Chapter 10 #4
He was quiet for a moment, but the furrow between his brows said he was thinking plenty. “Seems to me the older we get, the more complicated we start making things. Things that maybe ought not need to be so complicated.”
“Or life gets more complicated when your chickens come home to roost.”
An analogy she was sure Martha would love.
“Agree to disagree,” he said, and she would do no such thing.
“I’ve lived a lot longer than you have. That makes me the expert on time, not you.”
“Are you telling me I should respect my elders?” His smile crooked to the side, boyish in a way that made her heart flutter. “Want me to start calling you ma’am?”
“Not if you like your limbs attached,” she warned, her nose wrinkling.
“You know,” he said, shaking his head, “I’m starting to think you’re all bark.”
“I’m sorry, do you want to see my bite?”
His brows rose. “Are you offering?”
Her breath caught, visions of dragging him over the bar by his collar and sinking her teeth into his plush bottom lip until he groaned swirling through her mind.
Her stomach clenched and she pressed her thighs together, swallowing hard.
No. Bad Effie. She was meant to be putting thoughts of Finn to bed, not thinking about getting him into bed.
“Oh, please.” She scoffed, in part to keep her voice from trembling. “You couldn’t handle my bite.”
“I think you’d be surprised.”
She stared at him. “Finn.”
It was a warning. Or it would’ve been, and a stern one at that, had his name not escaped her on a stuttered breath.
His lips quirked. “Effie?”
He wasn’t serious…was he? The idea was laughable, preposterous. For Chrissake, she was a demon. He had to be joking. He wasn’t actually interested in—
“Cat got your tongue?” he goaded, smile broadening.
She tore her eyes away from his mouth. “As I was saying, on the night of the Strawberry Moon, we went outside, to a small woodland not far from the keep, and under the light of moon and stars, we exchanged vows, promising to find each other again when our souls were in the next life.” She slammed back her drink and set the glass down on the bar.
“And there you have it. That’s the story. ”
“Wait, what?” His smile faltered. “No. What happened after that?”
“You wanted to know why you married me,” she said. “What came after that wasn’t part of our deal. It’s not relevant.”
“I wanted to understand. There’s a difference between having the facts and actually—” He broke off with a frustrated huff and ran his fingers through his hair.
“Look, this was a good start. Thank you. But I’m going to need more than that if I’m going to have a shot of actually remembering any of this. ”
Good. She didn’t want him to remember, not any of it. Knowledge was a burden, and Finn might’ve thought himself prepared to carry it, but he wasn’t. Ignorance wasn’t just bliss, it was a blessing. One she was happy to grant him.
“What?” she asked, voice flat. “Do you want to ask me my favorite color?”
“How long were we married?”
“We were married in 1546. You do the math.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
Of course not. Because nothing in her life could be easy.
“What does it matter?” she asked wearily, this trip down memory lane leaving her feeling picked clean, raw. Her defenses, usually well honed, were trembling, cracks appearing in the walls that cordoned off her tenderest parts.
“It was a trial marriage,” he said. “A year and a day, unless…”
Another crack formed, this one in earnest, and it took everything inside her not to flinch. To sit perfectly still, spine ramrod straight, her face schooled into a blank slate, as if the weight of that word, unless, didn’t send a pang of longing through her breast.
“If that’s your way of asking if I bore you a child”—she swallowed over the lump in her throat—“the answer is yes.”
It didn’t matter how much time had passed, she remembered the day like it was yesterday, the day she’d told Finn she was with child.
The lambing snow had just fallen, the same as every year, heralding the start of spring.
Finn had fallen to his knees, a wide-eyed look of wonder stealing over his face as he’d whispered adoring words against her still-flat stomach.
The look on Finn’s face now was too close to the way he’d looked then, his lips parted and his eyes full of awe as he stared at her like she was the eighth wonder of the world rather than what she really was—an infernal, eternal disappointment, broken to begin with and put back together wrong.
Her stomach flipped, churning. She couldn’t talk about this. She didn’t want to. Not now, not ever, not with anyone, and sure as hell not with Finn.
“I think we’re done for the day,” she said as her heart, lodged in her throat, started to race. Confronting her grief was one thing, but this was more than she’d bargained for. Too much, too fast.
Finn frowned. “I’m not—”
“Let me rephrase.” She stood, stool screeching backward. “I am done for today.”
She ignored the sound of her name as Finn called her, and pushed through the door, promptly emptying her stomach in the bed of azaleas beside the bar. She spit twice and wiped her mouth with the back of her clammy hand before setting off for the inn, not once looking back.