Page 137 of Bittersweet & Strange

“She could have.”

“But she didn’t.”

“No.”

“Why?”

Something changes in Rhys’s expression, so slight I might have missed it a few months ago.

“I think partly it was her aversion to a village that ignored her desperate pleas. And I think she stayed for me.”

My anger falters.

Rhys looks toward his mother.

“The first morning after he died, she opened the front doors herself. I remember standing at the top of the stairs watching her because I thought she was going to walk through them.” His voice remains quiet and strangely matter-of-fact. “I expected her to. I knew enough by then to understand what this place had been for her.”

“But she stayed.”

“She turned around.”

My anger begins to drain.

“She chose you.”

“Yes. She told me nothing in her life was more worthwhile than me. That we were free to live here together. That the village was dangerous and no one there would understand the Beast’s son. I’d be ostracized. Condemned. To remain here with her seemed like, not only the logical choice, but the one that gave us a home free from monsters below. Staying here after her death was my choice.”

The thought leaves an ache behind. My father’s face comes to me so suddenly that I have to look down.

Choice.

I’ve spent weeks thinking about everything Rhys has taken from me. Every door I can’t open and every decision he has made without asking me. I haven’t thought nearly as much about the choices I made before any of this happened.

I came back.

When I could have ridden anywhere, I rode here. When Dad needed someone powerful enough to stand against Lucien, there was only one person I trusted to do it.

When Lucien dragged me away, I screamed Rhys’s name.

When Dad—

I close my eyes.

And when everything inside me finally broke, it was Rhys I collapsed against.

That doesn’t make what he’s doing right. It doesn’t make me free. But maybe that’s why the anger has become so difficult to hold onto.

“You came back too,” Rhys says.

My eyes open. I know what he means, and worse, I know exactly what he’ll say if I try to argue that coming back was different. That Dad needed him, that I needed his help and nothing more. Rhys won’t care about the distinction. To him, I left once, he allowed it once, and then I walked willingly back through his doors without understanding that he would never make the same mistake twice.

The certainty of it should make me furious. It does make me furious, but the anger doesn’t come as cleanly as it should anymore. The village failed Belle and it failed me. Somewhere inside is the uncomfortable truth that I came back willingly. I knew what Rhys was, knew how possessively he watched me, knew what leaving had done to him, and still, when I needed someone, he was the person I ran to.

“I gave you your freedom once,” he says. “I won’t do it again.” One finger lifts to trace the line of my jaw. “I hated it.”

An incredulous laugh slips out before I can stop it. Only Rhys could reduce my freedom to something he tried once and found unpleasant. He steps closer, and I retreat without thinking until my back meets the wall beside Belle’s portrait. He follows, one hand bracing beside my head and the other wrapping around my waist. My pulse jumps when I realize I’ve put myself exactly where he wants me.

“I let you leave because you asked me to,” he says quietly. “You came back because you chose to. I don’t care why.”