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udgingly returned to the boardinghouse that had been her home for the past few weeks. She’d made it clear she wanted to stay with him. He’d made it clear that he didn’t want her here. Everyone who had participated in the day’s events was exhausted, mentally and physically. She needed sleep and so did her Raintree cousins.
He needed sleep, too, but the way he felt right now...it might be weeks before he slept again.
Rye felt oddly empty without his abilities. Even dampened as they’d been for years, they’d been substantial. To be without them was like losing a sense, suddenly being blind or losing the ability to smell or taste.
Given the chance, he would change nothing. Better that he be blind than for the world to have to deal with what he might have become.
Screw the world. He would give up everything so Echo and Cassidy wouldn’t have to deal with what he would have become.
Doyle, who called himself the last Ansara, was now powerless. Cassidy was safe, at least for now. For the next several years Rye would devote himself to being a father. He would teach only her if he could. Could a man with no power instruct someone like her? He would try. He would try with everything he had.
He’d continue to run the pub. He’d continue to be mayor if the people of Cloughban wanted him to do so. If they wanted someone like them, someone who was special, he would willingly step aside.
And he would do it all alone. He would not tie Echo down in this remote place. He would not tie her to the ordinary man he had become.
She had so much to offer the world; she deserved the chance to make her mark. To be a powerhouse in the magical world. Raintree princess. No, Raintree queen.
Yes, he should sleep. Not just for hours, but for days. The pub was closed. He was exhausted. His daughter had healed him; he would carry no long-lasting scar from Doyle’s attack, but the wound had drained him in a way that could not be healed with a gifted touch. He needed rest, and yet his mind would not be still.
Cassidy had gone home with her grandmother. Rye had a choice. He could try to sleep above stairs or he could go to bed in his own room in that cottage.
Instead of doing either, he wiped down the bar in an almost-automatic manner as his mind spun with what-ifs and what-nows. Yes, he needed rest, but sleep would not come for a while.
When the door opened, he jumped. It would take some getting used to, not sensing when that door would open. Not knowing what was on her mind.
“Echo,” he said. “Did you forget something?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
She walked toward the bar, and him, much as she had that first day. He’d seen trouble in her then. He saw trouble now.
“You,” she said.
He should’ve locked the door after she’d left here with her cousins. He should’ve locked the place up and gone to the cottage with Bryna and Cassidy.
No, that would be the coward’s way. Best to handle this cleanly.
“Go away, Raintree. Your time here is done.”
She was not scared. Was she ever? Small and seemingly frail, she was one of the bravest women he had ever known. She didn’t back down. “Don’t tell me we don’t have something special.”
If he lied to her would she know? Was their connection completely severed? Earlier she’d been able to see into his head, but he’d been blind to hers. That mental link...was it entirely gone?
In case she could see more than she should, he stuck with the truth. “Perhaps we did have something special at one time, but we are both different now.” She was stronger; he was weaker.
“We’re not different, not deep down where it counts.” She walked behind the bar. Walked into him, wrapping her arms around his waist and laying her head on his chest. She was warm and soft; she was everything he had thought never to know.
There were a million reasons for them not to be together, but he didn’t want to argue with her. Not now. He didn’t want to talk at all.
He grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and inched it up slowly. She shifted away from him, just a bit, to allow him to pull her clothing over her head. With a few more moves she stood before him completely and wondrously naked. Fine from the top of her head to her toes. Perfection inside and out.
“No fair,” she whispered as she began to work the zipper on his jeans. “I am naked and you are not.”
He needed her. One last time.
She slipped her hand inside his unzipped pants; he wrapped his arms around her and picked her up, dislodging that hand, making her laugh. He loved her laugh; it was too rare, too precious.
