Page 90 of Rune’s Solace

That got me.

I looked away because suddenly the cabin had gone blurry, and I wiped under one eye before anything could make it down my face. For weeks I’d thought about the secret sitting between us, especially after our first night together. But he’d been waiting for me.

“You held it,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“So I could give it to you.”

“If you ever wanted to.”

I looked at him sitting over there instead of beside me, because even now he wasn’t assuming this conversation bought him the right to come closer.

“You could’ve saved yourself a lot of hell by telling me.”

“Probably.”

“You didn’t.”

“No.”

“Why?”

His eyebrows pulled together like the answer ought to be obvious. “Wasn’t mine.”

That was it. Two words, and I started crying.

Rune moved before he could stop himself, got halfway out of the chair, then caught it and stayed there. Even now. Even with me crying in his bed and him looking like sitting six feet away was killing him, he waited.

God, this man.

“Come here,” I said.

He was beside me before I finished it. I went straight into him, arms around his neck, and Rune gathered me up carefully because everything on me still hurt somewhere. I pressed my face into the side of his throat and cried for a minute, not hard, nothing like before, just letting it happen while his hand moved slowly over my back.

“I’m mad at you,” I said into his neck.

“I know.”

I pulled back enough to glare at him. “That’s not an apology.”

“I’m not apologizing yet. Still waiting to find out if I did wrong.”

That was so completely Rune that a laugh got mixed up with the crying.

He wiped under my eye with his thumb.

“Are you?” I asked.

“Don’t know.” His expression went serious again. “I’d make the same choice. That’s probably not a point in my favor.”

“No. Probably not.”

“But I’d make it.”

“Why?”

“Because it was yours.”