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“I wish I hadn’t been like your mother,” she blurted. “I wish I could prove to you that I’m not a selfish witch, but the fact I’m even worried about this means I’m selfish.”
What?
Alastair took a step back, dazed by the blow of her words.
“You’re nothing like my mum.”
“I left you. I rejected your love. I only cared about me. I never even asked you about her in all the times we were together.”
“Bloody hell.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and then glanced at the door. Was it too late to make a run for it? No, he couldn’t leave her alone. She was too vulnerable if those guys came back. “Do we need to talk about stuff? I’m okay not talking.”
“No, we don’t need to talk.” She held up her hands. “No. I’m sorry. It’s okay. Really. You’ve been through enough and you’ve made your position clear. Okay, so the kiss was confusing, but you probably have concussion and can’t think straight. I’m just doing what I normally do and thinking about myself.”
Alastair let out a sigh. Aye. They needed to talk. There was no getting around it. Why did women always have to hash everything out? It was unnatural.
“You’re nothing like my mum,” he said again, hoping it would sink in this time.
She didn’t seem to be listening. She’d shrunk in on herself the way she used to do. Alastair stepped up to her and put a hand on each of her shoulders to make her look up at him.
“There’s nothing selfish about you. You just get confused sometimes and make stupid decisions.”
She scoffed. “Yeah. Right.”
“Rainbow, when I first met you, you’d only just plucked up the guts to ask Lake to help you buy Betty’s underwear shop. You were terrified of doing something on your own for the first time in your life—and you were twenty-six. You were worried about your parents and how they would cope without you. You felt guilty that you weren’t there to run after them, because that’s what you’d always done. I watched you do the same here. Anyone who asked got help, until it reached the point where you didn’t have time to run your own business.”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t helping people. I was letting them walk over me.”
“You were helping. When Caroline needed a volunteer at the library, you were first in line. When the church needed someone to take lunch to the shut-ins, you stepped up. When Betty was sick, you took her soup and made sure she got her medication—and nobody in town wanted to do that job.” He stepped into her space. “Before Invertary you helped your parents, you ran your brothers’ political protests, you put yourself out for anyone and everyone at the commune who needed something. Coming to Invertary was the first independent thing you ever did. It wasn’t selfish. It was you trying to find your way.”
“No.” She wiped her cheek as a tear escaped. “I never asked you about your life. I was always talking about me.”
“Because there was a lot going on with you at the time.” He smiled at her as he wiped her cheek. “You need to cut yourself some slack. If you’d been here longer you would have known everything.”
“I was here long enough,” she scoffed.
“No, you weren’t. I get that now. We really didn’t have enough time to get to know all the little details about each other’s lives.”
“Yeah, like the fact your mum ran out on you. Maybe if I’d known that, I would have thought twice about doing the exact same thing.”
“She ran because she didn’t want us and because she only cared about herself. You ran because you were upset and confused. You were insecure and didn’t trust the people around you. The people who said they loved you. You didn’t leave because you didn’t care. You left because you cared too much. You’re nothing like my mum, Rainbow. Trust me, it’s totally different.”
Alastair felt as though he’d been knocked over the head as the words came out of his mouth. It was different. She hadn’t been rejecting him when she’d left. She’d been scared, hurt, reeling from her family’s betrayal. It wasn’t like his mum at all.
Had he thought it was the same? The answer was a neon sign flashing above her head—aye, he had.
“No—” Rainne opened her mouth to argue.
Lights shone through the cracks at the sides of the blinds, startling them and cutting off her words.
“Get down.” Alastair threw his good arm around her body and pushed her to the floor. “Under the desk.” He quickly shut off the flashlight and the fire, before joining Rainne.
The room was suddenly pitch black. And then another beam of bright white seeped through the cracks. An engine. Two. Heavier than a normal car, they roared past.
“Snowmobiles,” Alastair said softly when Rainne gave him a questioning look.
Her eyes went wide. Two sets of lights, two engines, passed the guardhouse on the way to the castle.
“They aren’t coming in here,” Rainne said with relief.
