19. Love and War #2
Tears flowed down Cecily’s cheeks, but not from happiness.
It sounded too good to be true, that she might be wanted so much that Jack would willingly defy his father in so many ways and defend her repeatedly against his objections.
Her hopes had been dashed so many times that any hope of this turned to dread in her stomach.
She hadn’t been worthy of death, let alone love, and her deepest fear and worst belief ripped from her as a simple, heart-wrenching question. “But what about when you realize he’s right?”
Jack’s face slackened. “Cecily—”
“I was never supposed to be like this,” she cried, the confession bursting from her with the force of how desperately and how long she’d ached so say it.
For ages, it had festered inside her, an excuse she was never willing to give because it would never forgive what had been done.
But she couldn’t hold it in any longer. “I was never supposed to be this awful girl I’ve become.
Every day, I’m horrified by who I am, but I don’t know how else I can be because I’m only trying to survive this life I never asked for. ”
Admitting it felt like pulling a splinter out, if a splinter could ever be so large to impale a person through the heart.
When she let herself face the truth of who she’d once been against who she was now, she yearned for her innocence in a way that was acutely painful.
Knowing she would never get herself back was like grieving a death nearly as shattering as her father’s.
There was no undoing the sins that had brought her here—both her own and others’—and she had been left hollow and gutted, soulless in a way that had kept her from any kind of hope, even when love lingered at her fingertips.
He had to know why. She loved him enough to warn him.
“Everyone told me death was too good for me, like I was a devil for doing everything I could to keep what little good I had left and—and—” She gripped her shoulders, her fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.
“I started to believe them because maybe I was being punished for not saving my father. Maybe there was something I could’ve done—”
“No,” Jack implored.
She swallowed her pain, refusing to look at him as she barreled on before she lost her nerve.
“But even if I didn’t kill my father, I killed six others.
I became a monster on my own to save myself because no one else would.
No one saved me from those men, or prison, or piracy.
” She gasped each word, like her body was rejecting every weapon she’d forged for herself, only to lay them at Jack’s feet in supplication.
“I only had myself, and now I have descended so far that I don’t know how anyone could want me.
I don’t understand how you could want me after all I’ve done to make you hate me—”
“I don’t hate you.” His voice came low and broken. He was only three paces away now, not close enough to touch her, but near enough to make her feel warmer, like his heat was a living thing that reached for her for the sake of its master.
“But I do,” she wailed. “And I thought running to a new life somewhere else might make any of this bearable, all while trying to ignore how you make me feel—like I could be soft and wanted, and it feels like I’m breaking, and if the wrong person sees, if they know, they’ll only break what little is left of me…
” She scrubbed away her tears. “I’m terrified, Jack, and I’m scared of how much I want you—so much that I would kill you to make it stop.
But after everything you’ve seen of me, everything I’ve done to you—”
He took another step, only two paces away now. “I like what you’ve done to me.”
“You can’t mean that,” she whimpered.
“I do.”
“But I cut you.”
“I don’t mind that you cut me.”
“I’m ruined.”
Dirt crunched under his boot as he came closer. “You’re perfect. I nearly told you so the day before we docked in Tortuga, and I haven’t changed my mind.”
“I’m damned,” she pleaded, hoping it would be enough to stop his approach because he didn’t understand. He didn’t see, and if he did, she might spare him. “I am a scourge.”
Another step brought him to stand in front of her. His hands lifted, offering comfort but not touching her yet. He would, in a moment, if she let him.
“I could imagine no better blessing than having you,” he said with such gravity that it took everything in her not to lean toward him.
“And I wish you could still have your father and your life. I would undo all that’s happened to you, but since I can’t…
I am beyond grateful to have found you. You are everything I have longed for, everything I’ve dreamed of, and I’ll tear the world apart to have you. ”
She held out her hand, placing it on his chest to stop him. Warmth enveloped her, gentle and comforting, and any ice that had been in her was long gone. She stared at their feet, tears dripping to the ground.
He leaned into her. “Don’t push me away.
I’ll only push back and pursue you until I’ve silenced every foolish reason for why you think we can’t be together.
” His hand came under her chin, and he gently tipped her face up, lifting her gaze to his.
“I see you, Cecily, beyond what’s been done to you and what you’ve been forced to become.
And I want every part of you, even if it hurts, because the only unsuitable thing about you is that you ever thought you were unsuitable at all. ”
She was enough. Jack had never thought otherwise.
She wasn’t strong enough to contain the flood inside her, but Jack was. The moment her hand fell, his arms came around her, crushing her to him and holding her together in a way she’d never have managed on her own as she began to weep.
The multitude of small knives hidden in his vest pressed into her arms and hands as she held to him, burying her face in his shirt.
He smelled like salt and warmth, and with him wrapped around her, she finally felt a distinct sense of rightness, like she could sink into him and belong there, safely guarded next to his heart.
And for all her self-righteous piety and judgment, she didn’t care that he was a pirate. He had proven himself to be so much more. When he’d learned of all she tried to protect, when he’d understood, he had never used any of it to wound her despite how she treated him.