Page 35 of A Nameless Highland Laird
Dropping his gaze, he shifted just out of her reach, letting whatever moment had built between them crumble.
“Cameron?”
Her voice was still so soft and unsure as she looked at him. He could feel her eyes roving over his face, but he made no move to meet them again.
“Are ye—is everything…are ye all right?” She managed to ask.
Cameron pushed himself off the floor, dusting off invisible dirt from his pants and straightening his shirt while he looked for an answer. After a long moment, he reached his hand down to her, helping to pull her off the floor. She, likewise, took a minute to sort herself out, smoothing her skirts back into place, but kept her eyes on him the entire time.
“Aye,” he answered at last. “I will be fine.”
He stepped away from her to collect the book he had thrown, busying himself with flattening the pages again before closing the book.
“Ye will be? Are ye nae now?”
He had hoped she wouldn’t catch that slip.
“That is what I meant,” he corrected. “I am fine now.”
With the book dealt with and them both standing and settled, he had nothing left to do but meet her gaze. She was watching his every move intently, as if she didn’t quite believe what he had said. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t believe it either.
Pretending to ignore her watchful stare, Cameron sunk into the sofa, letting the warmth of the fire creep over him, pushing away the lingering chill that clung to his fingertips. He could hear her breathing. He could almost hear her thinking. But he offered no answers, no explanation. He couldn’t, not when he was still trying to wrap his mind around it all himself. She sat beside him, closer than she had when they had been in the library together that morning. The light floral scent rolling off of her soothed the rest of his frazzled nerves, though he couldn’t figure out why.
“Are ye going to tell me what is going on?” she asked, her eyes still on him. “What just happened?”
He let out a sigh through his nose. He had put off the conversation as long as he could. And after what she had just done for him, answering her was the least he could do, regardless of how uncomfortable it would make him.
“It was a breathin’ attack,” he told her plainly. “I dinnae ken what else to call them. Ye saw for yerself what they look like.”
Shame threatened to burn him alive, but he fought to keep his composure. He was too exhausted to do anything else.
He glanced over at her, his curiosity getting the better of him. She nodded slowly, still trying to piece it all together.
“All right,” she murmured. “Can ye tell me why the breathing attack happened? Or what caused it?”
He shrugged with a nonchalance he didn’t feel.
“They have been happenin’ for years. It is a long story, a lot to explain. And it is late.”
“I have the time,” she pushed.
This time when he looked at her, he let their eyes meet. Despite the fact that they had spent the better part of the day together, or the fact that he had watched her carefully for hours on end, he had never noticed the color of her eyes before. Now, he couldn’t help but be entranced by them. Like her, they were warm and soft, a creamy shade of brown with gold flecks throughout. He had never seen anything like them. They invited him to share those darkest parts of himself, to show her who he really was. At least, as much as Alastair would allow. And without thinking through it, without really considering what he was doing, he found himself nodding.
“There was an…incident when I was a child. It is nae a pleasant tale and one that I have nae told for many years,” he started.
She reached out, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder again. He sighed again, bracing for what this retelling would bring up for him.
“Take yer time,” she encouraged.
He swallowed, his throat having gone dry at the memory of it all.
“I was a little more than a bairn, though I believed myself to be grown. I suspect that most young lads are like that. I had two younger siblings and felt verra responsible for them. It was my duty to see to their well-being. In truth, it was a job I did nae mind having. They were both just so young.”
The faint outlines of their faces floated into his mind, clogging his throat with emotions he had not felt in ages. If he tried hard enough, he could hear the sound of their laughter mixed with the long since forgotten sounds of their voices. It had been too long since he had truly known either of them. That familiar chasm in his chest threatened to open up again and suck him down into it.
“Anyways,” he cleared his throat, trying to hide the fact that his voice was hoarse, “we wound up in a house. It was a shack, really. The three of us were paralyzed as a fire took hold of the walls and burned things to ash in minutes.”
He could tell she wanted to know more, wanted to know how they had gotten into the hut in the first place or how the fire had started. None of it truly made sense, but that wasn’t something he was ready to tell her.
