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He immediately picked her up again, his brow furrowed as he bent and set her backside onto the sand. “Both of your feet?”
“Yes.” The sharp pangs shifted into swelling throbs rolling from her toes to her heels, one after another. She leaned back, her fingers curling into the sand. Her gloves had come off in the sea, and the tiny rough rocks of the shore rubbed into her left hand, a cool, odd relief against the itch of her scars.
Reiner dropped to his knees and lifted her right foot, examining it. Then he picked up her left, his fingers gentle across the skin.
“You went feet first into the water, you may have fractured them, but hopefully only bruised them.” His low voice took on a hard edge. “Though if you hadn’t, you could have died, Sloane—your body slamming into the water like that. It was too far a fall and you never should have jumped. You should have waited for me.”
“I wasn’t about to wait, Reiner.” She stared at her feet, swallowing the sharp pangs of pain making her nauseous. “There wasn’t any way I was going to let you board that ship. Not for me. You were headed for certain death.”
“So your death was a better choice?” His voice notched up into a yell. “A damn idiotic idea.”
Her look whipped up to him, her voice echoing his. “My death was preferable to your death, yes. So not so idiotic. But I also planned on living. I slit my dress on the deck—it was supposed to come off directly so I could swim.”
His lip curled and he heaved in a breath. “Still a bloody foolish move.”
Her fingers pointed to her chest, then to his. “I’m alive. You’re alive. That is what matters.”
He grunted a sigh. Not willing to agree with her, but not about to argue the point.
She’d take it.
He set her left foot gently down into the sand, then moved to sit next to her, pulling his bare knees upward and resting his forearms atop.
Sloane stared at his profile for a long moment. At the distinctive line of his jaw still flickering in anger, the slight dark scruff of a beard starting, his golden brown eyes staring out at the ship that was quickly disappearing from sight.
Her husband.
The man she never knew she wanted, but now needed like nothing else.
Her hand went to his cheek, her palm dragging across the dark scruff, pinpricks teasing her skin. “You believed in me. You came. You only knew where I was because you found Vicky. And she would have told you what I said.”
His head dropped forward, his eyes closing for five long breaths. Her hand fell away from his jawline.
He lifted his forehead, his gaze pinning her. “I’ve always believed in you, Sloane. It’s been my problem from the first.”
She jerked back. “Your problem?”
“Yes. Absolutely and unequivocally. I believe in you over common sense and sanity. And it has taken a complete loss of control to keep you in my life. To keep you safe—alive. To trust.”
“Oh.” The blood drained from her face. “I didn’t realize. I—I only said those vile things to Bockton because he was going to take Vicky. I had to make him take me and leave her and I was willing to do anything—to say anything to make that happen.”
He nodded. “I suspected as much—no—I knew as much. You love her just as much as I do—probably more.”
She nodded. “I do. I would do anything for her—for you. I protect my people. Vicky is my people.Youare my people.”
“Exactly—you know no bounds, Sloane. And I…I…” He paused, looking out to the sea, his head shaking slowly. “I had order—sanity before you fell into my life. And you are none of those things.”
Her head dropped, the air rushing out of her, deflating her from scalp to throbbing toes.
His right hand slid under her chin and he lifted her head to look at him. “But I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love you and you are worth it. Every second my heart has stopped because you were in danger. Every moment I wanted to throttle you for being so stubborn, so cantankerous. Every time you left me and I had to wrestle with the devil possibility of never seeing you again.”
He clasped his left hand against her cheek, capturing her face in his palms. “Yet all of that is nothing compared to the moments I can hold you in my arms. Hear your laughter. Press my body into yours. Talk to you about nothing but the thickness of the vines growing on the castle. Bask in the light you bring into my world—into Vicky’s world. You are the sun I—we—always needed.”
Her body, her world slowed in that moment. Her heart shattering and building itself anew—stronger, without doubt of the past, without anger over what could never be changed. A heart never again to be haunted by demons of distrust.
An aching smile spread across her face. “If I am the sun, then you are my earth, Reiner. And you will always be so.”
He pulled her close into a kiss so soft, so gentle from his lips it proved that for all the love in the world, they only needed the slightest touch. Something she’d always known, but never truly understood until that moment.
