“Aster, would you please have the pastries and cakes brought in while I attend my husband’s change of clothes?”
“Aye, love.”
“If you’ll excuse us,” she said to the men before leading Sin up the stairs.
He followed her up the narrow stairs. “Are you not going to answer my question?”
“I didn’t wish to do it in front of the others.”
“Why?”
She opened the door to their room and let him enter first. Then she closed the door and crossed the room to stand beside him. She wanted to pull him into her arms, but something in his demeanor told her he wouldn’t welcome that. “Lochlan told me no one knew when you were born. Is it true?”
His eyes blank, he moved away from her to pull his armor out of the trunk by the window. “Aye.”
Callie didn’t let him get away. She crossed the room to join him at the window and as soon as he straightened, she took his chin in her hand and smiled up at him. “Then today shall mark the day of your rebirth.”
He looked baffled by her words. “My rebirth?”
She nodded as she fingered his whiskered cheek, then traced the line of his jaw to his silken hair. “You’re no longer alone, Sin. You now have a home and a wife who wants you. Spurn me if you must, but you will always be welcome here. And if you’ve no wish to be a MacAllister or earl or anything else, that is fine. But from this day forward you are a MacNeely.”
His dark eyes narrowed. “I’ve no wish to be owned by you or anything else.”
Callie’s stomach drew tight in frustration. How she wished she could make him understand what it was she was offering him.
“And I am not trying to own you or even claim you. That is not the nature of what I offer and it breaks my heart that you can’t even understand it. Maybe one day you will. If you have to go, go. I won’t hold you here. I will stay behind and every day you are gone, I will miss you. Every hour, I will think of you and wonder where you are and be worried that something might happen to you.”
Sin stood in silence as her words cut through him. He’d never been more than just the most passing of thoughts to anyone. Not even his brothers.
What she offered...
If it wasn’t love, it was a damned good substitute.
“I hope and pray that I already have your child in me. And I hope he grows to be just as fine a man as his father.”
Sin ground his teeth at her words. The pain, the ache, the need inside him roared up and screamed through his soul. He couldn’t stand the agony of it. It was overwhelming and shattering.
“Do not say such things to me,” he growled.
“Why?”
“Because I can’t stand to hear it.” He felt tears prick his eyes, but he quickly banished them. Against his will, he reached out and cupped her cheek in his hand. “I don’t know how to love, Callie. I don’t know how to be the man you need.”
“You are the man I need.”
He turned away from her with a curse. Inside, his emotions were tangled. He was afraid to trust in her. It was easy for her to say she would stand by him now, but once he had proof of her brother’s crimes she would feel that way no longer.
Neither one of his parents had ever stood by him. His brothers might, yet they had never been put to the test, in part because he had no need to know whether or not they would stand by him or flee.
He had been hurt so many times. Betrayed over and over by everyone in his life. His brothers each carried the same guilt Draven did over the fact that when he had been sacrificed for them, they each had felt a twinge of relief.
Sin didn’t blame them for it, it was more than understandable, but having been the sacrificial lamb so many times, he refused to believe she wouldn’t turn on him as well.
Her clan meant everything to her and her brothers even more.
Nay, this was a lie. Not in her heart, for he knew she meant the words right now. But to believe in them...
He’d been many things in his life. A thief, an assassin, a starving beggar, a knight and an earl. He had never been a fool. And it was one role he wouldn’t play now.
