Chapter 15
ARRO
Ihated to admit it, but I bloody loved the new Defender.
It had all the bells and whistles, and its computer was awesome.
Biffy Clyro’s “Instant History” had never sounded so good on a sound system.
It was more comfortable and luxurious, and it handled the road so much better.
In my older model, I had to slow way down into corners for fear of rolling.
This one was a Dynamic, and my God, did it take corners like a dream.
Bloody Nora, I wanted to keep this car.
I’d succumbed to its seduction with embarrassing speed and experienced more than a flicker of guilt as I pulled up outside the Portakabin at our Lairg site. I couldn’t get rid of Dad’s Defender. But Lachlan was right. We needed to put it in storage. For too long, I’d let sentiment win.
I climbed the steps to the cabin and unlocked the door.
It was barely light out, and I was the first one on-site, arriving a few hours early.
But sometimes, I liked to get here before everyone else so I could answer emails and plow through my administrative jobs, enabling me to fully concentrate on-site when everyone else showed.
Marcello was always an hour early to work, so that meant I had to be even earlier if I wanted alone time to get through a good portion of tasks.
I pushed open the door, hit the light switch on my right, and froze.
Fear flushed through me, hot and instantaneous.
My desk, computer, and the walls surrounding it were covered in Post-it notes.
Marcello’s desk behind mine was untouched.
I knew what was written on them before I even took a step toward the Post-its.
Why won’t you see me?
Slamming the door behind me, I hurried to lock it, my fingers trembling around my keys. Then I fumbled for my phone, peering out the one small window in the cabin at the dark forest beyond the parked Defender.
I hit Lachlan’s name, and it only rang three times before my big brother picked up. “Morning, sweetheart. This is early.”
Something inside me soothed at his voice. “Lachlan, I’ve just arrived at the Portakabin at my site in Lairg. There are Post-it notes all over my desk.”
There was a moment of a silence before, “Fuck. Call the police right now.”
“No. No police. Lachlan, this is my job. I can’t have this being a crime scene. I can’t bring this into my work. Please, can you come or send Robyn?”
“We need to tell the police, Arro.”
“Robyn was the police. Please.”
“Arro, we can’t be foolish here. This is serious.”
Indignant, I snapped, “Do you not think I know that? This is happening to me. But I worked hard for this job, and I won’t have my position here affected by this shit. I won’t let this creep have the satisfaction. This stays between us.”
Lachlan sighed heavily. “Are you alone?”
So alone. “Yes.”
“I left for Inverness at the crack of bloody dawn, so I’m too far away, but I’m sending someone over now.”
“Not Mac.”
“Why?” Lachlan bit out. “What’s going on between you two?”
“Uh, nothing. I just … I don’t want to worry him,” I said lamely.
“Too late. I texted him as soon as you called. You’ll stay on the phone with me until he arrives. I’m texting him as we speak to inform him you don’t want the police involved. I’m sure that will go over well.”
Wonderful.
“Is it the same words?” Lachlan asked quietly.
“Yeah. ‘Why don’t you see me?’”
My big brother muttered a curse under his breath, then vowed, “We will figure out who’s doing this, Arro.”
I stared out at the darkness, my pulse racing as I imagined someone watching me. “I believe you,” I whispered.
Only five minutes later, after making small talk to distract me from my fear, Lachlan hung up when I told him Mac had pulled onto the site.
A different apprehension filled me as the tall, powerful figure of Mackennon Galbraith cut across the muddy yard.
I opened the door and then retreated into the cabin as he hurried up the steps.
He was so tall, he had to duck his head to enter.
His gaze moved to me first, his shoulders relaxing. “You’re okay?”
“As good as anyone can be in a situation like this.”
His features turned to granite, and I suddenly pitied the poor bastard who was doing this. Between Mac and my brothers, whoever this was, they were really taking a chance with their life.
Mac’s attention cut to the Post-it notes, and as he approached them, he pulled on a pair of disposable latex gloves and unfolded a large Ziploc bag.
He reached for a Post-it, scowling at it before he put it in the bag.
“I’ll have my friend in forensics look at them for prints, but I doubt we’ll find any.
” Mac took every single note off my desk, computer, and wall, and put them into the bag. “When do Marcello and the team arrive?”
“Marcello will probably be here in about half an hour. I come in early every morning to do admin.”
Mac zipped the bag closed. The cabin was clear, every inch free of Post-it notes.
Free of the crime.
If only I could say the same about myself. Anxiety wearied me, wondering who the shadow at my back was.
“I’m putting security on you,” Mac announced.
I bristled. “No, you bloody are not.”
He took a step toward me, and I had to stop myself from retreating. “Arro, the next message your brother received arrived along with a deer carcass.”
I flinched.
“If you won’t involve the police again, then I need security on you and …” He straightened, his expression set, determined. “It’ll be me. I’ll talk to Lachlan. We’ll put Jock in charge at the estate so I can guard you.”
The very thought of being forced into proximity with Mac for the foreseeable future made my palms sweat. “No.”
His nostrils flared like a goddamn bull preparing to charge. “I’m one of the few men on our team with bodyguard experience, and I trust me with your safety more than anyone else.”
“Well, I don’t,” I snapped. No way was I spending day in and day out with the one man who made me feel out of control. “It’s a hard no.”
“For Christ’s sake!” Mac’s famous patience abandoned him. “Put our shit to the side and let me take care of you while this is going on.”
“Our shit?” My body propelled forward with growing rage. “Our shit?” Is that what we were calling the devastation between us?
“You know what I mean.” He raised a hand, palm out defensively.
“No, I actually don’t know what you mean because I can’t encapsulate the life-changing trials of our entire relationship into something as demeaning as ‘our shit.’”
Mac took a breath and stared deep into my eyes. “Don’t. Don’t warp what I’m saying now to suit how you want to see the situation between us.”
“I want to see?” My God, did he want me to kill him? “No, what happened between us isn’t how I want to see it, believe me. If I could erase that entire night from my memory, I would, and unfortunately for you, Mac, it happened the way it happened. End of story.”
“Not end of story,” he said with far too much calm, patience, and far too much dejection in his countenance.
And something in me broke.
“I know what I did that night was wrong,” I whispered harshly. “But I don’t know why it was wrong. I keep going over and over it in my mind.” My fingers trembled as I pressed them to my mouth, trying to find the words.
Mac’s anguished expression only angered me.
“Did I read too much into every moment between us? Was it all in my head? Did I assault you?”
Shock flared in his eyes and he stepped toward me. “No, Arro. Fuck, no.”
“Then why?” I tried to pierce his gaze so I could finally understand what the hell was going on in this man’s head. “Why did you reject me like I was a stranger to you? You couldn’t have humiliated me more. Why?” I suddenly raged, everything swelling up and out of me as I shrieked, “Tell me why!”
“Because I was in fucking pain!” Mac roared.
I flinched back, shocked into silence.
He took a shuddering breath. “You were hurting me, Arro, and I just needed you to leave.”
“Hurting you?”
A hard darkness shadowed Mac’s face. I’d seen that brooding look before, but rarely.
Until that moment, I’d never understood what put that look on his face, but as he spoke, I began to understand.
“You can’t see what I am,” he said hoarsely, “but I know what I am, Arrochar. Maybe there isn’t a man out there worthy of you, but I know … ”
Mac drew closer until I had to tilt my head to keep his gaze.
“I know for a fact that it isn’t me. Lachlan would probably get over it if you and I claimed each other, but it wouldn’t take you or him long to realize I’m not who you think I am.
I’d disappoint you. And then I’d lose you both.
Something I can’t risk. And you coming to my home, pushing me, offering me the thing I want most and can’t have … it killed me.”
His eyes were bright with emotion, and it was physically painful to witness. “It hurt finding the strength to say no. It hurts keeping my distance from you in that way. But it’s better than you despising me.”
I shook my head, confused. “And you thought humiliating me would, what? Endear me to you?”
“Arro—”
“I’m not some cold icon of feminine perfection, Mac!
” Somehow his confession was worse, the bold truth worse.
“I’m real! I’m flesh and blood.” I pounded my chest. “I’m flawed and brutal and weak and strong and sorry and fucked-up like every other person who’s spent more than two seconds on this bloody planet!
” Tears streamed down my face before I could stop them as my voice dropped to a near whisper.
“I deserve more from you. I deserve more than to be put on some lonely, god-awful pedestal, to be used as an object for your self-flagellation and repentance for God knows what in your past. When someone tells you they love you, you don’t get to say, ‘I don’t deserve your love,’ and think that somehow exempts you from the consequences of rejecting them.
You’re not exempt, Mac. No matter your reasons, you rejected me like I was nothing and nobody to you, and you spit in the face of my love and did it in a way that made me feel small.
Wrong and guilty.” I ignored the horrified devastation on his face and whispered, “You hurt me to save you.”
“Arro …” A tear slipped down his cheek, and it almost broke me, but I couldn’t let it soften my determination to face the truth between us.
An exhausting grief swept over me as I stared at this man I’d loved but no longer trusted, at least in the way I had before.
“So I suppose you’re right … you don’t deserve me because everyone deserves someone who loves them through everything.
Through anything. And maybe it’s an impossible wish, but I want to be loved by someone who would die before deliberately hurting me. ”
“It wasn’t deliberate,” Mac argued, a little of that fire, that fight, returning to him. “I did it to protect you. It was the wrong move. I was wrong, Arro. I admit it. I made a mistake. But it wasn’t deliberate.”
“Too little, too late.” I swiped at the tear tracks on my cheeks because tears were of little use to me. To either of us. The pain of knowing why he’d hurt me didn’t change the truth.
“I don’t believe that,” Mac said, just as we heard a car pulling up outside. “I refuse to believe that.”
“Don’t.” My expression softened a little.
“It’s too late for us. But not for you. Don’t keep making this mistake, Mac.
Whatever is eating you, whatever is poisoning your mind, go talk to someone so that the next time a woman tells you she’s in love with you, you can say it back.
” Even then, in all my conviction, the very thought of him with another woman made me die inside.
Mac shook his head slowly and answered with a quietness that haunted me. “Unless that woman is you, I’ll never say it back.”
Before I could scramble to find the words to address what was an inadvertent declaration of love, Mac’s gaze moved beyond my shoulders, and he sighed. “Marcello’s here.”
He straightened and like he hadn’t just set off an emotional bomb between us, said, “I’m going back to the estate to talk with your brother, and then I’ll return.
Until we figure this out”—he gestured with the bag of Post-its—“I am your shadow from the moment you leave the house until the moment you get home and lock the door behind you. I’ll work out a system with the team so someone is watching your house at night.
No arguments, Arro. This is happening. I’ll be back soon. ”
And before I could protest, he stormed out as Marcello walked in.
“Good morning to you too!” Marcello yelled over his shoulder at Mac in sarcasm. Then he turned to me and said, “Who pissed in his coffee?”
I couldn’t answer. I could only stare out the window as Mac jumped into his SUV, swung it around, and drove out of sight.
As much as I wanted to shrug off his implied words of love or the realization that the guilt and shame Mac carried regarding his relationship with Robyn was much deeper than I’d thought, I couldn’t.
In fact, his lack of self-worth was shocking. Destructive. It had ruined us.
And I wanted to fix it. I wanted to show Mac how wrong he was. To make him see his good.
But with so much anger still between us, such broken trust, I was smart enough to know that I couldn’t be the one to make him see it when right now, I could only see the worst he’d wreaked on my life.
Out of nowhere, the dam I’d built broke, and a loud sob burst forth before I could stop it. Uncontrollable sobs racked through me, and I heard the vague rumble of Marcello’s surprise before his arms came around me.
For the second time in as many days, I let a friend hold me through my heartbreak.