Page 126 of Bittersweet & Strange

Her eyes remain on mine.

“I was wrong.”

Silence fills the cottage. Mara picks up the clean linen again.

“And I have had twelve years to regret it, so unless you intend to make me waste another twelve explaining myself, sit down and let me see your damned arm.”

I stare at her.

From the rocking chair, Boone makes a sound so small I nearly miss it, caught somewhere between a broken breath and the faintest laugh. My attention immediately shifts toward him. His eyes are still red and swollen, his cheeks wet with tears that haven’t stopped falling for more than a few minutes at a time, but for the briefest moment something other than grief breaks through when he looks between Mara and me.

Mara points toward the chair without bothering to look at me. “Sit.”

I sit.

44

Boone

I don’t understand how it can be over.

I fought so hard for him that somewhere along the way, keeping my father alive became the only thing that mattered. I fought Rhys when he tried to keep me in the castle. I fought Lucien when he decided my life belonged to him. I fought men I’d known since childhood when they dragged Dad from our house. Eventually, I fought the entire fucking village because all I wanted was for my father to be safe and healthy long enough to have something resembling a life again. After everything it took to get him back, one second was enough to make all of it meaningless.

One gunshot.

That was all.

My eyes drift toward his chair across from me, and I immediately look away.

Behind me, Rhys and Mara talk quietly as she tends his arm, their voices low enough that I catch only pieces of the conversation. It shouldn’t surprise me that they’re related, though I still can’t quite wrap my head around Mara being Belle’s sister. The village healer has always carried herself with the kind of authority that makes people move when she tells them to move and shut their mouths when she tells them she’s heard enough. She isn’t particularly warm, and I don’t remember ever seeing her linger somewhere simply for the pleasure of someone’s company. But more than once she appeared at our door to check on Dad without charging us a cent.

Just passing by, she always said.

Our cottage is at the very end of the village.

I never questioned it because I was too relieved to have some help where Dad was concerned. Still, Mara took care of us when no one else did, which is more than I can say for nearly everyone else in this miserable village.

My gaze finds Dad’s chair again.

Another wave of grief hits so hard that I fold forward and press my fist against my mouth, trying to stop the sound building inside me from escaping. His blanket is still draped over the back of the chair, one corner hanging lower than the other because he never bothered folding it properly. His cup from that last morning sits on the table with a little tea dried in the bottom.

It feels like he was just here.

He sat in that chair.

He drank from that cup.

And now he’s dead.

A broken sound escapes around my fist anyway, and I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to breathe through something that feels too large to fit inside my body. I keep waiting for the door to open and Dad to come through it complaining about whatever foolishness has kept him away this long. But every time I look at that door, it stays closed.

Behind me, the voices stop.

The door opens a moment later and closes again, but I don’t bother lifting my head to see who left. Floorboards creak under slow footsteps. Rhys crouches in front of me until his body fills the space between my knees and the empty chair across the room.

He’s shirtless, his coat and ruined shirt gone, and a clean bandage circles his upper arm. Most of the blood has been wiped away, though faint reddish smears remain along his skin. His pitch-black hair is tousled from the wind and everything that happened on the road, and there are shadows under his eyes I don’t remember seeing this morning.

But he’s still Rhys.