Page 85 of Faithless Vows

Then I unclasp Finn’s bracelet, letting it fall onto the bed, and leave it where it lands before reaching for a pen and a sheet of paper from the drawer.

What good is putting down roots if someone else is always choosing where I’m planted?

I look at the line for a moment, then write beneath it, slower this time.

I need to choose for myself now. I’m sorry.

I leave the note on the bed beside the bracelet, then pick up my bag and slip quietly from the room. Downstairs, I stop at the telephone in the hall and call for a hired car, asking the driver to meet me at the end of the road.

I leave the house and make my way to the road where I asked the driver to wait, breathing a sigh of relief when I see the car just pulling up. The driver steps out to take my bag, and before I climb in, I turn to look back at Grandda’s land. This place had felt safe to me once, and I wish it were ending differently. But after everything that’s happened, I know I can’t stay.

I get into the car and close the door behind me. It’s time to go home.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Ronin

I let myself into the house, sweaty and covered in dirt from working outside, and go straight to the kitchen. The realtor’s coming tomorrow, so I’ve spent most of the day getting the yard in shape, making sure the place looks the way I know Alannah would’ve wanted it. I turn on the cold tap and scrub the dirt from my hands while looking out through the window at the yard.

After drying my hands on the towel beside the sink, I open the fridge for a beer. Before I can reach for one, someone knocks at the front door.Who the hell is that?I shut the fridge and go to answer it.

When I open the door, Alannah is standing on the porch with a bag in one hand. Behind her, a taxi is already pulling away down the drive, gravel crunching under its tires as it turns back toward the road. Her pale blue dress is creased from the long trip, and her hair is pulled back in a low ponytail, pieces coming loose around her face. She looks exhausted but still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. For a moment, all I can do is stand there with my hand on the door, unable to take my eyes off her, because she can’t be here.

But she is.

She shifts the bag in her hand and clears her throat. “Ronin,” she says quietly, “would you mind if I came in?”

“Oh.” I step back, finally getting out of her way. “Yeah, of course. Sorry. Come in.”

She moves past me, and I reach for the bag in her hand. “Here,” I say. “Let me take that.” Our fingers brush when she passes it to me, and that small touch sends a jolt through me. Her blue eyes flick to mine, and I know she felt it too.

“Thank you,” she says, then walks farther into the house.

I close the door and set her bag down in the hall, watching as she looks around the living room. I wonder if she’s noticed that nothing has changed since she left. Not the furniture. Not the pictures. Not a single thing we chose together. “Alannah,” I say, drawing her attention back to me. “Is everything all right?”

She looks suddenly unsure, her eyes dropping from the room to her hands. “I know I should have called first,” she says. “Or written. But by the time I knew what I was doing, I was already on my way.” She takes a breath. “I was hoping we could talk.”

“Yeah,” I say quickly. Then I glance down at myself, remembering I’m still dirty from being outside all day. “Yeah, of course. I just—” I scrub a hand over the back of my neck. “Do you mind if I wash up first?”

“Of course,” she says.

I gesture toward the sitting room. “You can sit in there, if you want. Or wherever you like.”

She nods. “Okay.”

I leave her downstairs and head up, taking the steps two at a time, my mind going a mile a minute.Why isn’t she in Ireland? What does it mean that she came here?

I strip out of my dirty clothes and get into the shower before the water has time to warm. I wash quickly, barely feeling the cold. By the time I’m out, I’m towelling off with one hand and reaching for clean clothes with the other. I dress and head back into the hall.

I’m halfway down it when I stop.

The door to the little room beside the master is open, the one she’d wanted left alone when we were deciding what to do with the house. I push it wider and find her standing by the big picture window, her back to me as she looks out.

She turns slowly, and when her eyes find mine, a tear runs down her cheek. “When we first came to see this house, I stood in this room longer than I meant to,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “You’d already gone ahead, but I stayed here.”

She looks away from me then, her eyes moving over the room like she can still see it the way she did that day. “I remember thinking the yellow could stay,” she says. “And there could be little ducks or lambs painted along the border. A crib in that corner.” She glances toward it as she says it. “And a rocking chair by the window.”

Then it hits me what she saw when she stood here that day. A nursery. And God help me, I can see it too.