Page 16 of A Secret In The Garden

“You don’t have to do this,” I whispered, my voice rougher than I meant it to be. “I’m fine.”

He didn’t pull away. Instead, he looked at me with a heavy gaze, his expression unreadable. “You’re not fine. Not here.”

I could feel the shift between us, like something was unraveling. I was torn between feelings and logic.

“Don’t worry, I don’t think you’ll scar,” he said with a hint of humor, referencing his own scar.

“How did you get it?” I whispered, unable to stop myself. He was so close, it took everything to not reach out and touch the deep, jagged line across his forehead.

He focused on my hand, cleared his throat, and kept his eyes down, looking almost ashamed. “Bike accident when I was sixteen,” he murmured.

“How did the bike fare? Matching scar?” I said in an attempt to lighten the moment.

His face grew even more stern and humorless. “Bike was fine; the scar was given to me when the man I stole it from bashed my head in with a shovel.”

I tried not to visibly show how surprised I was at that.

The muscles in his jaw twitched and his brows lowered. “I know what it’s like,” he said, his voice quieter now, almost a murmur. “To feel…like you’re alone and everyone is waiting for you to fail.” His voice broke on the last word, but only for a second. Just a crack, like a faint echo of something deep inside him.

I swallowed, my throat tight, but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what words could fix whatever it was he was feeling or if I wanted to.

I thought of the rumors, all the tales of him murdering his parents after being an evil, spoiled child and all the stories of him lashing out at them in public. The sight of Jasper’s mother grasping at her throat at the foot of my bed snapped into my head. Suddenly, I was feeling a thousand different things, and I couldn’t pick just one to focus on. Pure danger seemed to ooze out of his pores in a confusing, almost appealing way.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” I said defensively. “I doubt you even loved your parents before you killed them.” The words slipped out before I could stop them. I hadn’t meant to say any of them, hadn’t meant to go there, but the words were already out, and I was grateful. I needed the distance—but I prayed it didn’t come with consequences.

His gaze shifted, a flicker of something dark crossing his features. He pulled his hand back, as if my words had physically pushed him away, and I flinched reflexively before seeing his hand was at his side. I’d never met another person that elicited such a chaotic, loose-tongued response from me. Of course it would be someone extremely dangerous to do that to.

“I’m sorry for whatever it is you’ve gone through.” His voice was cold again. His eyes didn’t meet mine anymore. They were focused on something else—something far away. “Though, contrary to what you might believe, I did very much love my parents.”

Underneath his anger, I heard it—the rawness in his voice. The echo of something broken, something that spoke to a pain I knew too well. I was struck by the realization that he didn’t want to be confessing his vulnerabilities to me either, but like me, he couldn’t seem to stop.

“I don’t need you to be sorry for me. My parents are still alive.”

The words hit harder than I meant them to, but I couldn’t stop them now.

He didn’t speak at first, but the silence between us was no longer full of distance. There was a flicker of understanding—silent, fleeting—but there. Just for a moment. We were both thrown off with our response to one another.

It made Jasper seem…human. He wasn’t the impenetrable figure I had tried to understand. He wasn’t the brooding man hiding secrets in a strange, dark manor. For one moment, he was just someone who felt the same brokenness that I did.

His lips parted, but no words came out. Instead, he glanced down at my hand, the cut still there but the bleeding slowing. His eyes flickered to my face. “You shouldn’t have come here,” he murmured again, his thick brows pinching together.

He turned to leave again, and I didn’t stop him. I watched him retreat into the shadows of the doorway, my heart still hammering in my chest.

Something was happening that I didn’t fully understand. Never in my life had I experienced such dark fear from someone mixing with such a confusing whisper of attraction. There was something so oddly thrilling, intoxicating about the sensations that shot through my system when he was close to me. Danger had swirled with hunger in a very, very unsafe way. I had never been one to play with fire, and I wouldn’t start now. I knew that if I wanted to leave this manor alive, I needed to stay as far away from Jasper as possible.

Chapter 10

Eliza

There were muscles aching in my back that I didn’t know I had. Hours spent bent over in the garden, digging and pulling weeds, had broken me. I’d never even come close to working on a garden that required this level of labor, and I wasn’t even halfway through weeding. Every day seemed to get longer and harder, with the small break of sleeping never bringing enough recovery time.

My hands were stiff, stained with dirt after abandoning my gloves from friction blisters, and now carrying calluses. The exhaustion had settled deep into my bones, each movement slower than the last. God, I just wanted to fall into my bed, but I couldn’t. I doubted I’d sleep anyway, not with my mind racing the way it was. My heartbeat even felt odd, irregular, with a deep thumping every few minutes that hit my chest like a timpani drum.

It had been a few days since Jasper and I fought in the garden—if “fought” was the right word—and my mood had only gone downhill since. There had been no more signs of the ghost, and every single day that passed showed me how truly incapable I really was. I’d thrown myself into the labor, avoiding the kitchen and dining spaces when I knew Jasper might be there. I was embarrassed by everything I’d said to him, even if I shouldn’t have been. Everything was starting to cave in around me, and I’d never felt more alone.

Earlier, I’d called into my work to check in and see if they could help me identify a few plants. I’d flagged several specimens I was unsure of, and after my boss had easily helped me, he chuckled awkwardly and asked me if I’d spoken with my mother lately.

My stomach had bottomed out and sunk through the floorboards somewhere.