Chapter 29
TROY
I’ve killed her.
That morbid thought stays with me when she doesn’t surface after me. The water is pitch black, but I find her somehow and haul her up. Then I swim her to shore, her cold, lifeless body weightless in the water until I drag her out of it. But she’s alive when I give her mouth-to-mouth.
She splutters up dirty lake water, her chest rising, barely. No time to waste calling for help.
I need to get her inside.
As I carry her into the house and take her straight to the sitting room, I consider putting her in a hot bath, but the water takes forever to heat up in this house.
Luckily, when I get there, the fire is still lit, though it’s not supposed to be.
Kathy has taken to ignoring my orders, which, for once, I’m grateful for.
I wrap Sage in towels and place her next to the hearth, and then focus on getting the fire going, fumbling with the wood and the twists of newspaper.
My fingers are stiff, and my hands are shaking.
Once the flames are catching, making me wince with every damn crack of timber, I return my attention to Sage.
She’s barely looking at me, shivering with blue lips and deathly pale skin. I rub her arms through the blanket, but it’s obvious she needs to get dry and warm.
I should get Kathy.
But as I walk to the door, I know that’s too slow. Getting the housekeeper from the third floor will take time that she might not have.
For Christ’s sake, it wasn’t supposed to hurt her, just scare her and prove to her how ridiculous her accusation is. It didn’t help that I was pissed waking up alone, head pounding, without my damn key. I thought she could swim! And why did she fight me when I tried to bloody well save her?
I stalk over to where she’s huddled and crouch down, making her look at me. “Sage. I need to take off your…clothes. Do I have your permission?” My voice is harsher than I intend it to be.
She stares back and eventually nods.
At least she’s not wearing much. If she had been wearing that wool dress, it might have dragged her down further.
Mercy would be helpful right about now, too, but the razor was lost when Sage tried to cut me with it.
I settle for taking her underwear off the old-fashioned way, unhooking her bra, and easing her out of her wet pants.
I take note of her injuries: scraped knees and cut palms from running away from me.
This is all my fault.
But I just saw red.
I let the monster out, and this is what happens.
It doesn’t take long until she’s dry, then I grab some fresh blankets from the ottoman next to the couch and wrap them around her. Under the glow of the fire, she looks white as a sheet, and she’s mumbling, not making much sense.
“Nell w-was…d-down there. I have t-to…g-go back.” Her lower lip trembles. Fuck, she’s not warming up. The fire isn’t hot enough yet, and it’s only warming one side of her.
“Shhhhhh. I’ve got you.” I make a split decision to drag off my own wet clothes, throw on the spare running shirt and joggers I keep in my office, and huddle under the blankets with her. Then I wrap my arms around her and hold her tight.
I’m not cold, far from it.
My blood is boiling, my skin is fire, being so close to open flames…
And to her.
Slowly, Sage stops shaking, but I keep staring at the fire.
For once, the heat and the flames don’t bother me as much; not when there’s a beautiful woman, naked, pressed against me, so damn close I dare not move.
I’m so fucking hard. All I can think about is the feel of her silky soft skin, and the thorny scent of wild lavender clinging to her.
Soon, she’s breathing deeply, her gentle snores telling me she’s asleep. I’ll wake her up if I try to extract myself, and she should rest. So, yet again, I stay where I am, leaning back so I’m against the couch, while she rests her head on my chest.
I stay like that for hours.
I go through everything that happened. She saw Tobias’s body, so she knows now I killed him.
He put my family through hell, and then he touched her, made her laugh, like he had a right to.
There was no way he was going to leave my island after that.
But I couldn’t outright admit it to her; she wouldn’t trust me, and I need her to.
Especially as she blamed me for killing Nell.
That I did not do.
And I needed to prove it.
But this is not what I envisioned when I jumped off the tower with her.
It was supposed to scare her into telling me the truth, for once.
Make her wake the fuck up. The girl I thought she was could swim.
Can you fake drowning? No, I doubt it. The shore wasn’t far.
She could have swum. And the lake wasn’t that cold either, with it still being autumn. I don’t get her, unless…
She’s really who she says she is.
Sage Lovett.
The daughter of the man who burned my family alive and framed me for their murder.