back. I’m here, I wanted to say. I’ll always be here.

“And so the second binding is made.” This second loop brought our hands tighter together.

“Will you share the burdens of each, so your spirits may grow in this union?”

At our murmured assent, the cord was looped around a third time.

“Simon and Emily.” I blinked up at Chris, surprised to hear our names being used. She dropped a wink at me. “As your hands are bound together now, so your lives and spirits are joined in a union of love and trust. Above you are the stars and below you is the earth. Like the stars, your love should be a constant source of light, and like the earth, a firm foundation from which to grow.”

I couldn’t think of a better way to start a relationship.

Simon pulled his hand free from mine, only to reach for me with both hands and finally kiss me the way I’d wanted him to ever since I first saw him in this clearing. His kiss felt different; I’d never kissed him when he was clean-shaven. But his lips were warm, and his mouth tasted like home. His arms around me, his body against mine, felt like home. I curled a hand around the back of his head, his close-cropped hair slipping between my fingers, and held him to me. He exhaled a long breath into the crook of my neck. I love you, he mouthed against my skin, and I held him tighter. We were both home.

When we drew apart we were mostly alone. The rest of the group had started to disperse, giving us a little privacy by heading up to the front for the final pub sing. April walked ahead with Caitlin, but she looked over her shoulder at me. She sent me a wink and I crinkled my nose at her. Had everyone in my life been in on this?

Simon brought my hand to his mouth as we walked, reassuring himself that I was there. That I wasn’t going anywhere. “I’ll need you to distract me next summer at Faire, you know. So I don’t try micromanaging everything.”

“Hmmm. I bet I can think of some ways.” Next summer seemed so far off. But I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. My roots had definitely started to take hold. “Is it okay if I don’t want to be a wench next year?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

“What about a pirate?” I wiggled my eyebrows suggestively. “Does the Captain need a first mate?”

That earned me a laugh, and my heart thrilled. Simon didn’t hand out laughs freely. “Very possibly.”

“Oh! I know!” I grinned up at him. “I can be Shakespeare.”

His laugh vanished, followed by a scowl, but his eyes still shone in amusement. “No. You can’t. Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare.”

“But what if he didn’t?” I poked him in the side. “What if it was Wilhelmina Shakespeare?”

“No.” More insistent this time, he dragged me to the side of the path until my back rested against a tree. “It wasn’t.” His lips grazed mine, a kiss for each word. “Shakespeare. Wrote. Shakespeare.”

He had his Teacher Voice on again, but when I looked up into his golden-green eyes I recognized the glimmer in them. The pirate was still in there. Those two parts of his personality weren’t as disparate as he thought they were.

I kissed him again and decided not to argue. I had a year and a day. I could talk him into it.

Epilogue

One Year and One Day Later

I was not able to talk him into it.

While Simon had relinquished control of many aspects of Faire, he remained firm on the topic of faux Shakespeares, no matter how many times I brought it up. Some stupid crap about not wanting to fill the kids’ heads with conspiracy theories before they went to college. Fine. Instead, I spent part of the spring recruiting high school students from Simon’s English classes, along with a few drama kids. We gathered on Wednesday afternoons at the bookstore, where we read Romeo and Juliet together and had roundtable discussions about themes, context, and the best way to bring the words to life. Then we put together a selection of scenes from the play, which they performed on one of the stages at Faire that summer. Caitlin abandoned her fancy lady-in-waiting dress and joined us; she made an excellent Nurse.

The rising seniors in the group had already decided that, even without a show to put on, we would continue the Shakespeare readings in the fall as a kind of book club. We picked Twelfth Night to read next, and I ordered copies, which the kids agreed to buy from me instead of downloading elsewhere. Even though Cait was only a junior she was very much part of the group, and already looking forward to smugly sharing her knowledge of the play since she’d already read it.

Although my official job at Faire was “Keep Simon From Twitching Too Much Because Things Were Changing,” I was more involved than ever. In addition to directing the kids through their Romeo and Juliet scenes, I found myself in charge of the wenches, a job Stacey was happy to give up. It was an easy task, now that I had some advance notice and prep time. Over the winter I talked to the manager of Jackson’s, and the bar agreed to sponsor the taverns at the Faire. Yes, taverns, plural. I proposed a second tent near the food vendors, since plenty of people would want beer to go with their turkey legs, and once we set it up it quickly became much busier than the tent I had worked the summer before. Waitresses from Jackson’s volunteered a day or two at a time, some in busty corsets and some in red T-shirts, and everything ran much more smoothly with professional servers in place. There were no more jokes about beer being forgotten.

Stacey and I were still dressed as tavern wenches, but we were able to roam, floating from one tavern to the other, stopping to curtsy to other characters, engaging in conversation, and all in all having much more fun than we’d had the summer before. I spent a lot of time on the sidelines of a certain chess match, catching kisses from my black-clad pirate. Those leather pants were just as compelling the second summer as they had been the first.