“She knows. And don’t worry. She’s been secreted off to her very own luxury private chalet where she will be well insulated and protected from harm.”
A good thing, so Jessie could be annoyed at her. “She’s a traitor.”
“I think she likes me,” said Ewan.
“Well, don’t feel too pleased about that. Maren likes everybody. She has quite literally never disliked someone until they proved that she ought to. And even then, she has a difficult time with it.”
“But not you.”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and denied the new tenderness surging through her.
Perhaps it was hormones.
That would be more comforting. More comforting at least than believing that proximity to him had done something permanent to her.
“I don’t like anyone. As a matter of course.”
“That’s sage, Jessie. As people are in general useless.”
“Where are we going?”
“Don’t you want to be surprised?”
“I had thought that we had gotten to know each other at least a little bit.”
“Be surprised, Jessie.”
She felt stirred up as they boarded the beautiful private plane, which she still wasn’t used to, and allowed herself to be served nonalcoholic drinks and cheeses.
She didn’t know that she wanted to be surprised; it was yet another thing she couldn’t envision. Couldn’t label her trust.
She already thought she was wandering in a dark room, and she just wasn’t accustomed to that feeling. She was used to having a reference door that she could open up in her mind to try and understand it. Even though sex with him had beenknowing, she had a cursory understanding of the act and what it was.
She had been able to figure out exactly what should pass between them.
And even though the sensations of it had been something different, she had a guidebook, essentially.
And the guidebook felt important.
But there was no guidebook to this. She was afraid of what it might be, but even then, she had no way to look at it. No way to understand it. No way to examine it.
It was all just too much. A swelling feeling at the center of her chest, the tightening of her stomach, a restless sensation in her limbs.
This feeling that whatever was happening to her was too big for her body to sustain.
She was already carrying a baby so that just seemed unfair.
She was living life for another human. It seemed over-the-top.
But then, so had Ewan, from the first moment she had seen him.
She had never been the kind of person who could bring herself to believe in destiny. If destiny was real, then why had she been born to her father?
Divine Providence was difficult to latch on to when everything was just...hard. When you were left to the devices of a sociopathic madman; when your own brain was an enemy because it could be used as a weapon, either against her or... She had used it as such against other people. Even though she thought they deserved it.
But right now she wondered. Because when she went back to that moment she had first seen him...
It was so hard to say because there was no room for magical thinking in her world. Her brain trapped every detail, so remembering him had not seemed significant.