He jerked and the heat of his gaze was suddenly too much. I turned away from him, looking into the foyer, silently trying to find the strength to get the rest of it out. “You aren’t a part of that. You’re just the man who saved—”
“Stop,” he begged.
I stood and shook my head. “No. I ruined your life.” Regardless of the rules set upon me, I had no right to force him to uproot his life for the sake of my freedom.
Holding my breath, I watched him look at his feet, muttering something I couldn’t hear before he gave me a confession. “You didn’t ruin my life.”
“You left it,” I returned, agony weighing on my shoulders. “Margo said you left the day of the book festival.”
He nodded. “Yes, to finish a job.”
“What job?” I held his gaze despite everything in my body telling me to look away.
A shadow fell over his features. “Don’t ask me that.”
Goose bumps reemerged. I pressed my lips together. I needed to honor his wishes. He’d done so much for me. “What can I ask you?”
He was still as stone, his eyes glimmering with heat. “Angel, please.”
My hands fell, gripping the edges of the couch cushion as he loomed over me, his shadow shielding me from the rest of the world. “Do you not want me to ask you questions?” My voice was barely above a whisper, my heart drumming in my ears. He saidnothing, pinning me in place with his gentle stare. I didn’t know what to do or how to act. Which presented a major problem, because I prided myself on knowing just what to do and just how to act to please everyone around me. Making people comfortable was a bad habit I’d been chipping away at, layer by layer, since I came here. I wanted my new life to be filled with only good memories, but as the days went on, I realized that life wasn’t life unless there was a little bit of bad. A balance. If there was only good, it would be a fairy tale—and fairy tales were fictional.
“I need you to tell me what you want,” he murmured. “And if you don’t know what you want from me, then let me go.”
Let him go?The thought of him leaving again formed a pit in my stomach.
“I don’t want you to disappear again,” I blurted.
Ash stared at me for a moment, blinking once, then twice before he said, “I’m not going anywhere. I’m back and I’m here to stay.”
I stood, my lips inches from his now. “Promise me. Promise me you won’t go away again.”
“With my job—”
“Then promise me you’ll always come back,” I cut him off, pressing my hands against my stomach. “I can’t—I don’t want to be the reason you stopped living your life.”
“Never had a life to begin with,” he replied instantly, regret curling in his brows immediately after.
A second later, the power went out, leaving us drenched in the glow of my candles, causing shadows of worry to deepen across his face. He looked up to the ceiling and then to the light switches on the wall. “Does this kind of thing happen often after storms?” he asked, moving away from me.
I moved to one of the windows, watching the storm hang over the mountains, moving on. “During storms, yes. Probably three out of five storms will cause the power to trip. The last electricianI had up here said the power lines were incredibly dated, and it was something I just needed to expect.”
He leaned down to access the antique light switch before looking at me over his shoulder. “Where’s your breaker panel?”
“Oh, um, through the kitchen. There’s a small utility room. It’s on the right wall.”
He was gone before I’d finished speaking, moving through my house as if he was on a mission. I looked down at my now-cold cup of tea and sighed. It was going to take me at least a week to get back into the swing of things. My temple was still throbbing, and I needed to take a scalding-hot shower. I still had to work tomorrow, and I’d have to face Marg.
“Do you have a backup generator?” he asked as he came back into the living room.
Shaking my head, I told him what the electrician told me. “Uh, he said there’s no guarantee it would kick on due to the old wires throughout the house.”
“What did you call him out here for in the first place?”
I swallowed. “To install a generator.”
He let out a deep sigh, turned his head, and muttered yet another thing under his breath. Annoyance glided across my shoulders, slick and oily. “It would be best,” I began softly, my voice unsteady, “if you didn’t say things about me to yourself. If you have something to say, regardless of my feelings, I wish for you to say them to my face.”
He straightened and turned to me with pinched brows and thin lips. “I didn’t say anything about you.”
