Page 79 of This Haunted Heart

“I told you—”

“You’re running again.”

“I’m not!” I insisted, and my heart pinched.

“You are,” he said, reaching out to lay a hand over the teacup that rattled between my fingers. “I heard you all those times you told me you couldn’t stay and that you wanted to take meaway. So this time I’m running with you.”

It was a good thing he put his hand over the cup when he did. He caught it when the next sob wracked me and I dropped it. He placed the cup on the table, and he sat back and let me cry. I wept until the image of him was a blur, my eyes were so wet.

“I’m supposed to be trying to fix you, not the other way around,” I said, but I wasn’t certain how much of that was coherent.

Lochlan pulled out a thick envelope from the lapel of his waistcoat, and he set it on the table beside the weaver-wood. I took both the pouch—best not to tempt him—and the envelope. My cash was inside. He hadn’t bothered to put on a coat, he’d been in such a hurry. But he’d made sure he brought me my fortune.

“You forgot that,” he said softly.

“Penance,” I told him, dropping it back on the table between us. It landed hollowly.

He shook his head. “I don’t want your penance.”

“Then what do you want from me, Loch? Because I can’t be one of your ghosts anymore.”

He didn’t have an immediate answer for me, or it wasn’t one he could articulate.

He watched the fire crackle for a moment, then his lips parted and he sighed somberly. “When I first went looking for you after Hulda told me the truth, I started in Light Lily and retraced your travels. I stopped at a number of music halls in places just outside of Blackwood County until I finally found the Night Lark. I didn’t want to let myself hope, but I couldn’t help noticing that you never traveled very far away from home. Not for someone who wanted to get away. In fact, had you gone far, it might have been impossible to findyou.”

“I didn’t go far,” I agreed.

“Is there any chance at all, even in the slightest, that some part of you hoped I’d find you one day?”

A sorrowful moan caught in my throat. “There’s no doubt about it, Loch. Of course I wished for that. I didn’t let myself dwell on it, though. I didn’t dare hope, but I wanted that. I wanted to be wrong about everything. Wanted you to still have it in your heart to love me after all that I’d done. I ruined it, but then I always knew you were better than I deserved. So maybe you would fix what I couldn’t.”

“No part of me ever stopped loving you,” he said, and his breath hitched. “Even when I was my most unforgiving.”

I stared at him for a time, gathering my thoughts. Eventually I pulled my legs up under me, wanting to make myself smaller on the cushion. “I know you don’t think I’m capable of love,” I said softly, “and I understand why. There were even a few moments there when I was thinking on your words and I was scared that you might be right.”

I had his full attention now. His sad eyes glistened in the light from the hearth and the brightness from the windows. Mine stung with threatening tears.

“But I know I’m capable of that most torturous of emotions,” I continued around the knot growing in my throat. “I know I love you by how much Ihatedthe people and things that made me think of you while we were apart. Poetry? I can’t read it. Can’t stomach it anymore because it reminds me of those beautiful, lyrical letters you used to write to me. Shakespeare? Hate him. Can’t enjoy the bard without thinking about the way you comforted me after I read that damn tragedy.”

A fierceness lit his gaze. He looked like a man possessed.There was sadness there, too, but he was all Loch, all mine, because Loch and Finley were one and the same. My pirate.

I was a pirate too, though.

“A few years back,” I continued, wet lashes lowering, “I met a young man in Salt Rock who announced to the bar that he’d just sold all of his belongings so he could head west to seek his fortune. Everything he owned was in his purse. But how dare he look a bit like you used to. I stole that purse, because howdarehe make me think of you when I was trying so hard not to. He wasn’t the only one either. Sometimes they smelled like you used to. Sometimes they had your eyes, or I caught them reading one of your favorite books. Howdarethey. So I stole from them too, and I never once felt bad about it. I just hated them so much for making me remember what I’d lost—what I foolishly gave up.”

“Why are you telling me this, Rynn?” he asked, a scratch in his voice.

“I know I’m not any good at loving you.” My voice cracked. “I’ve not been what you deserve, and I doubt I ever will be because I don’t truly know how to repair all I’ve done. But I do know that I love you. I loved you when you were a boy. Then I loved you when you were that young man I gave my heart away to. And I love whoever you are now. Finley and Lochlan. No matter what we do to each other, I can’t help it. I can’t make me stop it and neither can you. I love you, Loch.”

“But that doesn’t mean you’re coming with me right now, does it?” he said, shoulders rolling forward.

“I . . . I don’t know. All I’m certain of in this life is that I need loving you to hurt a little less,” I confessed. “And I think you need that, too. Maybe getting that ring back is the answer, and if it is, then it’s worth the hunt. However long it takes.”

He left his chair and came to the sofa, sliding in next to me. I fell against him, needing his touch to soothe away the ache spreading across my chest.

“I want to forgive you and be forgiven,” he said, tears landing in my hair, his arms sturdy and warm as they encircled me. “I want to let it all go. I just don’t know how. Tell me how.”

“I don’t know either.” A tear dripped down my nose. Another fell across my lips. “The audacity of me, demanding something I don’t even know how to do.”

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