I drop his hand so I won’t break bones by squeezing it. I force myself to go in, heart pounding. But when the darkness swallows me, I’m enveloped in a thick calm. The wind is dulled here, the waves muffled, and the glow of gaslights in town blocked. “It’s perfect,” I say, voice echoing around the cavern. I hold out my hand but cannot see it in the darkness. “No one will even spot us down here.”
“Except the pirates, of course.”
“Pirates!” I shoot up and bump my head.
I feel my cheek cradled, then his lips brushing that delicate spot on my jaw. The birthmark—he knows how to find it, even in the dark. “Don’t worry, luv. Just keep close to me.”
Close. How close? Suddenly his solid, masculine presence fills this cave, takes up all the emptiness that we’ll be sharing tonight. “This isn’t the best idea, AJ.”
He pats my arm as if seeing me by feel, then wraps his arms around me, holding me close. I melt into him instinctively. “How shall we sleep?”
“With our eyes closed.”
And near to each other. Beside him.
After fumbling about and laying out anything soft we can find, we both stretch out in the pitch-black and stare at the ceiling. He bumps me as he shifts, and I tense. He doesn’t movecloser. His breath is audible beside me as he relaxes, soft and pillowy. “You all right, luv?” His hand slides over mine.
Warmth bursts in my chest. “Well enough.” I close my eyes, though it hardly matters in this dark.
“So. Any memories yet?”
“No,” I say without missing a beat, yet the air here is teeming with my past. I don’t want it just now—not with AJ so near, his deep voice echoing about the cavern. I don’t want to know more about the man on the beach with the gentle eyes. I roll away, closing off my mind. “Can’t I merely invent some memories? Pretend I’m cured?”
“If you were dishonest, which you’re not.”
I suck in a deep breath anyway and let out a sigh. The aroma mingles with images in my brain—safe ones.Mama, pass it here!says my childhood self. “That smell. What is it?”
“Tea,” he says with authority. “These are the tea caverns.”
“You’re making that up.”
“I’m not. Hundreds of years ago, pirates used to—”
“Liar.”
“Storyteller. Very well, not pirates. Local men smuggled tea here so they could avoid paying the exorbitant import taxes.”
“Rather a shame it isn’t true.”
“Some stories are true, my lady.” His voice is laden with meaning, but I cannot guess what he’s trying to tell me.
“How do you know about smuggling, anyway?”
“Got an earful in town when I stopped for fish and chips.”
I take another deep breath, imagining piles of tea chests against the rocks. “The scent is so rich. Nothing like the weak, ordinary-tasting tea Lady St. Laurent took.”
He shifts again, the scraping sound echoing. “Life’s slightly different for you now, isn’t it? Do you regret it very much?”
I close my eyes, appreciating the raw citrus scents, the florals, the trace of peppermint I’m certain is lingering.DoI regret marrying AJ? “I think I was…lonely,” I say softly. “Before.” The aching stretch of unfulfilled longing takes up its familiar place. “Living with most of your story missing…your mind not working properly…it’s isolating.” I lived for three years on the edge of belonging. Silently trying to prove my worth to this family, yet knowing I never truly could. I have been defined, for all this time, by the cracks along my surface. “Sometimes it seems everyone else in the world is whole, and I don’t belong there.”
I almost wish to swallow the words up again, to take them back. But silence falls upon the cave, opening the opportunity for him to tell me about himself. To be raw, as I have.
Instead, he says, “Only until you met your very best friend.”
“You’ve a lot of—”
“Ahhh yes, dear Sabine.”
