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Chapter Twenty-One
Kellan
The fresh air filled my lungs but did little to soothe the warmth in my blood. I needed a cool shower to calm myself.
As if bending and kissing her hadn’t stripped me raw of everything I’d built to guard myself, seeing her naked had ruined me.
I’d never be able to get that image out of my mind. Her soft curves and smooth skin had me itching to reach out and run my fingertips against her.
Now Deidamia's stupid crow was following us.
What she had planned wasn’t something I could fathom. Trying to mentally prepare myself for it felt useless.
Dark clouds formed above me with the smell of rain behind them. My body still ached from carrying Josephine for so long. I needed a shower before nightfall. At least I would be clean if Deidamia decided to rain hell down on us.
Stalking toward the back of the house, I found Ernest there waiting for me. I stopped. “What is it?” I asked.
He chuckled humorlessly and slowly sat down on the back steps of his home. The growing wind pushed his graying hair around his head, and he breathed it in like you would at the beach.
“Tell me something, Kellan. Are you going to let yourself move on from your wife?” He looked over with those wise eyes. “Your soulmate is in that room, and you’re pushing her away.”
I shifted uncomfortably. Josephine wasn’t my soulmate. She was a girl that I found attractive.
He leaned back and rested both elbows on the step above him.
“She isn’t my soulmate,” I said.
He grinned like a Cheshire cat. “You live in a manure-filled field of denial, son. Why are you so scared to let go?”
The dreadful feeling of my past crept up the back of my neck. I stepped forward, feeling lightheaded from the pressure of the memories, and pointed my finger at him. “I do not want to talk about it.”
Ernest frowned. “I understand,” he said, standing up slowly. “But you’re doing yourself a disservice by not moving on. That girl,” he said, looking over his shoulder, “was put in your life for a reason. The reason you hear one another’s thoughts and that feeling of need is a connection. You woke her from her sleep state with a kiss, Kellan. That’s nothing to be discarded. No matter how hard it is to let your wife and little girl go.”
Ernest stepped upward toward the back door. “I’ll bring you a towel. You’re starting to smell.”
I lowered my gaze to the ground and stared at the tips of my steel-toe boots. His words felt like ice running over my body, waking up parts of me that had been asleep for far too long.
Though leaving the memories of my past life behind made me feel like a traitor. Walking toward the stall, I grabbed my t-shirt over my head and pulled it off, tossing it over the stall door.
Once I was naked, I turned on the water and let the cool liquid rush down my body. It was a relief from the flames that licked my insides.
Rain began to sprinkle down, mixing with the water and washing away the grime of this journey.
As he promised, Ernest tossed a towel over the side and a new t-shirt. The bar of soap had fallen from Josephine’s shower. The little elf had been getting a peep show when I got there.
Not that I was much better. I’d ripped the door open, expecting to see someone attempting to take her, and stalled. Because I couldn’t force myself to look away.
I screwed my eyes closed, attempting to block how perfect she’d looked in front of me, her forearm covering her breasts and the smooth path of her stomach ...
Stop it.
The torture I put myself through was cruel. So was holding onto a family for decades. I loved them so much that I wanted to die right along with them. But Deidamia’s cruelty ran deep. Instead of giving me the freedom and leaving me with them, she took me to her castle.
The smell woke me. The rancid scent of urine and feces clung to the air and seeped into my lungs like cement.
I gagged and rolled over to vomit what was left in my stomach. The dirty mattress below me was filthy, along with the cell I’d been shoved inside.
My memory felt foggy. There were only bits and pieces of the events playing in my head. I remembered my family ...
