Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ronin
I let myself into the house, sweaty and covered in dirt from working outside, and go straight to the kitchen.
The realtor’s coming tomorrow, so I’ve spent most of the day getting the yard in shape, making sure the place looks the way I know Alannah would’ve wanted it.
I turn on the cold tap and scrub the dirt from my hands while looking out through the window at the yard.
After drying my hands on the towel beside the sink, I open the fridge for a beer. Before I can reach for one, someone knocks at the front door. Who the hell is that? I shut the fridge and go to answer it.
When I open the door, Alannah is standing on the porch with a bag in one hand.
Behind her, a taxi is already pulling away down the drive, gravel crunching under its tires as it turns back toward the road.
Her pale blue dress is creased from the long trip, and her hair is pulled back in a low ponytail, pieces coming loose around her face.
She looks exhausted but still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
For a moment, all I can do is stand there with my hand on the door, unable to take my eyes off her, because she can’t be here.
But she is.
She shifts the bag in her hand and clears her throat. “Ronin,” she says quietly, “would you mind if I came in?”
“Oh.” I step back, finally getting out of her way. “Yeah, of course. Sorry. Come in.”
She moves past me, and I reach for the bag in her hand. “Here,” I say. “Let me take that.” Our fingers brush when she passes it to me, and that small touch sends a jolt through me. Her blue eyes flick to mine, and I know she felt it too.
“Thank you,” she says, then walks farther into the house.
I close the door and set her bag down in the hall, watching as she looks around the living room.
I wonder if she’s noticed that nothing has changed since she left.
Not the furniture. Not the pictures. Not a single thing we chose together.
“Alannah,” I say, drawing her attention back to me. “Is everything all right?”
She looks suddenly unsure, her eyes dropping from the room to her hands. “I know I should have called first,” she says. “Or written. But by the time I knew what I was doing, I was already on my way.” She takes a breath. “I was hoping we could talk.”
“Yeah,” I say quickly. Then I glance down at myself, remembering I’m still dirty from being outside all day. “Yeah, of course. I just—” I scrub a hand over the back of my neck. “Do you mind if I wash up first?”
“Of course,” she says.
I gesture toward the sitting room. “You can sit in there, if you want. Or wherever you like.”
She nods. “Okay.”
I leave her downstairs and head up, taking the steps two at a time, my mind going a mile a minute. Why isn’t she in Ireland? What does it mean that she came here?
I strip out of my dirty clothes and get into the shower before the water has time to warm. I wash quickly, barely feeling the cold. By the time I’m out, I’m towelling off with one hand and reaching for clean clothes with the other. I dress and head back into the hall.
I’m halfway down it when I stop.
The door to the little room beside the master is open, the one she’d wanted left alone when we were deciding what to do with the house. I push it wider and find her standing by the big picture window, her back to me as she looks out.
She turns slowly, and when her eyes find mine, a tear runs down her cheek. “When we first came to see this house, I stood in this room longer than I meant to,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “You’d already gone ahead, but I stayed here.”
She looks away from me then, her eyes moving over the room like she can still see it the way she did that day.
“I remember thinking the yellow could stay,” she says.
“And there could be little ducks or lambs painted along the border. A crib in that corner.” She glances toward it as she says it. “And a rocking chair by the window.”
Then it hits me what she saw when she stood here that day. A nursery. And God help me, I can see it too.
She wipes at her cheeks when more tears fall. “That’s why I asked the decorator to leave this room alone. I figured not yet... but someday.”
“I had it all in my head,” she says. “What our life here would look like. Christmas mornings. Children running through the house. Us growing old in it.” Her mouth trembles around a small smile. “I loved this house, Ronin. I loved what I thought it was going to be.”
I want to go to her. I want to cross the room, pull her into my arms, and tell her it doesn’t have to be gone. That I want it too. But I stay where I am because I don’t know if I have the right anymore. When I finally speak, my voice comes out rough. “I’m so sorry, Alannah—”
“I kissed Finn,” she says, and I suck in a startled breath at her words. She continues before I can say anything. “He courted me. Made me feel wanted. And then he wanted me to marry him.”
Her words echo in the quiet room. They hurt, but I know she isn’t saying them to be cruel.
She needs me to know the truth, and after all the ways I’ve hurt her, I deserve to hear it.
I haven’t been with another woman since I fucked up on my stag night.
Haven’t wanted to. The words rise, but I swallow them.
This isn’t about me, and she doesn’t owe me an explanation.
“But he wasn’t you,” she says. “And no matter what I did, I couldn’t make myself stop missing you. I hated myself for it. After everything you did to me, I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t make myself let you go.”
She wraps her arms around herself. “I kept wondering if I’d imagined that part of you.
The part that cared about me. If the Ronin I loved had ever really been there at all.
” He was. I was. I just lost myself so badly that I ruined everything before I understood what I was doing.
The words are there, but before I can get them out, she goes on.
“But your letters…” She swallows. “At first, I didn’t know what to do with them.
I kept waiting for there to be something else underneath the words.
Some excuse. Some demand. But there never was.
You didn’t ask me for anything in them. You told me about our house.
About my parents. About the women. About what you’d done.
” She takes a small step closer. “That doesn’t make it all right.
It never will. But it helped me believe the Ronin I loved was still there. ”
She looks down, and a bitterness enters her voice that I’m not used to hearing from her.
“When I first got to Ireland, my family was amazing with me. They welcomed me with open arms, and after what happened at our reception, I didn’t think twice about accepting everything they offered me.
But somewhere along the way, I realized the safe place they’d given me came with conditions.
As long as I went along with what they wanted, I was loved.
Protected. But the moment I wanted a choice of my own, everything changed. ”
A sad little laugh escapes her. “It started when I found out about the annulment papers. You have to believe me, Ronin. I didn’t know they existed until that day in the shed.” Her eyes meet mine, and I can see how much she needs me to believe her.
I nod. “I believe you.”
“Then your letter came,” she says. “The one where you mentioned my parents writing to me. That’s when I found out Grandmam had been throwing them all away.
After that, everything started coming apart.
I found out they’d all been expecting me to marry Finn once the annulment was done, and no one had told me that either.
Finn let it slip by accident. And when I told them I wasn’t ready to marry him, when I asked for a little time, they grew cold.
Distant. They stopped treating me like family because I wouldn’t let them bully me into agreeing.
” Her voice drops. “But I couldn’t let them make that choice for me. Especially not when I wasn’t over you.”
“You hurt me worse than anyone ever has,” she says, taking another step, close enough now that I could reach out and touch her.
“But when you told me you’d sign the papers if I asked you to, I knew you meant it.
You would have let my grandda shoot you before you took that choice from me.
” Her eyes hold mine. “And when I did ask, you signed. You didn’t fight me.
You didn’t try to talk me out of it. You kept your word. ”
A small smile touches her mouth as she closes the last bit of space between us. “Even if it took you a while.”
I look down at her, so close now I can hardly think, and still I don’t know what to say. “Alannah—”
She rises onto her toes and kisses me, and everything else disappears. I lose myself in the feel of her until I catch myself and gently rest my hands on her shoulders, easing her back just enough to look at her. “Wait,” I say, my voice rough. “Alannah, I love you, but—”
Her face falls. “But what?” she whispers. “You don’t want me anymore?”
“No,” I say at once. “God, no. That’s not why. I could never stop wanting you. You are the love of my life. That’s exactly why I’m stopping this.”
“But what if I’m asking you not to?” Her eyes search mine.
I look at her, not sure I’ve heard her right, and she must see it on my face because she reaches for my hand and laces her fingers through mine.
“Ronin, I can’t promise I won’t be angry sometimes,” she says.
“Or sad. Or that there won’t be days when what happened comes back and hurts all over again.
” Her eyes hold mine. “But I can promise I want to try. I want us. If you still do.”
My hand comes up to cup her cheek, my thumb brushing over her soft skin. “Alannah,” I say, quieter now. “You’ve got me. You always have.”