Eventually I understood. Eventually I chose mercy over violence, healing over harm. And eventually that choice destroyed everything I had built.
“Eventually what?” Dani pressed.
“Eventually I learned that the questions mattered more than the answers. That sitting with uncertainty, with not-knowing, was its own kind of strength.” He paused. “He died before I could tell him I understood. I have never stopped regretting that.”
The fire popped, sending sparks spiraling upward. He realized his hands had clenched into fists and deliberately relaxed them.
“That’s a sad story,” Dani said softly.
“Yes. It is.”
“But not all sad.” She moved, shifting across the floor until she was pressed against his side. Her small hand found his, curling around his fingers. “The teacher sounds like he loved you. And you loved him. That part isn’t sad.”
He looked down at her—this fragile, fierce little human who had decided he was worth trusting despite every reason not to. His eyes stung.
“You’re right,” he said quietly. “That part isn’t sad.”
Dani yawned, enormous and unself-conscious. “I’m glad you told us. Now we all have stories together.”
Stories together.As if the sharing had woven them into something connected.
She curled against his side like a cat seeking warmth, and within minutes her breathing had evened out into sleep.
He sat very still, afraid to move and disturb her. Afraid to examine too closely the feeling expanding in his chest—the warmth, the ache, the desperate want for something he had no right to claim.
“She trusts you,” Jessa said softly.
“She shouldn’t.”
“And yet she does. So do I.”
He made himself look at her and see the truth in her steady hazel eyes.
“That’s dangerous.”
“Maybe.” She rose from her chair and crossed over to them. She knelt beside him, gently brushing a strand of hair from Dani’s sleeping face. “But maybe some things are worth the danger.”
Thunder rolled overhead. Rain continued its steady assault on the roof. And he sat in the firelight with a sleeping child against his side and a woman who looked at him like he was something precious, and wondered if he could learn to believe her.
He carried Dani to bed when her sleep deepened enough that moving wouldn’t wake her.
She weighed nothing, less than nothing, really, her thin body as fragile as a bird’s. He laid her on the bed with exaggerated care, tucking the fur blanket around her shoulders and pausing to watch her breathe. In sleep, the shadows under her eyes seemed deeper.
She’s getting stronger,he told himself.The medicine is working. The mountain air is helping.
But worry gnawed at the edges of his thoughts regardless.
He closed the door and returned to the main room, expecting to find it empty. He expected Jessa to join Dani and leave him alone with the dying fire and his tumultuous thoughts.
Instead, she was waiting for him.
CHAPTER 16
Jessa stood by his chair, the one he’d built to accommodate his size, and watched him with those steady hazel eyes.
“You should sleep,” he said. “It’s late.”
“It’s not that late.”
