Chapter 13
Oskar took another gulp of his whisky and stared into the fire. His body was still tingling with desire, despite his attempts to drown it in booze. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lily. She had finally opened up to him, told him about her past, laid bare her vulnerability and pain. Far from repulsing him as she seemed to think it would, it had only made him admire her more. What a woman she was. To come through what she had, to have endured what she had... He’d rarely seen such strength. Oh, how he wished she were his.
Ah, what a cruel joke that was. She couldneverbe his.
His heart ached, torn between his desire for Lily and the insurmountable wall that stood between them. It was a wall he had built himself, brick by brick, with the stones of his past.
It was his own fault she didn’t want him and he didn’t blame her for that. Who would want to be shackled to a man like him? She deserved better. After all she had endured, she deserved the best—and that was not him. He loved her and that meant he would not,couldnot, drag her into his darkness. He would not bring her any more pain than she’d already suffered.
So he was glad she’d pulled away, stopped things going any further. It was better this way. Better that she didn’t love him back. Better that she had seen the monster that he really was before they both took a step they couldn’t come back from.
But that didn’t mean it was any less painful.
He didn’t know how much time had passed. Minutes? Hours? He’d lost track of them all. He could hear no movement from upstairs. Perhaps she’d fallen asleep?
“Oskar?”
He slewed around and there she was, standing in the doorway. He hadn’t heard her come downstairs. She was so beautiful that he felt his breath catch and the desire he’d been trying so hard to drown in whisky came roaring to life again.
“Aye?” he said softly.
She walked over to him and sat in the other chair. “I...I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “Ye have nothing to be sorry for.”
“Yes I do. I shouldn’t have reacted like that. It just...just caught me off guard. And I’ve been thinking—”
“Dinna go any further, lass,” he said, cutting her off. “Mayhap it would be best for both of us if ye just went back to bed and left things as they are.”
“No it wouldn’t and you know that. I’ve been doing some thinking—”
“Thinking is dangerous.”
“Maybe,” she said with a wry smile. “But all the best things are.” She fixed him with an intense stare. “I’ve been sitting up there, trying to make sense of everything. But I can’t. I can’t make sense of why I wanted you so badly just now. And I can’t make sense of why I still want you.”
He looked at her, feeling his heartbeat quicken. “Then ye shouldnae. I am no good for ye, Lily. I will only bring ye hurt.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Ye should!” he snapped, suddenly angry. “Listen to me! I carry shadows that will engulf ye if ye draw too close. I canna bear the thought of bringing ye harm, not after all ye have endured.”
“I don’t believe ye would ever harm me.”
“Then ye dinna know me!”
“Don’t I? Don’t you think you should let me be the judge of that?”
“Ye dinna understand!” he cried, springing from his chair and whirling away from her.
Curse it all, how could he make her see? He had once thought he could be different, that perhaps, just perhaps, he could be a better man, a man that might have deserved someone like her. But coming back here, to the place where it had started, had taught him his mistake. It had shown him who he really was, no matter how hard he tried to be something else.
And now she was tempting him, daring him to believe otherwise. Didn’t she know how close he was to losing control? To giving in to his desire for her?
“I’m not the man ye think I am,” he said softly. “I’m not some selfless hero out of a story. I am everything Bryn Fletcher said I was and worse. Ye would do well to stay away from me.”
He heard her move closer but he didn’t turn. “Weren’t you the one who was just telling me that we aren’t defined by our past?”
“This is different.”
