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She studies my face. “You miss him, don’t you?”
I look down at my hands, thinking. He kidnapped me. Played games with me. Ruthless, heated games that filled me with shame.
I never felt so alive.
“Wouldn’t it be bad to say I do?” I look up, meeting her eye.
She sets her mug on the side table, grabbing both my hands in hers. “Kitt, despite what Carol Ann thinks, it’s okay to want a man.”
“I know. But you’re supposed to want the right man. Not the bad man.”
“Bayne’s not got a bad bone in his body. I promise you that. We grew up next door to their farm. He was always sneaking us beef when he could, knowing how many mouths we had to feed. His father was a bad man. But when his wife left him after Eamon was born, he turned into a mean man. Cailean protected Eamon. Took care of him. Kept his brother safe.”
“That’s so sad.” I shake my head. “I can’t imagine.”
“When he was fifteen and Eamon five, he was finally big enough. He protected his brother the best way he could, fighting back till his old man finally left them alone.” She squeezes my hands. “That’s not an easy childhood to have. Makes the lines between right and wrong blur a bit when you’re protecting the ones you love.”
“But I’m not from this world.”
She gives me a soft smile. “Then why do you always fit in so nicely?”
I smile back.
She locks eyes with me. “It’s okay to want to be with him.”
“I don’t have anything. No money, no power. I don’t want it like it was, him in control over everything. And he’s the one who officially broke up with me.”
I think of the morning I woke up alone in his bed. His bracelet around my wrist. A note left on the pillow.
It’s safe for you to go back now. I’ve gone out of town, had a horse to sell. I won’t be back till the morning. Plenty of space and time for you to pack.
Eamon is on standby, ready to take you back to the lodge whenever you call.
Thanks, Kitty Cat, for everything.
“I know.” She sighs. “That note. God, that tore my heart out when you let me read it. But he left the door open at the end, didn’t he?”
I nod. “He did.” I fiddle with the bracelet at my wrist that’s so quickly become a part of me.
I think of that last line on the note, scrawled like he was running out of time, like if he didn’t do it quickly, he might not say the words at all…
I’m not going anywhere.
xBayne
“If I go back,” I stare at her pensive face, hoping she’ll understand, “I want to do it on my terms.”
“Aye,” she nods. “I wouldn’t mind a man catering to my every need, providing for me, but I can see why you wouldn’t want that. Not when you’ve been put in the position you were. ‘Tis a strange way to begin a relationship.”
“Right?” Relief floods me, happy she agrees. “If we’d just met and fell in love and things were normal, I probably never would have left?—”
She cuts me off, leaning in with wide eyes. “You said ‘fell in love.’ Kitt… are you in love with him?” I don’t know how to answer. She gives my hand a demanding squeeze. “Kitt?”
I stare out over the sea. The color seems to change every day, even changing over the hours, going navy if a storm is coming, blue-green when it’s calm.
This quiet morning, it’s the perfect shade of Bayne blue.
The color eyes our children might have. He’d be a wonderful father. Fiercely protective, stern but loving, ever-present in his children’s lives. And as a husband, well, I couldn’t imagine any woman he took for a wife ever wanting for anything.
