I need him to say it. I need to hear the words come out of his mouth because until he does, I’m just a girl with a knife in her heart. Only once he removes it, once I’m bleeding and hollowed out, can I begin to heal.
“She’s with…” He swallows, prolonging my agony, and this time the fingers that massage his temples make him look like the coward he is. “She’s withmychild.”
My chest splinters.
The iceberg beneath my breast shatters.
A world of hurt comes crashing down around me with thundering and devastating might, encasing me in an icy shield until I barely even recognize myself or the man before me.
“What…” The word comes out in a fractured half-sob that I also don’t recognize. It’s been so many years since I’ve cried that I wasn’t even aware I knew how anymore.
Dizzy, my head rolls from one side to the other—or maybe it’s my body that sways on the uneven, ever-shifting ground. My knees buckle. Bracing myself, I lean over the desk.
Rowland’s quick to come beside me, but he knows better than to touch me. The hands hovering around my elbows sweep up to his head instead, sliding through the ropes of hair that I was just curling around my fingers not more than a couple of days ago.
Maybe once he left and returned here,shedid the same.
“I didn’t want this to happen, Char. I’m so sorry.” Considering the lack of remorse in his tone, it’s not a very believable apology. “You’re not here though! I’ve begged you, a hundred times, to come live at Valor’s Rest, but you don’t want to be here. You don’t want to be with me. And I can’t just… I can’t just spend my life sneaking off to share secrets nights with you in that—that—place. We’re building something here—”
Fire roils inside me. “We?”
Eyes wide, his head shakes. “No, that’s not what I meant. I was just trying to say that—this place, we can—Ican have a life here. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. If we can move on from the past, from Hulbeck, we could have a future here. You could too if you allowed yourself.”
The flames melt through me, an inferno blazing, consuming me in a roar of fury.
My nails dig into the mahogany wood, and I shove myself upright.
“A life here? What? With you, your girlfriend, and your bouncing babe? And then what? You’d keep me locked in here with the rest of them, using me whenever you’d like, but only if I fit into the perfect life you’re constructing for yourself?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like, Rowland? Because that’s certainly what it sounds like.” I feel the iron-hot poker of hot tears burning at the backs of my eyes, but I blink them away. “How long has this been going on? How long have you been seeing her while you’re seeing me?”
Once Rowland and I found each other again—two teenagers ripe with trauma and brimming with hormones who needed some kind of release—it didn’t take long before we discovered that there could be more than the friendship we’d grown up enjoying. Though I was loathe to admit it, I needed companionship, and Rowland needed a break from the pressures of preparing for leadership.
We needed an ounce of pleasure in this abysmal life, and uncoordinated and inexperienced as we were, we found it in each other.
But that was what? Three years ago? Maybe four? Was Elison already with their township then, or had she come later? How much of that time had I been unknowingly sharing him?
But instead of looking the part of a withering flower to a flame, Rowland’s expression becomes incredulous.
“That’s just it,” he says, voice low. “I haven’t beenseeingyou. Not in any real way. Or I just mean—” He shoves his face into his hands but recovers quickly. “You know what I mean. I’ve tried, Charlotte. I’ve tried to be there for you. I’ve tried to be therewithyou. I’ve tried to make you see that this place is nothing to fear, that I’m someone who will protect you and care for you no matter what.”
I snort, pointing at the scattered maps beside us. “Oh, sure. You’ll give me what I need as long as I’ll run these errands for you. Bring you back noctis to experiment on. As long as I risk my life so that I can help you rescue your mistress. Your fucking damsel in distress!”
He slams his fists onto the table, maps flying everywhere.
“It could’ve been you!”
I stagger back.
“It’s always been you, Charlotte… Why can’t you see that? It could still be you.”
Abruptly, he stands, striding over to me with a renewed sense of urgency. He takes my hands into his and I’m too numb to pull them away, too unfamiliar with the territory we’ve trudged into.
“Elison doesn’t mean anything. She was—a distraction. I owe it to her and our unborn child to find her and make sure she’s safe. But if you tell me thatthis”—he presses my hand to the warmth of his chest— “Thatthisis what you want, then it’s yours. It always has been. You have to know by now, after all of these years that I love—”
Before he can finish making this the second most miserable day of my life—although maybe he already has—I jerk my hands free and turn my back to him.
