Page 64 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

“It’s not nothing,” she protested. “I was an asshole back there. I accused you of doing something absolutely horrible. Without basis. And that is inexcusable.”

“You have been wounded by me in the past,” he said gruffly.

“I have been, but not because you intentionally wounded me. I said I could accept it. And yet—” He could hear the tears creeping into her voice, the words becoming thick and waterlogged. “And yet at the very first opportunity, I accuse you of being a monster.”

He turned in his seat to look at her.

“I know you’re not a monster. You were brave and kind and loyal and always put others before yourself. I’m just so angry. Angry at you.”

“I never meant to hurt you.”

“It’s more than that,” she said, swiping at her tears. “I’m angry at myself, too. For not telling you. You would have stayed. I know you would have. And then I wouldn’t have—” She took a shuddering breath. “I wouldn’t have struggled for so long.”

“It hasnae been easy for me either, Jory, I?—”

“But you had money! You had money to buy new identities and new situations and new circumstances! You had money to buy safety! I spent hundreds of years scraping to save just enough to escape to the next situation, hoping like hell to be able to stay for a decade or so before they ran me out. You’re a man! You had money. You had connections. I hadnothing.Nothing.” She was nearly screaming now, her tears glistening in the light from her security camera flood lamp. “And I’mfuriouswith you for what you did, but I’m just as mad at myself because if I had told you, you would have stayed. I wouldn’t have had to… It would have been easier.”

He wanted to weep too. He wanted to reach across the center console and drag her into his lap and hold her close, to let her soak the cotton of his shirt with her tears until she felt better, as he’d done for her so many times before. But she was curled in on herself, arms crossed tightly over her chest.

“And because I’m just so angry, I assumed the worst of your business venture, of you. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I think it’s really wonderful what you’ve tried to do with the nightclubs, how you tried to protect people. And I know this new business is more of the same. And I just hate myself right now for being such a goddamn?—”

He didn’t let her finish. In less time than a blink, less time than a heartbeat, before the next vicious word could be turned back on herself, Callum was out of the car. He threw open her door and stood in the opening.

“Dinnae be unkind to yourself, mo cridhe,” he said thickly. “I cannae bear it.”

She unbuckled her seatbelt and turned, burying her face in his dress shirt, gripping the sides of his jacket in her fists. He smelled the saltiness of her tears.

“It was all for you, Jory,” he whispered against the top of her head.

She lifted her chin and looked at him, tears clinging to spiked eyelashes.“What?”

“Everything good I have ever done in this godforsaken eternal life, I have done for you.”

22

“Everything good I have ever done in this godforsaken eternal life, I have done for you.”

Had Jory not been clinging to his suit jacket like a life raft, she might very well have collapsed from those words. As it was, he could have knocked her over with a feather.

Jory felt the expensive silk blend of his suit against her palms. He smelled like cologne. Or maybe it was aftershave. She let go of the suit jacket with one hand and slid it up his broad chest to his cheek, feeling the rough bristles against her chilled fingers.

He looked down at her, his jaw tight.

“I believe you,” she whispered.

He blinked. She knew he didn’t need to. Just like she knew he didn’t need to breathe or cough or clear his throat or any of the other little affectations that he practiced in public.

She continued. “I believe you. About all of it. I believe that you didn’t ever want to hurt Esther. I believe that you didn’t ever mean to hurt me. I believe that you’ve tried your best to help humans and vampires alike. And I—” She felt the tears falling over the precipice of her eyelashes.

“I wanted to be a man you could be proud of.”

He stood just outside of the car, the door thrown open wide. She pulled on his suit jacket and he leaned in, shifting closer, one inch at a time, until his lips were a mere breath away.

“I was always proud of you, Callum,” she whispered.

A sound—not a sob, not a cough—rattled his throat just before he closed the distance between them and pressed his lips to hers.

So much was familiar between them. The heat. The attraction. All of it still as bright and shocking as a lightning strike. She expected him to kiss her like he had behind the shed, to devour her one thrust of his tongue at a time.