The walk home was cold and quiet, his breath fogging in the night air. He let himself into his house and stood in the dark entryway, listening to the silence. His office called to him. He had patient files to review, medical journals to read, research to catch up on. The familiar work would be soothing, helping to quiet his racing thoughts.
But instead he found himself climbing the stairs and returning to the back bedroom, to pull down another locked box. This one contained his father’s journal, the documentation of a man’s slow descent from controlled physician to something darker. He’d found it after his father died.
The last entry was dated three weeks before his father’s death. The handwriting was barely legible.
I thought I could control it. Thought love would be enough. But the Hyde doesn’t understand love, only possession. And since Elizabeth left there’s been nothing but increasing rage. I can’t do this anymore.
His father had fought but he’d lost, and he’d left a trail of destruction in his wake. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—do the same thing to Chloe’s life.
CHAPTER 10
The chronological filing system was coming together beautifully, which meant Chloe had far too much time to think.
She alphabetized a stack of water rights documents from 1847 and remembered the way Victor’s hands had felt on her waist. She catalogued three boxes of birth certificates and thought about how his eyes had blazed green in the snow. She cross-referenced property deeds with town council minutes and replayed the kiss on an endless loop until she wanted to scream.
He’d apologized.
That was the part that stung most. Not the professional distance or the cool demeanor or even the way he’d practically fled into the darkness afterward. But that stiff apology, as if kissing her had been a regrettable lapse in judgment rather than the most earth-shaking moment of her recent memory.
She shoved another box onto a newly installed shelving unit with more force than necessary, and the whole thing rattled. The baby kicked as if in response.
“Easy there.” She patted her stomach. “Mama’s just frustrated with emotionally constipated doctors who kiss like it’s the end of the world and then say sorry.”
The baby kicked again, a gentle flutter that made her smile despite her mood. She sighed and looked over at her coat hanging on the coatrack. Her new coat, the one Victor had helped her into when she’d left the clinic. She hadn’t even realized until the next day that he’d replaced her old one with a new one that was not only warmer and softer, but actually fit over her growing stomach.
I should thank him, she thought, not for the first time. Instead, she’d been avoiding the clinic for the past three days. And avoiding him meant she was being just as much of a coward as he was.
“Pathetic,” she muttered, pulling out her notebook to record the latest batch of documents. “He apologizes for kissing you and you hide in a dusty archive like a Victorian maiden who’s been compromised.”
Except she had been compromised. Because that kiss—that desperate, hungry, impossibly gentle kiss—had ruined her for all other kisses. Had made her want things she had no business wanting from a man who clearly didn’t want them back.
Or did he?
She chewed on the end of her pen, the familiar argument with herself replaying in her head. His words had said he was sorry. But his body, and the raw need in his eyes when he’d finally pulled away, had said something else entirely. She suspected he was terrified by just how much he wanted her.
To a certain extent she even understood that fear. The thought of trusting someone again, of letting someone close enough to hurt her the way Travis had, scared her. But Travis had been all smooth charm and empty promises. Victor was wrestling with something deeper than simple fear of commitment.
His great-grandfather’s journal sat in her desk drawer, calling to her. She’d read it cover to cover now, piecing together the story of Dr. Thaddeus Jackson and what he called his “guardian.” The entries were remarkable—detailed observations of what sounded like a split personality, except Thaddeus wrote about it with clinical precision and no hint of shame or fear.
The guardian emerged during the mill fire. I have no memory of the event, but witnesses say I pulled twelve people from the burning structure with impossible strength. My hands bore no burns despite grasping red-hot metal. Most curious: the sense of rightness afterward, as if two halves had temporarily aligned for a greater purpose.
Over the years his initial struggles with the guardian had faded. Later entries described learning to work with the guardian rather than against it. He’d found a balance and learned to use his heightened strength and healing for good.
Margaret says my eyes glow green when the guardian is near the surface. She finds it beautiful, claims it reminds her of spring leaves in sunlight. I am blessed beyond measure to have found a partner who sees the whole of me and does not flinch.
The final entry had been written shortly before Thaddeus’s death at the age of seventy-three.
To my descendants who may struggle as I once did: The guardian is not a curse but a gift. Not a monster to be caged buta partner to be understood. Fear will make you small. Trust—in yourself, in your purpose, in those who love you—will make you whole. Choose wholeness. Choose love. Choose to be brave enough for both.
She had cried reading that last passage, thinking about Victor’s carefully controlled demeanor, his rigid boundaries, the way he held himself apart from everyone. He wasn’t choosing wholeness—he was choosing fear, and she had no idea how to help him see the difference.
A knock on the archive door interrupted her spiraling thoughts.
“Come in,” she called, expecting Houston with another box of documents or possibly Flora with unsolicited advice disguised as casual conversation.
Instead, Ginger poked her head through the doorway, her face breaking into a warm smile when she spotted Chloe.
“Hi! I hope I’m not interrupting. I told you I’d come by and visit but I’ve been ridiculously busy lately.”
