Chapter 36 Tierney
Six weeks later
“Don’t you think this could have waited?” I asked for the millionth time.
Cammie answered with patience, even though she’d be well within her rights now to snap at me.
“No. We need the dresser so we can arrange the dining room. Having one space completely finished will be amazing for your social media. And I know you’re off on your travels tomorrow, so I’ll take all the photos and load them to the B and B socials. ”
My friend and interior designer had already explained her reason for getting me and Greig in a pickup truck borrowed from Forde to collect the Welsh dresser Ramsay had built for me. Three times she’d explained it.
I saw Greig and Cammie exchange a look of sympathy and I blanched.
It had been six weeks. I didn’t want people looking at me with those pitying looks anymore, but it was hard after Ramsay’s colossal assholian move at the Lantern.
Sure, it was common knowledge he hadn’t slept with the folk singer, because said folk singer had complained to Taran and Ewan the next morning at the coffee shop about it.
Ewan had proceeded to tell everyone. Now people were creating narratives in their heads about why Ramsay didn’t sleep with her, and I didn’t need their narratives when I was trying not to overanalyze the ones my own heart produced.
In the end, it didn’t matter. He’d still humiliated me in front of everyone and that was enough for me.
I was done. We were done. I’d avoided Ramsay as much as possible and we hadn’t spoken since.
I could have spent days in my bed, crying and bemoaning the end of something truly special, but I’d spent too much of life lately grieving.
I didn’t want to grieve someone who wouldn’t grieve me back.
Instead, I got on with life and with healing.
We’d celebrated Halloween and the only island festivities I avoided was the Halloween ceilidh because the pipe band played at it.
Thankfully, Ramsay avoided the haunted trail that Cammie and Quinn’s parents allowed to happen on their land.
It kind of reminded me of an American haunted hayride.
I helped out. It kept me busy, distracted.
Now it was a cold and wet November. Ramsay and the pipe band were on Skye this weekend to do a couple of gigs, and Cammie had decided it was the perfect weekend to put all the finishing touches on the guesthouse dining room. The first completed room in the B and B.
Because Greig was smitten with her, she’d roped him into helping us collect the Welsh dresser from Ramsay’s barn.
I was shocked Ramsay had given Cammie the keys.
Pulling up outside his home, however, I hadn’t expected to get slammed by so much emotion.
What I’d had with Ramsay took place over a month, a short span of time in the grand scheme of things, but it had been the kind of passionate affair I didn’t really believe existed between two human beings until it happened to us.
And that hurt so fucking much because it was like any loss. You mourned the loss of possibility too.
“You okay?” Cammie asked as Greig jumped out of the vehicle.
I avoided her question. “I hope you’re not leading him on.”
Cammie nudged my shoulder. “Stop changing the subject.”
I gave her a serious look. “Are you leading him on?”
“He’s young, he’s sexy, and he wants me.” She shrugged. “I’m tired of searching for ‘the one.’ We’re having fun.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t realized they were … “So, you’re already …?”
“Last night.” She waggled her eyebrows. “For a young ’un, he knows what he’s doing.”
A banging on the hood of the truck brought our gazes out to the windshield to where Greig waited with a cocky smirk. “If ye twa are done gossipin’ aboot ma talents, can we get a move on?”
I mentally promised to grill Cammie on this situation afterward as I chuckled and got out of the truck.
The clearing, protected by the trees, offered a reprieve from the harsh coastal winds.
Amusement fled as I stared at the house, tucking my chin into my scarf as I contemplated it.
Since I’d been avoiding Ramsay, I hadn’t approached him to ask for the things I’d left at his house.
I kept hoping he’d leave them with Taran at Pages & Perks or give them to Quinn.
But they never appeared. Now was my chance to get them back.
Before I could overthink it, I walked up the front porch.
“Uh, where are you going?” Cammie called.
Ramsay had a Beware of the Alaskan Malamute sign next to the front door. I lifted it up and saw the spare key taped to the wall of the house. He didn’t know I’d noticed it when I’d been out on the porch one morning.
I untaped the key and tried it in the front door. It opened, and I paused.
No alarm.
Glancing down at an open-mouthed, round-eyed Cammie, I explained, “I left some stuff that he never returned. I’m getting it back. I’ll be out to help you as soon as possible.”
“Is this your way of avoiding looking at the dresser and feeling soft emotions toward McRae?” Cammie deduced with eerie perceptiveness.
“Partly. But mostly I want my shit back.” I strode into the house and shut the door behind me.
I squeezed my eyes closed, leaning against the front door.
The house smelled like him.
It took me a second to gather the courage to open my eyes.
Memories cascaded over me.
While he’d never confessed much to me, I’d told him a lot about my past, about my parents, sharing little anecdotes about my childhood and travels. He’d listened with patience, like he was truly interested. I’d never had that before.
And then, of course, there was the stupendously amazing sex.
Bent over the dining table.
On the sofa.
Against the wall.
Even on the rug in front of the fire one particularly chilly summer evening.
Shrugging off the images that flooded my brain and erogenous zones, I moved through his space, searching for the books and tablet. My heart leapt into my throat because they were in the exact same place I’d left them. I was sure of it.
There was one of my paperbacks on the coffee table.
One on the edge of the kitchen counter, next to my tablet.
I picked them up as I passed, frowning as I stared warily into the bedroom suite. The rest of my stuff—toiletries—should be in there.
Most of the memories were in that room.
Tears of frustration burned my eyes, but I blinked them back. When I’d promised that night Ramsay left the Lantern with the redhead that I wouldn’t give him anymore tears, I’d kept my vow. It hadn’t been easy. There had been some close calls over the weeks.
But I was determined to be strong. Not just because I’d recovered better than anyone could have expected from my attack, not just because I was determined not to grieve him, but because I had to live on this tiny island and see this man all the time.
There was no other option for me but to compartmentalize the month I’d spent with him.
And get over it.
I had to move on.
Throwing my shoulders back, I strode into the bedroom and veered off into the bathroom first.
Staring at his vanity … I paused.
All my things were still here in the exact same place I’d left them.
The spare electric toothbrush I’d bought to keep here. My extra makeup bag. Deodorant. A hairbrush. It was all where I’d left it. It was like … he’d cleaned and then put all my stuff back in the same place.
I absentmindedly rubbed at the ache in my chest as I looked at my reflection.
If I closed my eyes, I could see Ramsay behind me at this sink.
Hands on my hips. Lips trailing across the nape of my neck, which he knew was a sensitive spot for me.
His bathroom was a wet room, so there was a massive walk-in shower where we’d explored each other’s bodies with an abandon I’d never experienced before.
Anytime I’d caught glimpses of Ramsay since he ended it, my immediate thought was one of vulnerability—this guy knew my body better than I did.
He’d seen a side of me no one else had. He knew what I sounded like when I came.
What my expressions were. How much I liked to be dominated.
That I loved when he talked dirty while we were having sex.
That I could come while he spanked my ass and told me the things he wanted to do to me.
This was knowledge only the man who shared my bed should know.
Except he no longer shared my bed. And he still knew.
One day, when I met someone else, Ramsay would always be walking around knowing these things about me, even as I gave them to another man.
It was disconcerting and one of the reasons it was harder to “just get over it.”
My hands curled around the vanity, and I sucked in a big breath, letting it out in a shaky exhale. “You can do this,” I whispered.
Striding out, I walked into the kitchen and found the cupboard where Ramsay kept shopping bags. I took one and began putting all my stuff into it. In the bathroom, I searched for my perfume, the one thing I’d really wanted back. It was expensive and I didn’t have another bottle at Taran’s.
It wasn’t there. I could have sworn I’d left it there.
Forcing myself to, I walked out into the bedroom, avoiding the bed itself.
There.
On Ramsay’s bedside table was my perfume, sitting on the paperback I’d been in the middle of reading. I hadn’t left either of them there.
Confused, I slowly made my way over, staring down at them.
Why was my perfume and book on his bedside table?
Emotion clogged my throat.
Did that big asshole miss me?
No.
He … if Ramsay wanted me back, he’d have said something by now.
Or would he?
I didn’t know what the man was hiding from me, but was it enough to make him push me away?
He hadn’t slept with the folk singer … Was it guilt … or was it that he didn’t really want her?
Why did it matter?
In my frustrated anger, I reached for the perfume too fast and knocked it over the back of the bedside table.
I winced as it clattered to the floor but thankfully didn’t smash.
Grumbling, I dumped the shopping bag on the bed and leaned a hand on the wall behind the table to reach down the crack between it and the furniture.
Not quite able to reach it, my hand slid down the wall for balance and landed on the wall light.
The weight caused the wall light to flex downward and I let out a little cry of dismay, thinking I’d broken it.
But then …
A creaking sound brought my head up as a draft of cool air hit me. I gaped in shock.
The wall beside the light had opened.
Opened like a freaking door.
I straightened, a million questions and thoughts running through my head.
Of course, curiosity got the better of me, and I found myself pushing the wall open farther. The movement hit sensors and light spilled into the secret room.
Ramsay had a secret … war room?
I stepped into it, my breathing heavy as my heart raced.
There was a bank of three computers that suddenly lit up with images of forestry, coastline, and the clearing outside. Sucking in a breath, I moved toward them, my gaze bouncing between the screens that had split views.
Of Stòr.
There were cameras all over the island.
There were even cameras at the little white house with the dock. Ramsay had told me it was the home the previous owner built, but Ramsay only used it as storage and it had a bed, in case anyone needed to use it. There was a camera inside that building and outside it facing the water.
A terrible thought crossed my mind, and I scanned the cameras for the inside of this house.
There were none.
Only cameras on the outside. I could see Cammie and Greig at the pickup truck.
Relieved to discover he hadn’t been filming me inside his home without permission, I stepped back to take in the walls.
They were covered. With weapons.
Different kinds of handguns and rifles. Knives.
More weapons than any one man needed.
This was … this was the kind of room a man who was running from serious shit kept.
Is this … is this what he’d been hiding from me? Literally.
The sound of the front door slamming had me skittering out of the secret room. I instinctively pushed the light back into position and the wall closed.
I studied the mastery of the woodwork, the way the wall paneling masked the line of the door, and I knew Ramsay built this himself.
Footsteps had me quickly reaching for my perfume bottle. I’d just dumped it into the shopping bag when Cammie appeared in the bedroom doorway. “Are you done?”
“Yeah.”
Her gaze swept the room, and I knew something cheeky flirted on her tongue by the quirk of her lips. Then she saw my expression and whatever she was going to say died. Instead, she asked, “Are you okay?”
Still reeling from the shock of the secret room, I covered whatever was on my expression with a half-truth. “Just … memories. Let’s go. Okay?”
“Sure. Greig and I got the dresser in the truck.”
“Already? By yourselves?”
“We’re strong.” She shrugged and I could see her looking around the house as we walked out. “McRae has a shit ton of books.”
“He inherited them from his parents.”
“He told you that?” she asked, surprised.
“Yeah. He had his moments, you know.” I stepped outside and waited for her to clear the doorway. Locking it, I then put the key back where I’d found it. “Let’s go before the tide changes.”
Cammie slid her arm around my shoulders, hugging me into her side. “You’re amazing, Tierney Silver. A total badass. And he doesn’t deserve you.”
Her words rang in my head as we reached the truck and I saw the Welsh dresser in the bed. Ramsay had stained it with a clear finish like I’d wanted. It was beautiful. I placed the bag of my stuff in the bed too since there wasn’t much room in the cab.
And he doesn’t deserve you.
I turned back to look at the house, thinking of where I’d found my stuff.
Thinking of the hidden room that spoke of a man who led a secret life that was frankly a little scary.
And he doesn’t deserve you.
Is that what Ramsay thought too?
Was that why he’d broken us?
If that was true, it hurt worse than anything.
Because I knew it was impossible to love someone who didn’t really love themselves.
Any kernel of hope I’d been clinging to, a hope of some miraculous reconciliation … it withered and died with that realization.