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‘I’m humbled you’d have me in your home.’
She hesitated as they reached the top of a narrow flight of stairs, as if about to say something before thinking better of it. Then she unlocked another door to a beautiful airy loft. She walked through the door, inviting him in. The whole space was light and bright, with mismatched rugs on the floor and decorated with well-worn antiques she’d clearly found in the markets below.
‘It’s not like you’re some villain in a dark fairy tale,’ she said.
‘There I might beg to differ.’
‘And that sums up the entire problem.’
She stood in front of windows overlooking the town and the soaring Alps in the distance, every move stiff and weary. He’d done that to her, taken this beautiful, open woman, whose life should be one filled with joy, and somehow left her closed-off and shattered. Of all the things he needed to atone for, this sin was one of his greatest. It started now with his deepest truth. He loved her, to the nucleus of every cell in his body. A sensation so marrow-deep it radiated within him and there was no turning back from it. The heart he’d thought withered, cold and dead could beat again, because she’d shocked it to life.
‘You redeemed me, Sara. That was a sin I found hard to forgive when I’d spent so much of my adult life fighting against any kind of salvation. Especially after Victoria.’
The heating in the loft was warm. Sara slipped off her coat and moved to an armchair, draping her coat over it. She gripped the back, fingers digging into the fabric.
‘How...is she?’
‘She seems to be doing better.’
It had taken six weeks of fighting to be allowed to see Vic in the clinic. He’d gone there to tell her two things. News that he’d ensured the safety of her animals, and news of his broken engagement to Sara. For the first, she’d closed herself in the bedroom of her small suite and came out again ten minutes later seemingly composed, yet with her eyes red-rimmed. As for the second...
‘I’m sick of people martyring themselves over me. I refuse to allow you to be another.’
She’d said plenty of other things too, like how he was a fool to pass up a chance of love, and she wouldn’t be responsible for his future unhappiness. All whilst hugging him like the warm, adoring young woman she’d once been.
He’d recognised then that he’d given Victoria no agency to help herself, trying to fix things rather than supporting her decisions—good or bad. Perhaps one day she’d tell him what her husband held over her. Perhaps not. For now, he’d done what he could to ensure she was safe, that she had options. She didn’t need his guilt. What Vic needed was his love and unquestioning support because his guilt made her trauma abouthim.
Just as with Sara. It had never been about her in the end. He hoped to change that today. If not, he’d walk away only half a person and try once again to live with the sins of his past.
‘I’m happy for you and for her.’
He shook his head. ‘All this time I’d convinced myself I hadn’t saved her. It directed my actions every day. Then you walked into my life, and I knew I had to saveyouor I’d never forgive myself. Yet I was terrified I’d fail and let down yet another person who’d become vital to me.’
Sara’s eyes widened a fraction. ‘I don’t think I was the one who needed saving.’
She was right in every way.
‘You and my sister are some of the wisest women I know. And I’m a fool.’
She released the back of the chair she’d been crushing in her hands and turned to look at the view, framed by the soaring mountains in the distance. Her shoulders lifted and fell.
‘What do you want, Lance?’
He’d tried living life as the worst version of himself and, in doing so, the cursed memory of his father always won. No more. He raked his hands through his hair.
‘I’m trying to make amends. Another fool made you doubt your ability to be Queen here, and yet youarea queen because you rule my whole heart. You always will.’
She couldn’t look at him,wouldn’t.If she did, she’d likely run into his arms and never want to leave them, when there was more to be said.
Time and tears had taught Sara many things. Her own value, her own strength, and that she was deserving of love. She’d promised herself when she’d left Astill Hall that she’d only look ahead, and now she needed to clear away that past to make sure she could build the future she craved.
‘It was only sex, you said.’
A long exhale hissed in the burgeoning silence between them.
‘For a man who prided himself in dealing brutal truths, I told the most terrible lies. When we were together, you reached in and grabbed my soul. I hadneverexperienced anything similar. It wasn’t sex, it was a connection so intense it consumed me. I was terrified I couldn’t protect you. That I’d end up hurting you, yet that’s what I did anyway. For that, I can’t forgive myself.’
‘Of all the things you said, that’s what cut the deepest.’
