Page 75 of The Forsaken

She felt like a thief of a different sort—one who was stealing the most intimate parts of him, things he wouldn’t have otherwise shared if she hadn’t forced him to this moment. But she heard more in the silence he left hanging in the air…

He wanted someone to share his fears with. She would be that person for him. For him, she would be whatever he needed her to be.

“Will you tell me?”

He nodded. The slight knob in Edgar’s throat moved unsteadily.

And he did. And when he finished, she didn’t know how she was still standing. What he had seen, what he had endured… the fear he’d lived with. She wanted to take it all away.

Andromena stepped into his arms, folded hers around his waist, and held on to him.

She felt this big, proud man’s body stiffen, felt him hover his arms uncertainly around her waist, and then give in. He folded his arms around her and clung to her in return, as though she were the lifeline who’d brought him back from the darkness of his memories.

Andromena moved enough to lean up on tiptoe.

“Oh, Edgar,” she breathed against his mouth. “You can’t convince me you are unworthy of love—you’re worthy. Or that you’re damaged—you’re not.”

“But—”

“Your father was sick. The sick deserve compassion. If you ever became ill, I would not stop loving you. I would love you more, and I would care for you. If you cried, I would not think you weak. I would hold you, and we would make it right together.”

Something shifted in his features. The look on his face stopped the passionate flow of words. He gazed upon her like she was the moon and stars and seas he sailed combined.

It was too much.

Andromena made herself step away from him—forever.

“I love you, Edgar,” she whispered, pressing her hand to her breaking heart. “I just… needed you to know this.”

And then, she did the hardest thing she would ever do in her life.

She walked away from the only man she would ever love.

Chapter 14

After Andromena had professed her love and left, the strangest thing happened to Kerr—he found God. Not in the Sunday sermons way. God, never that. Not again. As a lad who’d listened to his mother’s cry when she believed herself alone, he’d committed himself to the front pew, daily and nightly prayers. That hadn’t gotten him anywhere. Her misery persisted. Only when he stopped attending and instead stuck to asking—when all of Eton slept—for some intervention, had the Crazed Kerr kicked his heels up. That night, as a newly minted viscount, Kerr learned maybe that’s what it took—no sermons; just asking was good enough.

But asking favors without the bloody knees he got as a boy was far easier, and preferable, anyway.

The thing was, after his mother was finally free of the chains that bound her to a man her parents tied her to, Kerr wanted for nothing. He hadn’t asked for anything, because he hadn’t needed anything.

In the absence of logic and riddled with mind-bending terror, he turned to the Savior with a single plea: Christ, help me.

Cursing roundly, Kerr fished around the inside of his jacket until he found a cheroot. Finding the nearest brazier, he lit the scrap and filled his lungs with it.

Andromena loved him.

Kerr, who was scarred and uglier than a burnt boot—which, given her absence of horror worn by the rest, she didn’t seem to care about. And destined for madness—that she vowed to stand with him throughout.

Not to be left off the list he’d been compiling since she left was the most obvious item: whenever they were together, without fail, he made the lady cry. He insulted her in the worst ways—a dark mark against his soul. And he hadn’t complimented her nearly enough, a failure he only now understood after his time in the Rookeries.

All of this was a great deal for a confirmed bachelor, who would never marry, to consider.

Apparently, his stomach churned when the word starting with w and ending in ‘d’ was mentioned because he was just enough of a rogue, but not enough of one to be unaffected by an innocent lady professing.

She didn’t. Not really.

Not that he was a fellow who doubted love was real—or some form of it. His mother had remarried to Greyhold and been blissfully happy. Same for Culross. Rather, Kerr held the most pragmatic view of what it truly was: a mix of deep affection, fond regard, and, above all, overwhelming, all-consuming lust.