Chapter 48
Dominic
“Rayna!”
The chorus sounded the moment Rayna walked through the double doors that led into the open living area of the house, as loud as the sudden start of Dominic’s heart at the sight of her.
Kelly, George, Erin, and River were all standing around the sofas with worried downturns to their expressions. But he and Victor were at the forefront, rushing towards her at the same time.
“Rayna,” Dominic rumbled as he cupped her jaw in his palms. “Where have you been?” He tugged her into an embrace, needing to feel that she was well and safe. “Why did you not answer your phone?”
In the hour and forty minutes since Kelly had called River to tell them Rayna had left the house after finding her mother’s last note, Dominic had imagined a million different scenarios where he lost her just like he lost his dad.
After every call and message she didn’t answer, all he could think was that she was lying injured and bleeding somewhere, and there was nothing he could do to get to her.
To say he’d been terrified didn’t even cut it. He’d been on the verge of breaking into a fearful fit of agonised sobs.
“Sorry,” Rayna mumbled, remaining entirely impassive against him. “I was at the cemetery and didn’t realise you were all calling me until I spoke to my dad.”
A hush fell across the room as Dominic pulled away to look at her, but Victor took her into his arms. “You can’t do that, Rayna. You can’t just leave and not answer your phone. You should have waited for me to get back.”
“Hmm. Sorry.”
Caution tugged at Dominic’s brows.
What was wrong with her? Why did she sound so…hollow?
“George, Kelly, and Erin showed us what you found,” Victor said. He shook his head, his hands on her shoulders. “It’s not a bad thing. It just means we need to change our approach.”
Rayna nudged his hands away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
After a second of surprise, Victor tried again. “Rayna—”
“No, V,” she said sternly. “I don’t want to discuss it. I’m done.”
Silence.
Dominic’s heart dropped to the pit of his stomach as he finally saw the detached dullness in her charcoal eyes, just like her voice.
“What do you mean you are done?” he asked warily.
“She’s giving up,” Kelly spat the accusation.
Alarm bells started ringing through him, when rather than denying it, Rayna swallowed, and her lashes flickered.
Dominic recognised that telltale reaction. That guilt.
An ache cleaved through his chest.
“No,” Rayna said. “It means I need to grab something from upstairs, and then Dominic and I are going back to the farmhouse. So you can all go home too.”
“Why?” he croaked.
“Because I want to talk to you.”
“We can talk here.”
If she was going to give up, then she’d tell him where her family and friends were, so that if he couldn’t reason with her, then maybe they could.
“Alone, Dominic,” she declared.
She wasn’t going to budge. He knew that. But they weren’t leaving the house. He refused to.
After a moment to think, Dominic took her by the hand and walked past her. She voiced a single, tired protest as he led her up the stairs, but said nothing more when he drew her into her bedroom on the far left and shut the door behind them.
He let go of her hand in the middle of the carpeted room as he faced her. There was a double bed at her back and a four-door wardrobe at his.
“We are alone now,” he said, his stance wide, hands on his hips.
With a deep inhale, she hardened her expression, and Dominic braced himself to bear the pain of her words.
“Go home.”
“My home is where you are,” he said calmly.
“No. Your real home. In the past…where you’re supposed to be.”
“I’m supposed to be here with you,” he argued, moving towards her.
She backed away. “No, you’re not.” Her indifference splintered, revealing pained frustration.
“This isn’t where you’re meant to be. This isn’t where you belong.
That’s why history put you two hundred years in the past. And you can pretend we can fight it as much as you want, but we can’t.
It’s impossible. Nothing we do or find here will ever let us have a life together.
It will never work. So we should just stop fighting the inevitable.
” She took a deep breath. “Go back to your time, Dominic, and forget about me.”
Her words gouged deep wounds through all his muscles, ones that would never heal if he let her push him away for good. But his own festering doubts taunted him.
What if she is correct? What if they really were impossible?
No. He refused to believe that. Because if that were true, why had they met in the first place?
“You keep referring to my history, Rayna,” Dominic said.
“But what about yours? Perhaps in my original life, we never met, but in your life, we were always meant to meet. You were always meant to walk into my quarantine room, and I was always going to fight to have you as my Guardian. We were always meant to live together. And I was always going to fall in love with you. So how can you say it is impossible when it was meant to happen?”
He could see in Rayna’s eyes how she was chewing over the thought, but then she shook her head, quick and small. “Even if that was true, it still doesn’t mean I get to keep you.”
“Why not?” He swiftly closed the distance between them and ducked his head as he clasped her elbows. “Why can you not keep me? I am yours—”
“You’re not mine,” she snapped, breaking out of his hold. “You’re Lady Claire’s husband!”
“I am not,” Dominic spat.
He hated this faceless woman. Hated that her name was tied to his. He wasn’t her husband! He never would be. That man wasn’t him. It was false, intolerable to even think of himself doing such a thing.
Without a word, Rayna turned away and headed to the bedside cabinet. She opened the single drawer and whipped out some papers. Then she came back to him.
“Here.” She held it out for him.
He took it from her and flicked it open. “What is this?”
“It’s your history. Everything you were meant to do and be.”
His skin burned hot and cold with rage as his eyes rapidly skimmed the page, hooking on the words Rayna spoke aloud.
“You marry Lady Claire in March. You have four children with her. You build a school with her. You build a life with her.” Her voice cracked. “You’re happy with her…”
“Where did you get this?” he ground out, his hands visibly vibrating.
“It doesn’t matter.”
He brandished the papers in the air. “Who gave this to you, Rayna?”
But he knew who. It was Jim or one of the other POTeM Board members. One of the ones who didn’t want him and Rayna to stay together. And it was working.
It was tearing them apart.
“It doesn’t matter, Dominic,” she rumbled. “It’s just more proof that you and I shouldn’t be together. That you’re better off going back.”
“That’s nonsense,” he roared, throwing the stapled pages aside. “I will never be better off without you!”
“I can’t give you what she can.”
“There is nothing she could give me that you could not—”
“Marriage, Dominic!”
The sharp sound of his name echoed off the four walls as they both fell quiet.
Pain lanced across Rayna’s eyes, turning them glassy as her shoulders drooped. “You marry her,” she repeated. “You have a family with her. She gives you what you want.” She shook her head. “I can’t…I can’t do that. I don’t want to.”
Just like that, all his anger vanished like it’d never existed. His body swayed weakly as pieces fell off the cracked edges of his heart and clattered to the bottom of a dark depth.
“I don’t want to get married,” she continued, her voice wavering.
“Every time I think about it, it feels suffocating. And I don’t want children either if it’s going to interfere with my career.
” She hardened her tone. “And it will. You can say it won’t, but it will.
And that’s not the life I want for myself.
It’s what you want…but I can’t give it to you. ”
“You do not mean that,” he uttered barely above a whisper, the frayed rope of his optimism threatening to rip. “You are only saying it to convince me to leave.”
“No, Dominic. You knew this from the beginning.”
He had. But he’d thought…she’d said…she’d said she would consider it, and he’d hoped…
Dominic struggled to swallow around the lump choking him, his nose and eyes stinging.
He’d hoped. Foolishly.
“I do not need marriage or children,” he declared in one last desperate attempt to keep her. “I only need you.”
A broken sob fell from her as she glanced away before staring at him through angry, tear-filled eyes. “Stop it. Just stop it,” she pleaded. “You can’t give up what you want for me. You’ll regret it, and you’ll hate me for it.”
“I could never.”
“You will.” Her gaze implored him to see reason.
“We’re too different, Dominic. We grew up in different worlds.
We want different things, and if we stay together, all we’ll do is hurt each other.
” She threw a tired hand between them. “We’re already hurting each other and everyone around us.
And your not always being there will hurt your family at some point too. ”
He shook his head, denying the truth he could hear as he approached her. “I don’t believe that. I do not believe you. This is not you talking.” He clasped her face in his palms. “It is fear, and I understand, but please, my love, please do not allow it to come between us.”
“You read my mum’s notes,” she whispered, divulging what was really driving her away from him. “There’s no way to make this work.”
“That is not what she said. She simply did not have enough time to find a way.”
“Neither do we.”
Her words were final. And the remainder of his broken heart shattered like glass.
Rayna clasped her shaking fingers around his wrists and tugged. His hands fell away.
“Go home,” she said, her voice wet with unshed tears. “Please, Dominic. I’m begging you. Go back to where you belong.”
He teetered a few paces away, his body bruised, battered, and bleeding. Broken.