Page 219 of Auctioned to the Cruel Highlander
Ciaran kept his eyes on her face because looking away felt like cowardice. “Aye. I will always care for Laird MacKenna.” He heard the roughness in his own voice but did not stop. “And ye. Ye’re me wife, even for a little while.”
The silence that followed was charged.
Ava went still beside him, and he felt the change in her hand before he saw it in her face.
“What does that mean?”
There it was. The opening he had been waiting for all this time. He could lie and say it had meant nothing more than the uncertainty of life after fire and danger. He could delay again and push the truth a few days further down the road.
But he had done enough of that.
“I have been thinking,” he began. “And I think we should seek an annulment.”
The words left his mouth and broke the night cleanly.
Ava let go of his hand.
He lay where he was and stared up at the sky for one beat because he could not yet make himself face what he had done. Then he turned toward her. She had pushed herself up on one elbow. The wonder from earlier had vanished from her face so quickly it looked as if someone had taken a lamp from a room.
“Ye have been what?”
“Thinkingon it.”
She sat up fully. “Here? Now? This is when ye choose to say that to me?”
Ciaran pushed himself upright, too. The coat shifted beneath them, and the cold night rustled the grass at the edges. He felt none of it.
“I shouldnae have forced ye into this when ye were so plainly opposed to it.”
Ava stared at him in disbelief, and he knew at once he had chosen the wrong words.
“Is that still what ye think? That ye forced me?” she asked.
Ciaran exhaled. “Ava?—”
“All these days together, and ye still think I could be forced to make a decision this grand? Ye think this was all forced on me?
He said nothing.
“What happened was simple. Ye gave me a choice, and I made it.”
“Ava.”
“Nay.” Her voice sharpened. “Daenae dothat. Daenae turn me into some helpless girl now because it suits what ye want to say.”
He could not answer. This would have been rough, no matter how he had presented it. Her reaction was expected.
“Ye asked me,” she continued. “I answered. I stayed. I kept staying. Daenae sit under this sky and pretend I stumbled blind into me own marriage.”
His jaw tightened. The comet still burned above them, pale and distant and suddenly hateful for having remained so beautiful while the ground under them split open.
“I amtryingto set something right.”
“Nay. Ye are doing what ye always do—trying to run.”
The words hit close enough to ignite his anger, sharp and immediate. “Ye think I daenae ken what I am doing?”
“Worse, Ciaran. I believe ye ken very well what ye are doing. And frankly, I am growing tired of it. How much grace do ye think I have left in me?”
