30. Chapter 30

CHAPTER 30

F ury surged in her veins, and she tried to tamp it down.

She was so damn sick of him fighting this—fighting what she knew, down to her bones, was between them.

She shifted in front of him, staring up at him, determination set in her jaw. “No. I refuse it. I refuse to let you just spit out an edict like that without any reason. If you think you’re going to get rid of me, you better have a damn good explanation. A command is not an explanation. If this is about choking me, we’ve already gone through that.”

His lip pulled back in a snarl at her words, but then he slowly lowered his gaze to her. “It’s not about me choking you…but it is.” His voice dipped low on the word “choking,” barely able to get it out.

“What? How?”

His look fidgeted off to the side, avoiding her eyes, shame creeping onto his features. “I did something unforgivable to Nemity and the children last summer.”

The blood froze in her veins, her eyes narrowing. “What?”

His hand ran over his face, pulling back through his hair and tugging on the strands. “I left them once. They were in my carriage and I kicked them out of it and I left them in the middle of nowhere. Mercilessly. Left them with nothing. Left them because I had to get away from them.”

Her stare dropped to his chest as she took in the information, her mind churning. She glanced up at him. “Was one of them injured?”

He shook his head. “But it doesn’t matter. There is no excuse for it. They could have died for how I left them—unforgivable.”

She nodded, her look wandering as her mind tried to rationalize this out and came up with dead end after dead end. His actions cruel and horrible, she had to latch on to the one thing she could. “Except it appears as though Nemity has long since forgiven you, if what I saw today was any indication. And I didn’t see the slightest hesitation in those children’s faces when they bounded up to you. No fear at all in them.”

“That is only because I gave them that puppy.”

“ You gave them the puppy?”

He shrugged. “I found it abandoned on the estate. I didn’t know what to do with it so I brought it to the children.”

She gave a half smile. “A puppy would smooth over most anything with children.” Staring up at him, she could tell there was something in his eyes—evasive—that he wasn’t telling her about the incident. “Why was it? Why did you have to get away from them?”

He heaved a breath, his hand running over his face and he pinched the bridge of his nose.

She’d hit a nerve.

“Why?” she prodded.

“Jacob was crying in the carriage. Crying endlessly.” His hand fell away from his face. “His mother had just died, so he was sad. And Georgette was crying because he was. Hours of it and then the sound of it…the wailing…it wore me down until it triggered something deep within me and I reacted. Not able to control myself and my actions, losing my mind, and I felt like I left my body for a long moment, my mouth moving, words I wasn’t controlling coming out. Like a different person shoved me out of my own body and took over. I kicked the children and Nemity out of the carriage onto the barren road.”

Her chest squeezing hard at the thought, she exhaled a puff of breath. What he’d done was harsh, but she had to remember that she had just seen Georgette and Jacob and Nemity and all were well and happy. Which meant she had to tackle what was standing in front of her. “What did their crying spark within you that made you react so?”

He heaved a sigh, not looking at her. “You are going to ask? Need to know?”

“I think I do.”

He shook his head, his stare going off to the sea. “When I was in that prison, they kept me in the cell next to the one that held the prisoners that were due to be executed. The cells were open to each other, only iron bars separating them. It was the cell where families would come to visit their fathers or brothers or sons, for the last time.”

She understood instantly. Her head tilted down, her voice low and haunted. “You could hear it, every time.”

His eyes closed, pained. “Every damn time. The worst days were when mothers would bring their children to see their fathers for the last time. The screams. The wailing. The guards tearing apart families. Ripping children from their fathers’ arms. Blood curdling screams as the children would reach out, scramble, wiggle out of the guards’ arms and run back, doing anything to touch their fathers.”

Full in the memory, his eyes opened, only to gloss over as his stare stayed far off on the rolling waves.

“I’ve heard people—children—crying since then and I have been fine. But on that day with Nemity—on that day that I kicked them out of the carriage—I don’t know what was different, but it was. It was too long. Maybe because it was with Nemity and she is one of the few people that mean anything to me. I’m not sure. I only know that I couldn’t stand to hear the children crying—I just had to escape it.”

She nodded, her bottom lip jutting up as she considered all he said, tried to right it in her mind.

Long seconds passed before his gaze dropped to her, the hardness in his countenance returning in full force. “I am an awful human being. I understand that and had accepted it, and then you appeared in my life and for a moment—for one fucking moment—I was pretending I could be more than I was. More than I am. But I cannot. You see now why this—us—I cannot do it. I’ve choked you—tried to kill you. I kicked out sad, vulnerable children into the wild. It is clear that no matter my intentions, I cannot be trusted.”

She grabbed his forearms, her voice pitching into anger. “No—you cannot do this. You are judging your entire being on two incidents—two incidents that may never happen again—you are giving up on life because of reactions you had no way to control.”

“Which is exactly why I have given up,” he screamed into her face. “I can’t control myself, Izzie—I think I am in control, and then suddenly, I am not. What would you have me do? Kill you? Kill my own child some day because it cries a little too long? That’s what seeing Nemity and the children reminded me of—reminded me of how innocence cannot have a monster like me in their midst.”

She snapped away, frozen for a moment.

There it was. The crux of everything. He couldn’t trust himself with a future he so clearly wanted. Wanted desperately.

She shook her head, her voice a whisper. “It won’t happen. I will not let it.”

“You think you can stop it? Again and again? Every time? I cannot control myself. What is it about that you don’t understand?”

“You don’t trust yourself, but I trust you.” Her hand slammed onto her chest.

“Do you?” The edge in his voice sliced into her, carving brutal gouges deep in her gut. “You need to really think about this, Izzie. And not think with the stubbornness that permeates every pore of your body. Think about a future where you will always be on edge. Think about a child you will always be terrified for. Really dwell on that, and I think you have the exact answer on what you need to do. You need to leave this estate and never come back.”

“And if I’ve thought on it and I don’t walk away?”

He seethed in a breath, staring her down. “I will not be your tragedy, Izzie. And that is all you will get if you stay.”

He turned from her, stomping away, leaving her standing in the bitter wind of the cliff.

She stood, staring at his retreating form, his dark coat flapping in the stiff gales.

Was she that delusional?

That he believed so fully he was to destroy her, while she believed so fully she would be able to stop him.

He disappeared beyond the castle and she took a deep breath, her shoulders lifting with the motion.

Turning away from the castle, she started to walk. And walk. And walk.

Madcap thoughts racing through her mind.

They had never even discussed the future. She had certainly never brought it up, for she was well out of her depth with Thomas and she knew it. She’d been taking one day at a time with him, letting her instincts guide her. But this—that he was giving up before they even began—could not be the end of their story. She wouldn’t let it be.

Stubborn—she was the worst of them, when it came down to it.

But she also should have died time and again in her life, and she never had. That innate stubbornness that she trusted completely to see her through anything had always been her saving grace.

Stupid or not, she would trust it again.

She wasn’t leaving Ravenstone. She would see this through to the end, whether that was fifty days from now or fifty years.

Her path along the cliffs ran into the area where the sharp rocks started to be taken over with trees as the land dipped down toward the cove that supported the nearby port.

The trees at her back, she stopped, wrapping her arms around her middle as she stared out at the sea, a deep heaviness in her chest. Heaviness she had to banish before she made her way back to the castle.

“Hello, wee frettchen.”

Ice slipped through her veins.