She tilted her head up to look at him, and in the dark, he could see the faint gleam of her eyes.
“I’m telling you this because I want you to understand something,” she said. “When I say I’m not leaving, it’s not because of the name, and it’s not because I think I owe my aunt some kind of debt. It’s because you’re in pain, and I’m here, and leaving is something I can’t do. Not won’t. Can’t.”
He was quiet for a long time after she finished speaking. The room was dark, and her hand was warm on his chest. He could feel the rhythm of her breathing against his side, steady and unhurried. She’d said what she needed to say and was now waiting, without anxiety or demand, for whatever he would offer in return.
What he offered wasn’t a speech, wasn’t a carefully constructed rebuttal or a formal acknowledgment or any of the verbal structures he’d spent his adult life perfecting. What he offered was his hand tightening around hers and his mouth pressed briefly against the top of her head, and a silence that contained no distance in it at all.
They fell asleep like that, in the narrow bed with the quilt pulled up and the October dark pressing against the window, and for the first time since he’d escaped the void, Malachi did not dream.
11
Roslyn stirred and then froze. For the first time she’d arrived in Oregon, she wasn’t alone in the narrow bed where she’d collapsed each night after tending to Malachi all day.
He lay next to her, cleanly etched profile outlined against the dark curtains that obscured the view outside. As far as she could tell, he was still asleep, incongruously dark lashes fluttering against his high cheekbones, his chest rising and falling in even rhythms. She couldn’t know this for sure, but she had a feeling this was the first time he’d slept so deeply in a very long while.
And then he stirred, eyes opening. For the briefest moment, he stared up at the ceiling before he rolled over on one side so he could gaze at her.
“Morning,” she said. Unbelievably inadequate after what they’d shared the night before, and yet she somehow knew it was what he wanted to hear. Malachi Van Horn wasn’t someone who needed or wanted her to tell her how incredible it had been.
He knew, just as she knew, and that was enough for both of them.
“Good morning,” he replied. He shifted again and seemed to wince slightly. “I don’t believe this bed is any more comfortable than the chair in my study.”
“Probably not,” she said lightly. “But I still prefer lying down to sitting up while I sleep, so you can keep your chair.”
A wisp of a smile touched his lips. Even after living together under this roof for the past three weeks, she’d still never seen him smile broadly, hadn’t seen anything close to a grin.
And that was all right. Those half-smiles felt far more earned than a wide grin from someone with a less guarded nature. To be honest, if she ever saw him grinning broadly, she’d probably think that the strain of watching over all those artifacts had finally gotten to him.
“Ready for breakfast?” she asked, and he nodded.
“In a few minutes.”
Which probably meant that he wanted to use the bathroom before he went downstairs.
“I’ll get the kettle going,” she said, and he nodded.
She noticed that he kept his gaze downcast as she climbed out of bed and retrieved the clothes she’d discarded the night before. Despite the intimacies they’d shared, it seemed clear he still wasn’t entirely comfortable with the change in their relationship.
Well, the morning after was generally awkward, even with someone who hadn’t spent the past seventeen years of their life fiercely celibate. Or at least, she assumed he hadn’t been with anyone during all that time. He’d admitted that it had been a very long while, and she certainly hadn’t been in any position to ask further questions.
No, she’d only wanted to sink onto the bed with him and finally allow herself to feel all the things she’d been wanting but had been too stubborn to acknowledge to herself.
After slipping on her flats, she headed downstairs to the kitchen. Everything looked exactly the same, the dishes from the night before sitting on the drain next to the sink, the curtains of the sink pulled shut, and yet Roslyn couldn’t help thinking it had all changed.
The last time she was in this room, she hadn’t yet made love with Malachi Van Horn.
Her cheeks flushed a little, even as she told herself that she was an adult and could be with whomever she liked. Still, she knew if any of her friends or family had been around to see her this morning after, they probably would have been asking her some pointed questions about Stockholm Syndrome.
This was nothing like that, though. Or at least, she didn’t think it was. Malachi had done everything he could to keep her at arm’s length, but the more she learned about him — the more she understood why he had done the things he had done — the more she’d come to the realization that she and everyone else in her clan had misjudged him.
She remembered how Brianna had told her about the battle on the promontory, where Malachi had come with some of the people who worked for him in an attempt to take the artifacts the McAllisters had in their keeping. Bree had told the story with her usual flair, but one particular detail seemed to have taken up permanent residence in Roslyn’s mind. Near the end of the confrontation, Malachi had cried, “You don’t know what you’re doing!”
Bree, of course, had related this as yet another ploy, something that of course the Collector would say if it would get them to back off. But now Roslyn realized that hadn’t been Malachi’s intention at all. He’d known, while they didn’t, that destroying him or imprisoning him would cause the kind of disaster they could barely comprehend.
Those words hadn’t been a ploy.
They’d been a warning.
