Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
C allum
She’ll have no secrets between us. The thought of her keeping information from me makes my blood boil. She’s been teaching me so much. One of those lessons has been that I have to put myself in others’ shoes, so to speak.
Not that I’d ever be caught dead in the pink gardening wellies she wears, but still…
I know what she means.
“No secrets,” I say.
Her voice is soft, but her gaze is steady. “Aye.”
My stomach turns. I have to tell her. I have to come clean.
I reach out, grabbing her hands from her hips and holding them tight. “Alright, but promise me you’ll remember all the good things you have here. How happy we are.”
“Callum,” she pleads. “You’re making me nervous. Just tell me. Please.”
I take a deep breath, finally saying, “Yer father dinnae come to me.”
“What do you mean?” she asks, her hands flexing in mine as her face falls.
“I may have gone to your father first, offering the money, knowing about his gambling.”
Her hands fall away from mine. “You didn’t.”
I run my hand over my beard.
“Don’t do that,” she says. “Not now.”
“Do what?”
“Rub your hand over your beard like that.” She starts to pace, moving back and forth across the cement in front of me. “I love it when you do that; I find it…sexy, and I don’t want to feel that now. I want to know why you did what you did.”
“K.” I shove my hands in my pockets.
She continues pacing, quiet, contemplating. Each step she takes brings more unease to my chest. Finally, she stops, turning to face me. “You planned this. Ages ago. Didn’t you? You knew he’d be in debt to you, and then you’d demand my hand in marriage as payment.”
“Aye, ‘tis romantic, don’t you think?” I hope she agrees since I can’t stop the cocky grin that’s spreading across my face .
It was romantic—aye?
She gives me a look of pure disgust. “When did you first loan my father the money?”
“After that night at the Hobgoblin. When I asked you to dance, and you denied me.”
“How could you do such a thing?”
“If I hadn’t given it to him, he would have got it elsewhere. At least I knew if he got it from me, he wouldn’t be killed for missed payments.”
“No,” she says. “You just set it up to take his daughter as payment instead.”
“Exactly.”
“Don’t you see how wrong that is?”
I dinnae see the problem. I’ve given her a home, a family, a life. “I brought you to a better place. I wouldnae have brought you here if I didn’t think it would be good for you.”
“You were thinking of what was good for me?”
“Aye! Every moment. That’s why I had the movers there. So your father couldn’t pawn off your valuables or anything of your mother’s for gambling.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
To hell with putting myself in her shoes. She belongs here, and she knows it. “You’re happy here, Fiona.”
“You don’t get it. That’s not the point.”
“What’s the point? ”
“You lied. You’ve been living a lie.”
“I never lied.”
“You stole me away.”
“You came willingly.”
“You fed my dad’s addiction. You knew he’d gamble the money away and be unable to repay you.”
“He already had the addiction. He was already in debt. I paid his other debts off.”
“Still.”
“I saved him from the scum that would have taken much more than your hand in marriage from him.”
“Why? Why me?”
“You’re sweet. You’re good. You’re…right.”
The right smell. The right taste. The right kind of effortless beauty.
Kindness. Sweetness. Radiance.
The right girl.
“You’re the woman a man chooses for his wife.” I lift my hand to my beard but stop myself, shoving it back in my pocket. “To have his babies. A good girl like you, you wouldnae give a man like me the time of day.”
“You’re right,” she says. “With good reason.”
That hurts. Badly. Bands tighten around my chest.
I ache with need, thinking of her sitting at the Hobgoblin, that flush on her face as I teased her, tugging on the end of her braids. Wee Fi is all grown up .
“I wanted you from the moment you denied me that dance.” I reach out to touch her face, and she lets me. “Sweet. Innocent. Beautiful.”
She seems to soften a bit, leaning my way as she crosses her arms over her chest.
I’ve worked so hard to see her point of view. Why can she not try to see mine?
She’s being so unreasonable—thank God Freya never told her about the contract…
“Fiona.” I take her face in my hands, “Please. Try to understand.”
For a moment, she’s silent. Thinking. Then, she shakes her head, taking my hand from her face. “I cannae understand something like that.”
“Why not?”
“If you don’t understand…” Anger glints in her gaze. “You’re a monster.”
Icy tendrils of pain creep through my chest, leaving a chill in my bones. “A monster?”
But she’s not finished with me yet. “You tell me why, Callum Burnes. Tell me why a simple island girl such as myself would not want to be with a man like you.”
I stare at her openly. “I dunno.”
Tears glisten in her eyes, threatening to fall. She gives them an angry swipe. “Try—for just a wee moment—to put yourself in my shoes.”
I try to do as she says. I think of her meager home. Her lonely life. Days spent working her fingers to the bone. Nights spent alone in a cold bed.
Still, I don’t understand. My anger begins to creep up. “Haven’t I given you everything?”
She meets me head-on, her tone filled with a soft, quiet rage. “Think, Callum.” ‘Tis terrifying. I’d prefer she shout at me.
Her head turns over her shoulder, gazing through the kitchen window behind her. The one overlooking her garden. Her eyes settle on the blue bowl she keeps on the deep shelf of the sill—her Mam’s bowl—her most cherished possession. One of my men told me she held it on her lap the whole ride over to the house.
Her mam, who was married to her father.
A long, hard marriage to a man who didn’t much care to look after his wife or his wee ones.
A bad man.
Her gaze returns slowly, meeting mine.
“No,” I say.
It can’t be…
Surely she doesn’t think…
Finally, I ask, “Ye think…I’m a bad man?”
“You lend my father money to gamble. Raise his debts. All to steal a bride who never agreed to marry you in the first place.” She takes one short, determined step toward me. “Tell me, Callum. What kind of man would you say that is?”
“I’m not like him.” I shake my head. “I’m nothing like him.”
She takes another step closer. “Putting your wants before my own. Like him.” And another step. “Putting the bottle before his family.”
“Your father has changed, gettin’ sober. And I’ve changed as well. You’ve taught me to listen. To earn your hand.” Distraught, I shake my head. “I thought you’d want to be here. I thought you would like it here.”
“I do,” she says. “And I do.”
“I’ve always wanted ye to be mine,” I confess. The truth settles in, barbed wire encasing my heart. “But ye don’t want me, do you?”
“No,” she says. And my world comes crumbling down. “Not like this. Not based on a lie. A plan that you made, then carried out. Yes, you’ve given me the world. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. This home, you and Freya, Chef and Nan, I love it all.”
“But you won’t try to love me?”
“Love? Is that what this is about, Callum?” Her gaze, bright and steely, narrows. “Or was your plan always about power and control?”
If she sees me as a monster, she’ll never see me for the man I am. One willing to do anything to give her a good life. She won’t trust me after this. A relationship without trust is nothing. She’s taught me, alright.
And now, I know what I need to do.
The hardest thing possible.
Let her go.
“I told you I don’t make promises I can’t keep. I promised to make you happy here but it looks like that’s impossible. You could never be happy with a monster, could you?”
She stares back at me, anger in her eyes.
I cross my arms over my chest, steeling my nerves. “If I’m such a bad man, go. Leave. Return to your father and tend to your garden. Live in your wee little house and live yer wee lonely life. Alone.”
“You’re an ass,” she hisses between clenched teeth.
I’ve never heard her swear, never seen her angry like this.
I swallow. Hard. I step back, leaning against the high part of the wall, creating space for her to walk past.
“Go,” I say. “Yer free to leave.”
“I will. Oh, and Callum? It’s not me.” She brushes past me as she goes, pausing only a moment, her hand already on the knob of the back door as she gives me one last look. “It’s you.”
I turn my head and stare straight ahead. I can't watch her walk away, but I’ll have the final word.
In my anger, I call out, “You leave, Fiona, and you’ll never step foot in this house again!”
“Is that a promise?” she hisses.
There’s the sound of the door closing behind her. Then, quiet.
She’s gone.
My heartbeat is the only sound piercing the silence in her wake.
Beating steady.
But broken.