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He could have handled that much better.
What she did instead was to reach over and slide her hand over his heart, as if she could hear the way it beat, jagged and painful.
“I want to understand, Griffin,” she said softly. “But I can’t unless you tell me.”
“It was my mother,” he said, when he was certain he had no intention of speaking. It was as if the words were torn from him, and once spoken, he couldn’t seem to stop.
He put his hand over hers, there against his chest, intending to peel hers away.
But he didn’t.
Before him, Melody simply waited. Still and yet engaged. No longer pretending to cower or shake, and that seemed to punch in him. He would never have told this story to a fragile creature. It would never have occurred to him.
Melody was anything but.
“She used to tell me I was her favorite,” he heard himself say, his voice as rusty as the words seemed when he’d kept them inside so long. “My brother had belonged to the crown since birth, but I was her friend. Herbuddy.”
God, how he’d always hated that word.
“As the years went by, she became more pale. Brittle, almost, the longer she stayed married to my father. She told me only I made her smile. Only I tethered her here.”
Melody made a soft sound of distress. “That seems like an unfair burden to place on a child.”
“Whether it was or was not, it was the only thing that kept her with us.” Griffin ran his free hand over his face. “Everybody knows that my mother took her own life. But they act as if that was out of the ordinary for her. As if it was a one-time mistake gone too far.” He shook his head, his throat suddenly thick. “It wasn’t.”
Melody only murmured his name. And he suddenly felt that her palm, lying there and holding his heart in place, was the only reason he was still standing upright. Telling this story he’d never told. The story he’d vowed he would never tell.
“She tried again and again,” Griffin said, unable to stop himself. “And sooner or later, if someone wishes to go, they will. No matter how carefully guarded. No matter how loved.”
“It’s not your fault, Griffin,” Melody whispered.
He looked at her, fiercely glad she couldn’t see the emotion he feared was far too obvious, all over his face. Even as he was convinced that somehow, she knew anyway.
“I’m afraid you’re wrong about that,” he said, his voice steady with the conviction of all these years. The scar of it. What it had meant to him. What it made him. “My brother found her. But I left her. She promised me she would not do it, and fool that I was, I believed her.And I left her.”
Somehow, it seemed as if Melody’s palm against his chest grew harder. Hotter. And there was something about the expression she wore that made a low sort of shudder move in him.Protective, something in him whispered.
But he thrust that aside.
“The only other person I have actively tried to care for in my life is you,” Griffin told her, because what did it matter now? Why not lay all of this out, this grief and betrayal, so that at last what was between them would be clear?
Unmistakable.
And then, maybe, he could go about the business of putting himself back together when he still didn’t quite understand how he came to be so broken in the first place.
“You’re focused on the fact that I am not as weak as you expected me to be,” Melody said, a faint crease appearing between her brows, making her look fierce. “But you made me feel safe. Me, Griffin. When I have never felt such a thing, anywhere. Or with anyone.”
He wanted to hold on to that. He wanted it to mean something. When would he stop with all this fruitlesswanting?
She blew out a breath. “No one fights the way I do, consistently and with years of intense practice, because they already feel safe. I thought the only way I could ever feel like that was if I was actively attacking someone. If I was winning a real fight. But all you had to do was treat me as if I was fragile. As if I might be precious. And there it was.”
This was excruciating.
“It was a lie,” he gritted out.
“But don’t you see?” She shook her head, that hand on him seeming to pin him to the wall when he wasn’t touching it. “What would it really mean if you had saved a weak and fragile creature, more breakable than glass? Anyone could save such a girl. I could save twenty with my hands tied behind my back. Surely the victory is greater when the need is less.”
He reached out to touch her, but only to grip her shoulders so he could set her away from him. Because hewanted, God how hewanted,and he knew better than that.
