Eleanor softened, though she did not retreat. “Then you are still living in the moment you lost your father,” she said. “And you are making every new attachment answer for it.”
Anne looked down, her hands trembling slightly as the truth sank in. At that moment, she knew that she should not have left.
But she had, and it had cost her everything.
CHAPTER 28
The storm had not eased by the time Dorian reached Rosemere House.
It followed him incessantly, the wind cutting across the road and rain turning the ground unstable beneath Tempest’s hooves. He did not slow down once the estate came into view, nor when the lanterns blurred through sheets of water, nor when exhaustion began to edge into every movement that should have been controlled.
He only stopped when there was nowhere left to go.
The front doors of Rosemere House were solid against the night, and he struck them hard enough that the sound carried through the entire entrance hall and beyond.
Once was not enough. The second blow came immediately after, then a third, each one less controlled than the last, until footsteps sounded somewhere inside.
“Open the door,” he called, his voice breaking through the rain rather than rising above it. “Please.”
There were more footsteps, then a pause, and then the locks shifted.
When the door finally opened, Anne stood there wrapped in a robe, her hair loosely pinned and falling in damp strands around her face, as though she had been pulled from sleep rather than waiting for him.
The sight of her did not calm him. It made everything worse.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Rain poured around him while she simply stared at him, as though she could not believe he was real. Then she spoke, her voice quiet but sharpened by confusion.
“Dorian—”
“I am sorry,” he blurted, the words spilling out before he could shape them into anything more controlled. “I am sorry. I should not have come like this. I should not have waited. I should not have let you leave without fighting harder for you.”
Anne’s expression shifted slightly, uncertainty giving way to something more guarded. “What are you talking about?”
Dorian shook his head once, his breath uneven. “All of it. The hesitation. The silence. The moment I let you believe that Lady Vivian meant anything at all compared to what I feel for you.”
He took a step forward, then stopped himself as though he was not sure he had the right to cross the threshold.
“I told myself I was being careful,” he continued, his voice tightening. “That I was thinking of you and that I was trying not to hurt you further. But that is not what it was. It was fear. It has always been fear.”
Anne did not move, though something in her chest tightened as she listened.
Dorian’s hands curled slightly at his sides as he forced himself to continue. “Since Lily died, I have built every important decision around the idea that if I care too deeply, I will destroy it. I let it decide how I speak, how I act, how close I allow myself to get to anything that matters.”
His voice faltered briefly, but he pushed through it.
“And then you entered my life, and I did not know what to do with the fact that I could not keep my distance from you even when I tried.”
Anne’s breath caught faintly, but she said nothing. Dorian looked at her properly then, rain dripping from his hair, realizing that he was not entirely steady on his feet.
“I hesitated because I believed you deserved someone better than me,” he said quietly. “Someone whole, untouched by what I have become. But I cannot lose you. I cannot stand here and pretend that what I feel is something I can survive letting go of. I love you, and I do not think I will recover from watching you walk away from me.”
The admission hung between them as the rain continued to fall around him, the house behind her utterly still.
Dorian did not move closer. He simply stood there, as though everything he had avoided for years had finally caught up with him in a single moment he could no longer outrun.
Rain still fell in heavy sheets around them, but he barely seemed to feel it anymore. The storm had stopped mattering the moment Anne appeared in front of him, wrapped in a robe, watching him with a stillness that made every word feel like it might either reach her or destroy what remained between them.
His breath came unevenly as he tried to steady himself.
