Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

A melia never cried, that was the thing. Ever since she was a kid, and had learned very quickly that tears were at best ignored by her father, and at worst would make her a more active target of his frustration, she’d simply chosen not to cry. Pain, disappointment, frustration, grief… every emotion that some people would respond to by weeping, Amelia found a different way through. Usually, it was training harder. Don’t get angry, she’d tell herself as she clocked yet another late-night session — get even. Don’t let the bastards win.

But right now, staring down at a photo of a best friend she’d never see again, she could no sooner have stopped herself crying than she could have turned back the tides. And it was as though some great floodgate had opened, as though the tears had been building up inside her for years and years and were now finally bursting their messy way free of her. She dropped onto the bed, shoulders shaking with sobs, then buried her face in the pillow to mute the undignified sounds she was making. She wept for what felt like hours — first for the fact that she couldn’t reach her friend, then for the isolation she felt here in this bizarre place, then for the life she’d lost back home.

But before too long, it was more than just her situation she was weeping about. She could feel her mind jumping from memory to memory, working its way back through her life, digging up old frustrations and heartbreaks that she hadn’t even realized were still needling at her. Half a dozen breakups reared their ugly heads, most of them short-term relationships that she’d broken off because they were threatening to interfere with her career. Several career disappointments that had been crushing at the time, disappointments she’d thought she’d handled by simply intensifying her training regime. A few friendships that had dropped by the wayside or disappeared completely out of a mixture of misunderstanding of her busy schedule and jealousy of the success she was finding… and then she realized she’d worked her way all the way back to the last time she’d seen her father alive.

Strange, that it wasn’t his funeral that she remembered, here in the depths of the storm that was shaking her. No — his funeral had been, if anything, kind of peaceful. The man in the box bore no resemblance to the man she’d lived with most of her life. That man had been gone, on the day of the funeral… and she’d been grateful. The last day she’d seen her father, he’d taken a swing at her. Even knowing what he knew about her training, about her career — which at that point had been taking off — he still had the arrogance to think he could still scare her. She’d dodged the blow effortlessly, grappled for a moment with the temptation to break his nose for him… then she’d walked away. Later, she’d go back and forth over whether she regretted refusing to hit him back.

But right now, what she really regretted was not telling him to his face what a terrible disappointment he’d been as a father.

This was dangerous, she realized, pulling herself back into a sitting position even as the tears rolled down her cheeks. She had an uneasy feeling that if she kept crying like this, her mind was going to start digging up childhood stuff that wasn’t going to be so easy to put away. She tried to steady herself, to catch her breath, to ground herself in the here and now — but the tears kept coming, and the sobs kept shaking her with great, hiccoughing sounds that made her cringe at how embarrassing they were, even in an empty room.

It wasn’t until the door swung open that she realized that she’d been ignoring a soft but insistent knocking for quite some time. She froze, horrified by the thought of even a servant seeing her like this… but of course, it was much worse than that. None other than Hamish MacClaran was standing there, resplendent in clan tartan, a worried look on his face as he hastened across the room to kneel before her like she was some kind of child.

“Amelia,” he said softly, the worry in his voice only serving to make her sob harder. “What’s the matter?”

“Sorry, sorry,” she gasped, dashing the tears away from her face and grimacing as they were quickly replaced by more. “Sorry, this is stupid, sorry if I woke you?—”

“You didn’t wake me,” he said firmly, reaching up to take both her wrists in his hands. He was warm to the touch and the gentle squeeze was unbelievably reassuring. “I just finished up with Donal and was walking back to my room when I heard you crying.” There was a rueful little flicker in his eye as he added, “My wife was a very soft-hearted woman. I heard her cry a lot. Not often like this, though,” he added, seeking her gaze again.

“I’m fine, I’ll be fine,” Amelia heard herself saying — but she sounded half-concussed, and she didn’t need to look at Hamish’s face to know he wouldn’t believe her. “Sorry. It’s just — being here, it’s all — horribly overwhelming. Sorry! God,” she added through gritted teeth, scrubbing at her face again. “I, uh. I don’t cry much.”

“I get that impression,” he said, smiling a little. “May I…?” He nodded toward the bed.

“Oh, sure.” She shifted along a little, letting him take a seat on the bed beside her. This, at least, was a little better — she could stare straight ahead and pretend he wasn’t looking at her, seeing her horribly puffy, tear-stained face… “I just — miss home,” she said, feeling her heart twist and break in her chest as she said it aloud. “I miss it. I miss my life, I miss my friends, I miss my job, I miss?—”

“Tell me about them, about all of it,” Hamish said gently.

She glanced at him sideways, frowning.

“It’s strange, Amelia — when I look at you, I think I’m looking at someone I spent a lifetime with, but I’m not. Tell me about your life.”

And to her surprise, she found herself opening up to this near stranger. First, she told him about Carmen — about their whole friendship, from the day they’d met to their last hangout the day before she’d left on this trip. She even dug her phone out to show him photos, aware she was burning through the precious battery but not caring — at least this way, once the phone died for good there’d be at least one other person who knew what Carmen’s face looked like. And that, of course, led her to telling him about her professional fighting career. He seemed genuinely fascinated by it, and asked a series of surprisingly intelligent questions before he bit his lip.

“Tell me if you’d prefer if I didn’t talk about her so much,” he said first. “But it’s fascinating to me — you and Amy couldn’t be more different. She was always so shy, so quiet and agreeable, so timid in the face of any kind of threat. I loved her for it,” he said, glancing up at Amelia. “Don’t take that as a criticism.”

“I haven’t always been like this — you know,” Amelia said, lifting her fists into a half-hearted fighting stance before dropping them to the bed again. “I was pretty timid as a kid. It’s how I got into all this, actually.”

“A warrior woman,” Hamish said thoughtfully, smiling at her. “I wish Amy could have followed in your footsteps. She’d still be here.”

Amelia wanted to question that cryptic little conclusion, but something about the distracted look in Hamish’s blue eyes told her that he hadn’t exactly meant to say it aloud — and warned her not to ask too many questions of what happened to his wife. Instead, she heaved a sigh and wiped the last of the tears from her cheeks, pleased to note that the worst of the storm seemed to have passed.

“Thank you, for coming to check on me,” she said softly, fighting her own embarrassment. “And for telling me about Amy. I know it must be hard to talk about her.”

“It has been,” Hamish said, looking at her thoughtfully. “Strangely enough, I find it much easier to talk about her with you.”

Once he was gone, Amelia settled down in her bed, worried that the awful shaking tears would come back for her… but instead, she dropped into the deepest and most restful sleep she could remember.