“No,man,” Damien shot back, rising to his feet. “You need to stop that. You need to stop pushing us all away and punishing yourself like this. We care about you. Everything can go back to the way it was.”
“You do not understand!” Evander roared, shooting to his feet. “All those months, I kept myself alive on an idea... a dream,” Evander said quietly, his gaze dropping to his ruined hands. “A foolish one. Something I had been reaching toward before everything. I told myself that if I endured it—all of it—I would find my way back. That there was something worth coming back to.”
He let out a breath that was almost a laugh, and the sound of it made Damien’s chest tighten.
“And now I look at what I have become,” Evander rasped. “And I think, God help me, I think she would sooner recoil.”
Damien stilled. “She?”
Evander’s jaw tightened, and he looked away toward the dark window, as if he had not spoken at all. The silence that followed was answer enough.
Then a look of pain drew over his pale face.
“Evander... You should know that we are here for you,” Damien murmured as Evander drew in slow, deep breaths.
Silence stretched through the room. Evander closed his eyes, continued to draw breaths into his far too weak chest. Another wave of anguish washed over Damien as he took him in once more from a closer distance. Evander was so thin now that he could clearly see the bones beneath his pale expanse of chest.
“You need something to eat,” Damien stated, rising up to his feet. “Something to drink as well.”
“I am fine,” Evander rasped.
“My friend, you are the furthest possible from fine, and I will not see you punish yourself any longer,” Damien replied, walking to the door. He hollered for the butler until he appeared in the darkened hallway, and Damien ordered him to fetch a meal for the Duke of Redgrave. By the time he finished, his anger had abated completely, and as he walked back to Evander, he decided to apologize. It was Evander, though, who was first to say the words.
“I am sorry, old friend,” Evander croaked, reaching a quivering hand up to his forehead. “Despite what I said, I do not blame you. But this is precisely why I have stayed away. I am not a man anymore. I am a beast.”
He let out a weak laugh and shook his head.
“No, a beast at least has strength. I have nothing. I am just a wounded animal that does not understand why it is alive when it should be dead.”
Damien swallowed the pity that rose up in him, knowing it would serve no purpose.
“You can come back from this, Evander,” he stated instead. “You are the strongest person I know.”
A knock came at the door, interrupting their conversation. Damien quickly took the tray the butler offered and closed the door again. He brought it to Evander and placed it on his lap.
“Eat,” he commanded, pointing to the plate of cold ham and sliced bread with his eyes. He wished it were something more sophisticated, but given the look of Evander, he doubted the man even employed a cook at all.
Evander narrowed his eyes at him for a moment, then, after a moment of reluctance, he picked up a thick slice of the ham and tore a bite out of it with his teeth.
“Is this how you convinced my cousin to marry you?” Evander asked with his mouth still full. “Barking orders and force feeding her ham?”
Damien let a dry chuckle escape his lips, relieved that not only was Evander eating, but that he was cracking a joke.
“Precisely,” he quipped, and his tension eased a little when Evander let out a soft laugh before taking another bite.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose and sat back down.
Damien looked at his friend and felt the weight of what he said earlier pressing against his chest. Evander had clung to the idea of a woman through horrors Damien could barely imagine, and now he was convinced she was already lost to him. That whatever he had survived for had been for nothing. There was nothing Damien could do about that, and the helplessness of itweighed heavily in his gut.
“Adrian told me, you know,” Evander said, then swallowed another bite. “Before I left to come here. That you had taken to our sweet cousin. Like a beast stalking its prey, I believe, is what he said. You must truly love her.”
Even though Damien’s heart fluttered, he shook his head.
“Love has nothing to do with it,” he replied. “I owe your family a debt. I did not protect you as I should have, but Iwillprotect her.”
Evander swallowed another bite as his brows furrowed.
“Protect her? From what?” he asked.
