Tara
Iclean up some shrub clippings and wipe my forehead. It’s a hot afternoon, only couple hours before sunset, and I’m exhausted from working for a couple of hours in the late afternoon heat. Sweat rolls down my back. Rory’s watching me from the nearby shade, also sweating despite not doing much more than standing around and glaring at everyone.
“Any word from Kellen?” I call over to him.
He shakes his head. “Still nothing.”
It’s been twenty-four hours since we came back from Cait’s grave. At first, Kellen kept me locked in the room, but soon the whole mansion was swarming with men loyal to him. The staff was corralled, accounted for, and summarily fired—everyone except those that Kellen had snuck in. The place is running on a skeleton crew and it feels so strange and empty.
Cormac and Irene are both gone as well. They must’ve escaped around the time that Hugh took off. Their wing is utterly silent, like they’d never been there at all, and it has an eerie and ghostly vibe.
Kellen said he’s going to douse that white room in black paint then light the whole damn thing on fire.
“What are the chances they’re going to find something?” I ask, kicking at the dirt.
“Hard to say. Kellen knows what he’s doing.” Rory squints at the sky. “We don’t have a whole lot of light left.”
“I was thinking about taking a break. Do you mind?”
“Break sounds good to me.”
I gather up my stuff and he offers to help. We walk back to my cottage together, put away the tools, and instead of heading all the way to the mansion, I decide to fire up the window unit and visit my old home.
“I’ll stay here,” Rory says sitting at the kitchen table as the AC hums and cold air blasts into the space. It smells musty and strange, like I left the garbage full or something. I haven’t been in here in a while and I’m not accustomed to the way it smells anymore.
“Make yourself at home.”
He laughs and stretched out his legs, already looking at his phone.
I head into my old room. It looks just like I left it, except it seems so much smaller now. I must’ve gotten used to the size of everything in the mansion, because now my cottage seems utterly miniscule, like way too small for a single adult human to ever actually inhabit. And yet I lived in this place for years.
It feels strange, being back in here. I thought I’d hate it—like I was betraying Kellen. Instead, it’s almost nothing, like it doesn’t matter anymore.
And I think in a lot of ways, what was holding me back before is gone.
The pain is still there, but it’s muted. The self-loathing is still there, but dialed down to a whisper. My world isn’t a screaming nightmare anymore, and I can look at myself in the mirror and smile. A lot of that is thanks to Kellen.
And a lot of it is thanks to forgiving myself.
I don’t know what’s going on with my husband, but there’s something boiling between us. It’s not purely a business arrangement anymore—not exactly anyway. I still want what he promised, but there’s more to me sticking around now. I look forward to seeing him, to kissing him, to feeling his hands on my hips. I want to laugh with him and lie in bed and talk late into the night and feel all those crazy butterfly tingles I never felt when I was younger because I was too numb and too jaded.
I want to be alive with him.
Kellen gets me there, closer than anyone else ever did.
I sit on the edge of the bed. I kick my feet and smile, thinking about my husband, and I look at the ring on my finger.
Gorgeous, glittering ring.
He didn’t have to get it for me, but he wanted to. He doesn’t have to sleep in bed with me. Doesn’t have to treat me like a princess.
But he does, because he wants to.
And in that moment, I realize I’m happy. The feeling is so unfamiliar that it takes a little while to identify it, but I’m happy. I’m not burdened by hate or sadness or addiction or abuse anymore, and while those things will always be with me, they don’t define who I am.
I’m happy. For the first time, I’m suffused with joy, like a dream.
I smile to myself and laugh.