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“How can you say that?”
“Better me than …” Damn it, he should have died that night. Somehow he knew in his soul he wassupposedto have died that night. And because of her, he’d spent fourteen years stumbling through the world half-alive, looking in vain for an entrance to hell. All for nothing. Nothing.
Irrational rage welled within him. He clenched his hand into a fist. “For God’s sake, Meredith. You are a stable master’s daughter. You threw a burning lamp in a horse barn? You should have known better.”
She buried her face in her hands. “I did know, I do know. But I wasn’t even thinking. I just needed to stop him, and it was the closest object to hand.”
“All those horses … Jesus. They died horrible deaths. Did you hear them screaming? Did you?”
“No.” Her voice grew very small.
“Lucky for you. I still hear them.” Even now. Even now, in this dark, dank hell, he could hear those screams echoing through his skull. He put his hands to his ears, but it didn’t help, because the memories resided between them.
“I ran to raise the alarm,” she said. “And then my father forced me to go home.”
“Your father …”
“My father was maimed. I know it. I know it well. I’m the one who has bandaged and bathed and dressed and tended him all the days since. And it may be horrible of me to say, but I would do it again. That man would have killed you. No matter what the consequences, I can’t be sorry for having stopped him.”
He bent his head to his knees, feeling ill.
“Don’t you want to know why?” She put a hand to his shoulder.
He shrugged off her touch. “No. No, I don’t want to hear any more. My head is killing me. Just leave me be.”
He had an awful, sinking suspicion he knew what she would say next. And he didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t want that precious gift mixed up with all this anger and pain.
“Because I loved you.”
Damn, there it was.
Her voice shook. “I have loved you for as long as I can remember, ever since I was a girl. I loved you all those years you were away. I read every page of every newspaper I could find, scouring the print for word of you. I dreamed of you at night. I went to bed with other men, wishing they were you. And I will likely love you until the day I die, because if I could have stopped loving you, I would have found a way to do so by now.” She inhaled deeply, then released the breath in a rush. “There. I love you.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Meredith waited in the flickering dark, afraid to say more. Afraid to move, or blink, or breathe. There it was, the truth she’d been hiding inside herself for decades now. Hiding so deeply, she’d even been able to deny it to herself. Not any longer.
The longer he went without reacting, the more anxious she became. Fear gnawed at her insides, working its way from the pit of her belly all the way to her limbs. Eroding her chin and fingers and knees from the inside, so that they trembled.
“I love you, Rhys,” she said again. Because what was one more time, after all? She laid her trembling fingers against his wrist. “Rhys? Please. Say something.”
And after a long, excruciating moment, he spoke exactly one word.
“Fuck.”
She nodded. Not what she’d been hoping for, but somehow unarguably fitting.
“Fuck,” he said again, louder this time. The curse echoed through the dark. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I’m so sorry. Until yesterday, I had no idea you’d been blaming yourself all this time. I imagined you thought the fire was an accident. Because it was. It was a stupid, tragic accident.”
He raised his head. “How could you keep that from me? Can you have any idea what difference it would have made, if I’d known that all this time?”
“That I threw the lantern? Or that I love you?”
“Both. Can you possibly imagine—” He made a strangled noise in his throat. “For God’s sake, my whole damned wasted life …”
“I’m sorry. So sorry. I wish I could have told you sooner, but—”
