Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
LEO
The heavy door creaked as Leo shut it behind him. Ruby was hydrated and safely in bed, and his parents were none the wiser.
Now that it was clear what had actually happened, guilt washed over him. He had been overcome with fear that something had happened to Ruby and had unfairly lashed out at Emma. She had saved Ruby from public humiliation—or worse. He owed her an apology.
Outside, he ducked his head against the bitter wind. There was no answer at her door and no greeting from Cooper. Surely she wouldn’t have tried to walk the dog in a blizzard.
A creeping sense of alarm rose as he thundered down the steps to the courtyard.
Large dog tracks and small human-sized ones cut through the courtyard.
The edges of the prints were uneven, like they had been left in a hurry.
He followed them as quickly as he could, kicking up snow and staggering against the harsh wind.
A niggling thought wormed its way to the forefront. Ruby had been wrapped in Emma’s coat with the giant stitched hole when she returned her home. That meant Emma took Cooper out with no coat on. What if something had happened?
His stomach hardened into a knot, and he screwed his eyes up against the blistering winds. The tracks wound around the castle and headed in the direction of the lake. He quickened his pace, squinting against the punishing curtain of ice and snow.
“Emma?” he called. No answer.
He continued to follow the tracks. Shit. They broached the invisible edge of the lake.
“Emma?” he called again.
A low woof came from across the lake. Oh, no.
“Cooper, come.”
A few seconds passed, then Cooper bounded across the ice and came skidding to a halt in front of him. Leo grabbed the frozen leash and knotted it around the post of the dock. Then he dashed across the ice, following the tracks.
There she was. A few inches away from a midnight circle of water, Emma lay prone on the ice.
Panic set in. He dropped to his knees and crawled over to her.
“Emma?”
“Leo?” she asked groggily. Her face was pale. Her lips were blue. Her hair was a mess of icicles, and her eyes were unfocused. He needed to get her warm. Now.
He grabbed her arm and tugged her away from the jagged edge. The ice beneath him groaned but didn’t break. Slowly, he climbed to his feet. There was no time to lose.
He shrugged his coat off and zipped it around her. His foot slid and he nearly came crashing down as he picked her up and threw her over his shoulder.
She wasn’t even shivering. This was bad.
He staggered across the lake, nearly slipping several times, until he reached the edge. He wound Cooper’s leash around his wrist. Through the squall, he could make out the rough shape of the old caretaker shed he’d repurposed into his workshop.
He waded through the snow, which seemed to deepen by the minute.
“Stay with me,” he said to Emma. She mumbled something, but the words were lost against the wind.
Finally, he reached the door to the shed. He squatted and fished around until he retrieved the key from under one of the rocks. He plunged it into the keyhole and muscled the door open. Cooper ran past them and collapsed on the floor.
Leo set Emma gently on the couch and ran to the fireplace. He grabbed some wood from the pile and threw it onto the firebox, then bolted to the cabinet in the corner for some matches. His hand shook as he lit a match and touched it to the kindling.
In minutes, a fire was sparking.
He turned back to Emma. The fire wasn’t fast enough. He ripped his sweater off and threw it on the floor, his pants quickly following. Emma’s eyes were closed, so he slapped her gently in the face until she opened one eye.
“Not the time for a boink,” she mumbled. “Mad at you.”
A boink?
He ripped his coat off of her, and she frowned.
“I need to get you warm. We have to take your wet clothes off.” He yanked her sweater unceremoniously over her head and peeled off her jeans. He pressed her against his bare skin, jolting at the icy feel of her flesh, then wrapped his coat around her again.
She needed to see a doctor, but he had stupidly left his phone in the castle. He needed to warm her up before he ran for help. His friend Joffrey had fallen through the ice when they were young, and he almost hadn’t made it.
Leo ripped his hat off with one hand and covered her head. He pulled her off the couch and wrapped her legs around him. The logs had caught, and the fire was crackling in earnest as he walked them over to the hearth.
“Stay with me, Emma.” He rubbed her arms beneath the coat, trying to encourage her circulation. She curled against him, head on his shoulder.
Cooper trotted over and sat next to them. The ice in his fur had already started to melt. He seemed largely unbothered by the incident, which was lucky because Leo knew exactly nothing about dog hypothermia.
Slowly, Emma’s shallow breaths lengthened. Her limbs began to tremble, and color bloomed in her cheeks. Her skin went from icy, to frigid, to barely warm.
“Th-thank you,” she said over chattering teeth.
“You scared the hell out of me,” he said. “What were you thinking? Why didn’t you call for help?”
“C-Coop doesn’t kn-know how to swim. Wasn’t thinking.”
He sighed but resisted the urge to lecture her more. She had saved his sister not two hours before. He held her as she trembled, willing his body to lend her his warmth.
The fire crackled comfortingly. Cooper stood, and Leo shifted Emma just in time for the dog to shake and send a spray of water droplets at them.
“Damn it, Cooper.”
“Don’t swear at him. He’s a good boy,” she mumbled against his bare chest.
A flicker of relief was born in his gut. If she was forming whole sentences, her condition was improving.
“Sorry,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Oh, fantastic. Like I had a brief vacation in a cryotherapy chamber.”
His grip tightened around her. Even though the circumstances were dire, something felt incredibly right about holding her in front of a crackling fire.
“Thank you for looking after Ruby. She told me about Paul.”
“I assume you have a spider-infested prison somewhere? Or maybe a guillotine for tiny, tiny penises?”
“He will be dealt with,” he said firmly. Paul was the son of a lord, which meant his mother would insist on handling it privately. Leo didn’t need to tell her that he was going to privately remind Paul to never come near his sister again.
“Good. Thank you for saving me,” she said softly. Her shivering was starting to subside, but he didn’t relax his grip on her.
“I came back to apologize. This isn’t the first time Ruby’s done something like this.”
Emma shrugged. “She’s a kid. Kids do dumb stuff.”
“True. When I was seventeen, I climbed one of the castle spires and threw a frozen turkey into the courtyard. Decimated the roof of my dad’s Rolls.”
She pulled her head back and looked at him. “No, you didn’t.”
“I did.”
“And they let you live? My mom would’ve drowned me in the Hudson.”
“What’s the Hudson?”
“A river.”
“Oh. Well, no. I was grounded for like a year, but they didn’t really enforce it. They didn’t do a lot of…parenting.”
Emma grunted and snuggled back into him. “Oh, sorry. I was probably supposed to be shocked. That sounds like a hard way to grow up.”
“It wasn’t always easy. We’ve always kind of been accessories. Meant to be seen and not heard, perform for the crowd, that kind of thing. They didn’t play with us. They rarely laughed with us.”
Why was he blabbering about his childhood? He was a straight white male who’d grown up in a castle. He had all the privilege in the world.
“Did you feel loved? Safe?” she asked.
He was silent for a long time.
“No. They loved me in their own way, I suppose. But it’s not the type of love I would give my own child.”
Her fingertips pressed into his chest. “You still want kids after all that?”
It had always been a part of the plan. Like Ruby, he had a soft spot for children. Sometimes he went to the local daycare facility and read books to the toddlers. They were so curious, silly, and wonderful.
“I do. Someday. Call it breaking a generational curse, I guess. What about you?”
Though he could explain this conversation away as simply trying to keep her talking and conscious, he was genuinely curious.
Not that it mattered if they were compatible. She lived in a different country and had dreams that had nothing to do with him or moving to a small European country. She was used to the big city.
Emma hesitated, and her body tensed against his. Shit. He had said the wrong thing.
“Yes. At least two. But I don’t know if I’ll ever be financially stable enough to support a family. And then there’s my mom to think about.”
“What would you and your mom be doing today if you were home? Another holiday activity?”
She stared into the crackling fire. “Tonight would’ve been It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Leo leaned up and fumbled with a remote on the arm of the couch. A TV mounted above the workbench flickered to life. He scrolled through the channel guide—it had to be on somewhere. Finally, he found it and clicked.
Emma sighed happily, and her eyes closed. Should she be sleeping?
“Why is Christmas so important to you and your mom, anyway? Seems like a lot of fuss for a soulless corporate holiday.”
Her eyes popped open, and she frowned. “It’s just a special time of year for us.”
“Why?” he probed.
She averted her gaze and seemed to be thinking. “It wasn’t always. I grew up in an abusive household.”
The breath caught in his chest.
“My dad would drink and just turn into this evil, unrecognizable person. He would yell and beat my mom over the smallest things—dishes in the sink, a surprise visit from her aunt, burned dinner. We walked on eggshells around him for years. She bought me a CD player when I was five so I could drown out the yelling. I would hide in my closet with our dog and blast the Spice Girls. But I only ever listened with one ear. Even back then, I was terrified that he was going to kill her, and I needed to know when to run. I had a little backpack with peanut butter crackers and clean underwear ready to go.”
The words came slowly, like she had to dredge them up.
“Why didn’t she leave him?” Leo whispered.
“It was complicated. She loved him. And it wasn’t always bad.
I still remember hearing him apologize, swear it would never happen again.
Sometimes he would even give up drinking for a week or two.
But he always went back to it. He pressured her to stop talking to everyone—her parents, her friends.
He controlled the finances. We were alone, with nowhere to go.
She didn’t leave him until he turned his hand on me. ”
His heart shattered, and he held her tighter.
“The day we finally left, we moved into a shelter in the city. We went out and bought our own Christmas tree, decorated it exactly how we wanted, and slept underneath it for a whole week. I can still remember waking up, panic in my chest, waiting for the front door to crash open, and seeing the twinkling of the Christmas lights. It was the first time in my entire childhood that I felt truly safe. It’s wonderful that you’re going to give your people a safe space. ”
Silence fell between them. Shock, grief, and shame warred in him.
“I can’t believe I just complained about my two-parent household while being raised in a castle,” Leo said. “I’m sorry.”
Emma broke away from his chest to look at him. “We all have our own trauma. I was lucky to be loved so hard by my mom. One loving parent is infinitely better than two ambivalent ones. Don’t cheapen your experience. You deserve to be loved.”
The firelight brought out glints of amber in her green eyes.
Her hair had thawed out and was drying in loose waves that hinted of summers on the beach.
She had been so honest about something that caused her so much pain.
Something deeply primal and protective had awoken in him.
She didn’t deserve this life. She was a caregiver, a hard worker, persisting even when the entire world conspired against her.
“So do you,” he said.
Before he could second-guess it, he closed what little distance there was between them. Her lips were unbelievably soft and still had a touch of chill to them. She froze for a second under his touch, then snaked her arms around his neck.
Explosions rippled under his skin. A long, slow pull in his stomach had his fingers pressing into the bare skin over her vertebrae. He hadn’t been kissed in an embarrassingly long time. Was it always this way—heat and ripples of need?
She pulled back a minute later, breathing hard. Her skin was warm beneath his fingertips. Finally.
“We should really get you to a doctor,” he said to cover the silence, even though he’d give away his entire fortune to never leave this cabin again.
She shook her head. “Let’s stay. Please.”
“As you wish.”
They descended into silence once more, but this time it was comfortable, almost necessary. Leo drifted into sleep with Cooper at his back and Emma clutched to his chest, the smell of lake water in her hair. For the first time in a long time, he felt at peace.