42. Rainer

42

RAINER

I t was a relief to be back in Olney where winter was eager to surrender to an early spring. While it was still too cold for Rainer to swim in the mornings, he was happy to run in the fresh, salty air every morning.

The breeze hit him where he waited outside the Olney Healing Center for Cecilia to finish her shift. In the months following their return, she'd thrown herself into her work, as if the only way to heal herself was through her commitment to healing others. But unlike before, when she was running on guilt, now she seemed more focused, committed not to outrunning her grief and fear but to sitting with it each day like an old friend. Some days when he picked her up she was quiet and pensive, but little by little she came back to herself, her face brighter, her chatter livelier.

Twice a week she and Mika conducted a women's group to help victims of violence find comfort and support in each other's company. Originally it was under the guise of quilting, and slowly the women began to trickle in. Now there were more than twenty of them.

Rainer scanned the building down the street, trying to remember where each path in Olney City led. He couldn't stop testing himself.

His memory was better. Cecilia had done her best to gradually feed back in everything he'd lost, but it was slow work. If she gave him too much at once, he got headaches, so each day she told him their love story little by little.

Sometimes when he came across a blank spot, his anger still consumed him. He knew the rage might never fade completely, but he was trying to make peace with it and Cecilia was so patient with him.

Cecilia's pain was a love letter, bold and brutal and laid bare for him, so vulnerable that it hurt to look at. So personal it hurt not to.

What a beautiful thing to feel the cracks in someone else's heart, for them to let you try to glue them back together. It was humbling the way she opened up to him as if she'd never been hurt. The way she looked fear in the face and pressed on.

Some days she held the pieces together. Some days he did.

He longed to comfort her with physical touch. That intimacy had been so soothing to her before, but Cecilia wasn't ready yet. She'd been very attentive to him, but hadn't given Rainer the chance to return the favor. It was less about the physicality of it and more that he wanted nothing between them. He wanted to feel the comfortable intimacy of casual touch.

Mika had told him to be patient and he could feel his fiancée slowly coming back to herself.

Cecilia pressed through the front door of the Olney Healing Center, waving goodbye to Lyra and Mika.

"Those two seem…friendly," Rainer said, watching Mika thread her fingers through those of the other healer.

Cecilia smiled. "Yes, they do, and good for them. Mika deserves some happiness after all she's been through."

Rainer threw an arm around her, kissing the top of her head. "How was your day?"

"Productive. I'm tired, though. Looking forward to eating dinner and going straight to bed," she sighed.

"Well, that's a shame because Aunt Clara has been dying to talk to you about wedding plans—I have already answered about fifty questions about cake, but I know nothing about flowers. "

Cecilia shook her head. "I know I should just let her enjoy this, but I could not care any less what kind of flowers are there. I just want to marry you."

He paused along the trail, pulling her into a slow kiss.

"What was that for?" she asked, blinking up at him.

"I am just always relieved when you say it. I thought maybe it would be how it was before, that you would want to wait until you felt more settled."

Cecilia smiled, brushing hair from his forehead. "I know enough now to know how ridiculous that is. I wanted everything to be neat and tidy before. Now I know that healing is long and messy and enjoying myself—settling in for a life I love—along the way is only going to help. I am—" Her voice broke, her eyes glassy. "I am all of these broken things. I am all of my wounds and fears, but I am also all of my love and joy. I can be all of those things at once. There's no clean slate and even if there was I wouldn't want to forget, not really."

Rainer swallowed hard. He knew what she meant. A clean slate was not all it was cracked up to be, him having had several months of it back in Argaria. He was so grateful she'd preserved the lost parts of him.

She gave him a quick hug before weaving her fingers through his. "Have you talked to Raymond?"

Rainer tensed.

"I know you think it's going to go poorly and I'm inclined to agree with you, but if you think there's any chance at all that you might want him at the wedding?—"

"I don't. Cece, you of all people know he is the worst thing for me."

She sighed. "I know. I just thought maybe after everything you might have a thing or two to say to him yourself."

She looked suddenly nervous.

"What aren't you telling me, Cece?"

Her eyes flashed to the cottage door. "I may have invited him to talk with you tonight."

Rainer pulled away from her, feeling betrayed. Cecilia held her hands up in surrender. She had always been wary of Raymond McKay's influence in Rainer's life, yet now she was reintroducing him just as Rainer felt free of him.

"If you feel that strongly, I will ask him to leave," she said. "But if there's even a chance at healing what is between you, it might be worth trying. I keep thinking about how you were with Vincent, how under your skin there's this sense of not being enough, and I thought maybe you would want to stand up for yourself. And if you don't, I will tell him to leave and I will stand up for you because you're my love, and my hero, and you've saved me every day since we met."

Rainer lifted her into a tight hug.

"I'll be right behind you the whole time. Just like you always have been for me," she whispered.

He put her down and took a tentative step toward the cabin, pausing to collect his thoughts. What if it went wrong? What if his father was the same as always? It was pure insanity to expect otherwise, but he was accustomed to long shots, and Cecilia was always protecting him. If she didn't think there was a chance this might bring him peace, she never would have suggested it.

He pushed the door open and stepped inside, finding Raymond sitting on the window seat.

"Rainer?" He stood and closed the distance between them. "Son, you've been home for months but you haven't stopped to see your old man? I couldn't even get your attention at the commendation ceremony King Marcos had for you and that Reznik girl."

Rainer frowned. "That Reznik girl is a woman now. Cecilia is my fiancée and, being as you've known her since she was a child, the least you can do is call her by her name."

Raymond frowned at him, clearly unaccustomed to receiving correction.

"Why are you here?" Rainer asked.

"Can't a man visit his son?—"

Rainer's laugh came out brittle. "A man can, but you have not been much of one so long as I've known you, and you've certainly never been a father. Just tell me what you want because that woman whose name you can't bother with is outside hoping that you're a man that both of us know you aren't. I'm here because I love her and she thinks that I need to make peace with you. But I think there is no peace to be had and nothing you can say will mend what is broken between us because you have only ever known how to shatter things; you've never learned to mend."

Raymond rubbed the back of his neck. "I did not know you felt that way. I only ever wanted to push you to be the best and you are. King's council. Friend to the king and queen of Argaria. Rainer, you have far exceeded my expectations, far exceeded the kind of recognition that would allow you to proudly take the Novaris name."

Rainer's stomach sank. There it was. The true reason Raymond was there. The man could not grant him peace. Rainer had finally reached the pinnacle and this man still managed to find a new height he could aspire toward. If Rainer let him, Raymond would break another beautiful thing, but this time it wasn't a toy or a book or his mother's prized possessions. This time it was Rainer's own story, which until that moment he had not realized was the deepest, most intricate part of himself.

If he let Raymond McKay have his story, he would take all the beauty, heartbreak, angst, and love and twist it into a hero's journey from orphan to renowned warrior. That was more than Rainer could take. It was his story and he would be the only one to choose the ending. It had taken twenty-seven years, but his father had finally crossed the line of no return. Rainer had well and truly lost the will to fight this battle anymore.

This wasn't a fairy tale as Cecilia had hoped it might be. It was a tragedy, and if Rainer had even expected for a moment that it wouldn't be, he might have felt grief. Instead, this was merely the grave marker on something already dead and buried. Rainer felt nothing but relief.

As if he could feel it too, Raymond stood and, for the first time in his life, looked aware that he'd lost something he couldn't get back.

For so many years, Rainer had swallowed Raymond's words like poison, thinking he deserved the burn and scorn. Now it was all coming back up—twenty-seven years of anger surging out of him like a dam breaking.

"I am grateful that you're not my real father—that it's not in my blood to be cruel and unfeeling. Someday Cece and I will have children and I will use your actions as a map of exactly what not to do. I'll love them in a way you aren't even capable of comprehending. You will never know them and their lives will be better for it. And if they ever ask about their grandfather, they'll only hear about Leo Reznik."

Rainer gestured to the door and Raymond stood frozen for a moment, a hint of hurt on his face.

Rainer was beyond caring and it felt good. "Goodbye, Raymond." He opened the door. "I hope you have a nice life."

Raymond opened his mouth to speak and then closed it before turning and making his way out the door. He paused in front of Cecilia before leaning over to whisper something in her ear. He didn't turn back as he walked down the trail toward town.

Rainer watched him shrink into nothing in the distance before turning and sitting on the edge of the kitchen table. He hung his head.

"I assume it didn't go well?" Cecilia said.

Rainer narrowed his eyes at her. "You didn't listen through the door?"

She gave him a sheepish smile. "I just wanted to be there if you needed me."

Rainer shook his head. Before he'd walked into that room, he'd been braced for impact, waiting for the heaviness in his chest that always arrived on the heels of his father, but now he just felt light.

"I'm so sorry," Cecilia whispered.

"No, I'm sorry to you. I'm sorry for you that he couldn't be good just for one godsdamned minute to be part of our lives. I'm sorry you didn't get your fairy tale."

Cecilia smiled at him. Her hand came to his cheek and she forced him to meet her gaze. "Rain, this is the fairy tale. This is what I wanted for you. You slayed the real dragon. You finally accepted that you were good enough without his approval and you told him. I am so proud of you."

Rainer let out a shaky breath. It was hard to express what it meant for someone to have seen all of his greatest struggles and still be proud. The lump in his throat threatened to choke him. She pulled him into a hug and he leaned his head against her shoulder, squeezing her until her ribs creaked.

"Do you think now you'll start using your birth father's name?"

Rainer swallowed hard. He'd been considering it since he dropped his sword on the temple floor.

His whole life he'd ignored the cracks in the illusion of his birth father. It was easier to make Zelden Novaris the good guy when Raymond McKay was the other option. For so long that had seemed the standard for heroics, but even heroes had their flaws. Much as Zelden might have been a savior to Olney, personally he had not been a hero to Rainer. He'd left his son alone in the world—traded responsibility for glory. True heroes were there for the people who counted on them, even when their hearts were broken.

As much as Rainer had looked up to Zelden, put him on a pedestal his whole life, it took forgetting who he was and being forced to stand up for who he'd become for Rainer to realize he no longer defined himself by someone else's standards. Now Rainer was a man who was worthy without having to prove it, who was loved for exactly who he was, both in his strongest and weakest moments.

Cecilia had fallen in love with Rainer McKay, and though he knew she'd love him no matter what name he had, his given name possessed folklore that had become more compelling and definitive of who he was now.

"I don't think so. I like being Rainer McKay—maybe for the first time ever. The name is more mine now than his anyway. I won't keep my lineage a secret anymore because I'm not ashamed, but I want to keep this name because I've made it my own."

Cecilia smiled, stroking his hair.

He was almost afraid to ask, but he had to know. "What did he say to you? "

Cecilia swallowed hard. "He said the best thing he ever did was bring you to the seer's suite that day. He said to love you better than he could."

For all their differences, at least Rainer and Raymond agreed on two things: the best thing he'd ever done and who could love Rainer best.