James. She’d dreamed of James coming for her. Of him knowing in that wordless way he always had that something was horribly wrong in her world. And not stopping until he’d saved her.
“I’m sorry, Rose.” His voice rasped. “I’m sorry I didn’t come and fight for you when you needed me most.”
She could see nothing through the streaming tears, yet she fought with everything in her to hold back the sobs.
But when James’s hand slid under hers, his strong callused fingers wrapping around her own, the touch tore down the last of her barriers.
CHAPTER 16
The first sob escaped Rose before she could stop it, raw and broken in the cave’s hushed silence. The sound echoed off the stone walls, carrying with it eleven years of buried grief and longing she’d tried so desperately to contain.
But James didn’t pull away. His thumb traced over her knuckles, steady and sure, the same gentle touch she remembered from childhood scrapes and disappointments. The familiarity of it only made her cry harder.
“I used to lie awake at night.” She hiccupped the words. “Wondering if you’d forgotten about me entirely. If any of you even remembered I’d existed.”
“Never.” The fierce certainty in his voice drew her eyes away from her hands clenched in her lap. His green eyes blazed with something that squeezed her chest even tighter. “Not a single day, Rose. You were always on my mind. I sent letters, but I should have come. I should have known you were in trouble. Should have felt it somehow. Searched every town and mining camp until I found you. I should have brought you home years ago.”
Letters? She sniffed, trying to process his words through the haze fear and relief and overwhelming emotion. “You sent letters?”
“Once I found out you were in Virginia City. Every few months at first, then less often when…” His voice trailed off, but she could read the pain in his expression. When she never responded.
Her stomach dropped. “I never received any letters.” Vincent would have intercepted any mail that came for her. He’d controlled every aspect of her life, every connection to the outside world. How many letters had James sent that she’d never seen? How many times had he reached out while she’d believed herself completely forgotten? Vincent had stolen even that.
Years of grief, pressed down and hidden, spilled out now in this small stone sanctuary.
James shifted closer, his shoulder a perfect fit as his arm came around her. For a breath, every instinct screamed at her to pull away—to shrink from a man’s touch, to measure the danger in each movement.
Vincent had taught her that love was something you earned through perfect behavior. It always felt like God’s favor was like that too—contingent on flawless obedience.
But this was James. The boy who carved her wooden horses and spun stories of magical valleys. The man who searched for her, wrote letters she never saw, kept their childhood treasures safe in a battered tin box.
She let herself lean into his warmth, and he wrapped his other arm around her, cradling her in his hold. The safety of it… His heart beat against her cheek through the thick wool of his shirt, steady and sure in a way that anchored her for the first time in years.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered against his shoulder, though she wasn’t entirely sure what she was apologizing for. The tears, maybe. Or the years of silence he’d mistaken for indifference.
“Don’t apologize.” His voice rumbled through his chest, vibrating against her cheek. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
She pressed her face closer, breathing in the scent of pine and leather and man, relaxing into the tender strength in his arms—it felt like coming home to a place she’d thought lost forever.
Minutes passed in the cave’s sheltered silence, her grief finally fading as his heat seeped through her coat and into her bones. The stone walls that had witnessed their childhood secrets now held this moment too—raw and fragile and more honest than anything she’d shared with another human being since Mama passed. Before that even.
When she finally lifted her head, James’s green eyes searched her face. His thumb brushed away a tear from her cheek, the callused pad rough against her skin.
“Rose.” Her name was barely a whisper, but it carried the burden of every unspoken word he’d held back through all the years since she’d left.
The cave felt suspended in time, as though the world beyond these stone walls had ceased to exist.
Her pulse thrummed in her ears, and his breath brushed her forehead as he leaned closer, dipping his chin so their gazes locked. “I never stopped loving you.”
The careful walls she’d built around her heart trembled, threatening to crumble entirely under the weight of his confession.
“James—” She started to pull back, but his hand cupped her face.
“I know you’re scared. I know you have good reason not to trust anymore.” His knuckle traced along her cheekbone, and pain glimmered in his green eyes. “But I need you to know that what I feel for you has nothing to do with pity or obligation. I love you, Rose. I’ve loved you since we were children, and I’ll love you until I draw my last breath.”
The words she’d dreamed of hearing for so many years crashed over her like an avalanche, beautiful and terrifying in equal measure. Every fiber of her being wanted to sink into his declaration, to let herself believe in the possibility of love without conditions or contracts.
Of love with James.
