Chapter 28
Chloe woke slowly, gradually; more of herself coming together until she realized she was lying down, and the ground beneath her had turned soft and warm instead of hard and cold.
She then noticed that the sound she’d been hearing for some time without noticing was a fire, steady and low, burning through peat somewhere nearby.
She did not open her eyes immediately. Instead, she lay there and took stock of herself.
Her wrists, aching along neat lines where the rope had cut.
Her jaw, sore on one side where she knew, without needing a mirror, that a bruise had already begun to form.
The deep, bone-deep fatigue that had nothing to do with sleep and everything to do with whatever her body had exerted itself doing in that clearing to stay upright.
William.
She came half up off the pillow before she’d finished the thought, before she’d even opened her eyes properly.
“He’s safe.” Edward’s voice, close, low, before she’d gotten further than the first inch off the bed. “Sleepin’ in the nursery. Melodie’s with him. He wasnae hurt, Chloe. Nae a scratch.”
She let herself back down and only then opened her eyes fully to find him.
He was sitting in the chair beside her bed, close enough that his knee nearly touched the mattress.
He was still in the same shirt from the clearing, a dark stain at one shoulder she did not let herself look at too closely, his hands clasped together in his lap with the knuckles scraped raw on one side.
“How long have I been out?”
“Most of the afternoon. Beathag gave ye somethin’ for the shock, and ye went under almost before she’d finished pourin’ it.” He said it plainly, no accusation in it, though something in the set of his shoulders suggested he’d counted every hour of it. “It’s near dusk now.”
Chloe pushed herself up against the pillows, slower than she meant to, and Edward’s hand came halfway toward her before he stopped it, as though uncertain whether help would be welcome or an insult.
“I can manage.”
“Aye.” He drew the hand back, though his eyes did not leave her, tracking the careful angle she’d propped herself at, the wince she had not quite managed to hide when her wrist bent wrong against the sheet.
“He’s dead,” Chloe said. Not a question, though she found she needed to hear it said aloud; needed the words to exist properly in the room, instead of only in the numb, half-formed shape they’d taken in her memory. “Me father.”
“Aye.”
“I saw it happen and I still cannae…” She stopped, tried again.
“I kept thinkin’, all these years, that if it ever came to it, I’d feel somethin’ plain.
Relief, maybe. Or grief, even, for whatever small part of him had ever been worth grievin’.
Instead, there’s only this.” She held up one hand, palm flat, empty. “Naught at all. Is that wrong of me?”
“Nay.” Edward’s voice had gone rougher than before. “I felt naught, the night I did the same to me own father. Took me thirteen years to understand that wasnae wrongness in me. It was only what was left, once the fear finally had somewhere to go.”
Chloe looked at him properly then. Really looked, the way she had not let herself look at anyone in days, and found none of the wall left in his face that had been there in the distillery, none of the careful, formal distance he’d worn across the supper table like a second skin.
What was left instead was something rawer than she’d ever seen on him, stripped down past the Laird and past the gruffness and past even the man who’d told her that she had not earned the right to ask him anything.
“Ye killed him for me,” she said. “Nae for the clan, or the debt, or any of the reasons a laird’s meant to have.”
“Aye.” He did not dress it up in anything softer than the plain truth of it.
“I’ve told meself a great many things these past weeks to keep from admittin’ what this was, Chloe, but I stood in that clearin’ and watched him strike ye, and there was nae a single thought left in me head about clans or debts or reasons.
There was only ye, on the ground, bleedin’, and him standin’ over ye with a blade still in his hand. ”
Her eyes had gone wet without her quite noticing when it started.
“All this time,” she said, “since the sea, since the cave, all I’ve wanted, every single night, was to wake and find ye sittin’ exactly where ye’re sittin’ now.
I didnae let meself say it, because ye’d made it plain enough where I stood with ye, but that’s the whole truth of it, Edward. That’s all I’ve wanted.”
Something moved through his face at that, quick and unguarded, gone before she could properly name it and then arriving again a moment later, slower this time, allowed to stay.
He reached for her hand, his fingers closing loose around hers first, testing, before he let them tighten properly.
His thumb found the raw line at her wrist where the rope had cut and rested there, not pressing, just present, as if merely touching the injury without hurting her further was something he needed to prove he could do.
“I said things to ye, in that distillery, that I’ve regretted every hour since.
” His voice had dropped low, rough at the edges.
“I told ye that ye hadnae earned the right to ask after me. That was a lie, Chloe. Ye earned it the very first night ye stitched a wound on me hand and didnae flinch from the sight of it. I only couldnae stand what it meant, ye askin’, so I made it yer fault instead of mine. ”
“I ken why ye did it.”
“Ye shouldnae have to ken why. Ye shouldnae have had to sit at me table these past days bein’ spoken to like a stranger in her own home, for somethin’ that was never yer failin’ to begin with.”
His grip on her hand tightened, just slightly. “I watched ye across that table that night, sayin’ ‘Me Laird’ like it was a wound ye were pressin’ on yerself on purpose, and I let it happen because I didnae ken how to stop it without sayin’ the rest of it too.”
“Say it now, then.”
He looked at her for a long moment, the fire throwing soft, moving light across half his face, and Chloe found she could wait as long as it took, now, with his hand around hers and nothing left standing between them that either of them had not already said aloud once today in one form or another.
“I couldnae survive losin’ ye,” Edward said, finally, plain and rough and entirely without armor.
“That’s the whole truth of what’s sat underneath every wall I’ve thrown up these past weeks, Chloe.
Nae fear of what ye’d think of me. Fear of exactly this, of carin’ enough about someone that losin’ them would finish what me father started and never managed to. ”
Chloe turned her hand in his, so that her fingers closed around his instead of merely being held by them.
“Ye havenae lost me,” she said. “Ye’re nae goin’ to.”
“Ye did, though. Lose me.” Edward’s thumb moved once over her knuckles, slow, like he was still convincing some part of himself she was actually there to be touched.
“For about the length of time it takes a heart to beat twice, standin’ in that clearin’.
I saw his hand come up, and I thought, ‘That’s it.
’ That’s the whole of it, done, and I hadnae even told ye… ”
He stopped himself.
“Told me what?”
“Naught ye daenae already ken.” He looked down at their joined hands rather than at her face.
“I’ve been struck before, Chloe. By worse men than him, in worse rooms than that clearin’.
None of it ever hollowed me out the way watchin’ that blow land on ye did.
Nae the beatings. Nae the years after, learnin’ to survive on me own with naught but Tyler and a burned-out keep to me name.
Nae even the night on the stairs. That moment in the clearin’ was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, and it didnae even happen to me own body. ”
“Edward.”
“Let me say the rest of it, or I will lose the nerve.”
His jaw worked once, the old habit, but he did not let it close him off this time, forced the words past it instead.
“I’ve believed, since I was young enough that I cannae properly remember believin’ anything else, that carin’ for someone is what makes a man dangerous. Me father cared for somethin’, once, before the drink took the whole of him.”
He paused. “I daenae ken what, exactly, but I’ve always thought it must have broken in him first, before it turned to what it turned to.
So I built me whole life around never lettin’ it happen to me.
Never lettin’ anyone close enough that losin’ them could break me the same way.
I told meself that was strength. Keepin’ ye at arm’s length, keepin’ William at arm’s length, near enough.
I told meself it was protection. Yers, nae just mine. ”
“It felt like punishment.”
“I ken that now.” He finally lifted his eyes back to hers.
“It wasnae punishment I meant it as. It was fear wearin’ punishment’s clothes, because fear’s an ugly thing and I didnae ken how to let ye see it plain, so I dressed it up as distance instead, and called the distance yer fault when it wasnae ever yers to carry. ”
Chloe said nothing for a moment, letting the fire fill the silence instead, watching the raw honesty sitting on his face without the armor he usually wore over it.
“I cannae promise ye I will be easy,” Edward said, quieter now.
“I’ve thirteen years of practice at pullin’ away the moment somethin’ matters too much, and I daenae ken how a man unlearns that in a day, or a month, or maybe even a year.
There’ll be days the old habit wins. Days I go quiet when I should speak, or cold when I should reach for ye instead. ”
His hand tightened around hers. “But I am tellin’ ye, Chloe, I mean to learn.
To trust ye with the whole of it, nae just the parts that are easy to hand over.
To trust meself beside ye, which is the harder thing by far.
And on the days retreat feels easier than stayin’, I mean to stay anyway.
That’s the whole of what I’ve got to offer ye.
It isnae perfect. It’s the truth, though. ”
Chloe studied him for a long moment. The same face that had frightened her in that distillery.
The same face that had stood over her in a clearing with a blade in its hand and killed a man to protect her, and now, stripped of all that, with nothing left between them that either of them was still pretending not to feel.
She reached up and laid her palm against his cheek.
He went still beneath it, but this time the stillness lacked the old caution, the tension of bracing for a blow he expected to absorb alone.
This time, he let her hand rest there, rough stubble under her palm, warm despite the chill lingering in the room.
He closed his eyes for half a second, like a man finally letting go of something heavy he had carried for too long.
“Edward.”
“Aye.”
“Stop talkin’ now.”
She leaned forward before he could decide whether that was an order or an invitation, and kissed him.
He did not move at first. One full breath of silence, his hand still wrapped around hers, his entire body tense with the effort of not trusting the moment enough to let himself fall into it.
Then something inside him finally gave way all at once, the same way it had in the sea cave, but this time more slowly, without urgency or fear of interruption.
His free hand came up to the back of her neck, careful of the ache still sitting in her shoulders, and he kissed her back like a man who’d finally stopped counting the reasons he should not.
It went on for quite a while. Neither of them hurried it. When he finally pulled back, his forehead rested against hers, both of them breathing more heavily than the stillness of the room seemed to explain, and for a moment, neither of them said anything at all.
“Ye’re meant to be restin’,” Edward said, eventually, though he made no move to put any distance between them.
“I’ve rested most of the afternoon.”
“Beathag will have me head, if she comes back and finds ye sittin’ up kissin’ me instead of sleepin’.”
“Then daenae tell her.” Chloe let her hand slide from his cheek down to rest against his chest instead, feeling the steady, unhurried beat of his heart under her palm. “Stay, though. However long ye’re able.”
“I wasnae plannin’ on goin’ anywhere.” He settled back into the chair, though this time he kept her hand in his, resting on the edge of the mattress between them. “I have nay intention of leavin’ this room tonight, Chloe. Nor any night soon, if I have any say in the matter.”
“Ye have a say in it.” She kissed him again, and this time he kissed her back properly, careful of the ache still sitting in her shoulders, one hand coming up to rest against the back of her neck instead of pulling her closer.