Could she really fault him for that?
You can’t control your feelings, and his had obviously revealed themselves to be not what he’d thought they were. Liza couldn’t fault him for that.
Maybe she was just high from her fever, but the thoughts swirling around in her brain abruptly crashed into a realization that maybe Connor was a prisoner of the regret he mentioned. And maybe she was a prisoner of her resentment toward him.
Maybe if she unlocked the cage, she would stop hurting, and he would be able to let go of his anger. Ophelia had mentioned he went through something awful, so why should Liza insist upon adding to that? Why shouldn’t she let it go so he could let it go? She’d just said herself that it was an insignificant period of their lives from a very long time ago. Maybe history was written in ink, but even ink could rub off and fade over time. Maybe you could even make the effort to intentionally wipe it clean.
And suddenly, that seemed like exactly what Liza needed to do. And maybe she really was high from fever and wouldn’t agree with herself after she’d regained her coherent state of mind, but she believed offering grace and mercy was an inherently good thing.
Maybe forgiveness was the one thing that would heal the hurt in her own heart.
“Connor?” she attempted to call out, but her voice caught on a sharp pain in her throat. She coughed and tried again. “Connor.”
Footsteps padded on hardwood, approaching the door, and it swung open, revealing Connor with a concerned look on his face. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. I just needed to…” With a great deal of aching effort, she threw the blankets off and slid out of the bed. She limped on stiff, sore joints to stand close to him and wrapped her arms around his middle as she pressed her cheek against his heart. “I forgive you.”
His arms hung limp at his sides, and his heart rate picked up. He was silent for several beats. Activity hummed on the street outside. Her own heart was a deafening thump in her ears.
Connor inhaled and exhaled quietly. “How can you do that?”
She shrugged against him.
“What I did to you is unforgivable,” he said with that same razor-sharp edge, and it was clear he honestly believed it.
“I disagree.” Liza squeezed his solid torso harder. “I choose to forgive you and let it go. Maybe you can, too. Not letting go of ugly things will only make a person miserable. I’ve been pretty miserable, and I think you have been, too. Let’s try letting it go.”
He lifted his arms with obvious apprehension and then wrapped them around her. He lowered his head so that his cheek pressed against the top of her head. “I don’t understand you.”
“You don’t have to. Just let me let it go.”
Connor was quiet for long enough that the blood slowly drained from Liza’s head, settling in her feet, and she clung to him tighter just in case she passed out while standing up.
“You are an infinitely better person than I am, Liza Hardin.”
“It’s not a competition, Connor Deneau.”
He pulled his head back, looked deep into her eyes, and brought his hand to her cheek. He stroked her hot skin with his cool thumb and then combed her hair back.
Liza was catapulted backward to a distant moment in time; the first time he held her like this, whileStand by Meplayed over crackly old speakers. After he’d snagged her wrist and swept her away from their friends to a quiet, secluded corner of a twenty-four-hour coffee shop at 3 a.m., pulling her against him and into a slow dance. After they’d swayed together for all of a minute before he stopped and held the side of her face, tilting her chin upward and claiming her mouth with a glorious, deep kiss. Her mind had declared with utmost sincerity that it was so perfect that she never wanted to kiss anyone else but him ever again.
Maybe love at first sight wasn’t a real thing, but in that moment, Liza had believed with her whole heart that love at first kiss absolutely was.
And here they stood, more than ten years later, Connor holding her face and holding her close in that same manner, and Liza’s whole body ached with the knowledge there would be no kiss for lots of reasons. Chiefly being the fever, but the baggage a close second.
“Maybe not,” Connor finally murmured, gaze shifting back and forth between her eyes and her mouth. She wondered if he was thinking of that moment, too. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Forgiving me.”
Liza didn’t know how to respond and was overwhelmed with exhaustion from merely standing, so she shrugged. “You don’t have to say thank you for that.”
A sharp pain tickled her throat again, and she pulled away, turning so she could cover her mouth and cough in the opposite direction.
He gave her a nudge and reached to pull back the blankets for her. “Back to bed.”
Without a word, she climbed in, rolling onto her side and curling up into a fetal position, aching through every movement, and she moaned as tears threatened again. “I’m so sick of this. I just want to feel better.”
