Page 189 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Was it?”
All right, the repetition thing was annoying now that she was on the receiving end of it. If he noticed her contention, he said nothing about it.
Her voice sounded thinner than she liked when she spoke next. “Isobel is worried about ye, ye ken?”
That was true enough, but Ciaran did not look away.
“She isnae the only one,” he responded, his low voice carried by the gentle breeze in the tower. “I am worried about me as well.”
The words landed with such force that Ava had to catch her breath for a moment. Something in her chest did a hard, painful twist.
So that was it.
She turned toward him fully. “That is a cruel thing to say.”
His brow furrowed slightly. “Cruel?”
“Aye.” Her hands tightened in her lap. “If that is the truth of it, then the rest of this week has been even crueler than I thought.”
Something shifted across his face then, sharpening his gaze.
“Ye avoided me,” she said. “Ye left me to wonder whether I had imagined half of what has happened between us. Ye let me think…” She paused, her breath hitching. “Ye let me think ye wanted distance because I had become tiresome to ye.”
His jaw tightened. “Ye were never tiresome.”
“Nay?” Ava scoffed, and now the hurt had found its voice properly. “Then what was I meant to think when ye walked away whenever we grew close? When ye could kiss me one hour and vanish the next?”
His eyes held hers, and what she saw there made her pulse jump again, because there was no hollowness in them now. Only a hard honesty he had plainly tried not to give her.
“All ye were meant to think was that I was protecting ye,” he said. “I was trying nae to make a worse mess of things.”
Ava let out a short breath that was too sharp to be laughter and too startled to be anything else. “That is a very poor explanation.”
“It is the only honest one I have.”
A wave of anger and relief tangled together inside her in a way that made sitting still impossible. She rose from the bench and turned away a pace, not because she wanted distance, but because she needed room to think without his shoulder nearly touching hers.
Behind her, he did not move.
“Do ye ken what is hateful about that?” she asked.
“I expect ye mean to tell me.”
“That I might almost prefer simple coldness. It would at least have spared me the humiliation of guessing wrongly.”
“Ava.”
“Nay,” she hissed, rounding on him. “Ye daenae get to say me name in that voice and think it answers everything. If ye felt this, if ye kent I affected ye, then why leave me to stand there like a fool, wondering whether I had been the problem all along?”
His expression changed at that. It did not soften. It tightened.
“Ye have never and will never be the problem, Ava.”
The room went very quiet.
Ava could not look away from him now, even if she wanted to. She had asked him for the truth and was now getting it in a form that made her almost sorry she had demanded so much of it.
Almost.
