Page 31 of Strict Confidence (Rochester Trilogy 2)
“You said you loved me.” I love you, damn you.
“I thought you were going to die. Now you’re not. The moment passed.”
I want so badly to be numb, to have that ice around my feelings. The words he’s saying are like hot pokers, burning into my heart, leaving marks forever. “You’re only saying this to protect me. To protect yourself.” Tears make him a wavy form against the backdrop of the ocean. “Because you think you don’t deserve to be happy. You do deserve it. I love you, Beau. I love you.”
“I’ve heard that before. Emily told me she loved me before I left for California. Then she fucked my brother.” He gives me a hard look all the way down my body, a look that remembers every single kiss and touch we’ve shared together. “Rhys would have liked you.”
It’s a slap in the face. I stagger back as if it’s physical instead of just a handful of words. “This isn’t you. And I’m not her.”
“No,” he agrees. “I would have taken care of her, even after she married my brother. If I’d known what was happening in that house, I would have taken her away. Protected her. Saved her. But you aren’t her, are you?”
My tears feel like acid, burning my eyes. “Stop.”
“I’m not going to terminate the contract,” he says softly. “But then you already knew that. Because Paige needs you. And the craziest fucking part of all, I think I need you, too.”
He turns and walks back to the inn, no limp whatsoever, leaving me reeling, the world tilting, my feet stumbling in the powder-soft sand, hardly able to breathe for how much it hurts.
He told me his love was dangerous.
Maybe he was telling the truth. It doesn’t start fires. It doesn’t start wars.
It breaks hearts. Mine feels shattered.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Beau Rochester
It’s one thing to know the house burned to the ground. One thing to watch it coming down on top of us like hell turned inside out.
Looking at the charred remains is another thing entirely. I’m still not used to it.
I can see from the graveled drive where I stand at my car with my hands shoved into the pockets of my jeans. No person’s looked at the ocean from this vantage point in a century. When it was first built, Coach House must have seemed like an intrusion. An unnatural barrier between the flat of the cliff and the view beyond.
Now its burned husk is a terrible compromise. It hasn’t returned the land to its resting state, but it’s not whole, either.
It begs to be rebuilt. Or leveled completely.
There’s a hell of a lot more left than you’d think would be in a burned-down house. Support beams slash through empty window frames like broken teeth. Ancient insulation boils over cracks in the walls. The roof collapsed down the center, leaving a clear path to the ocean.
The fire chewed up the house and spit it out.
It almost took me with it. It almost took Jane.
There’s a sense that the house tried to eat itself to swallow its secrets. It would make me sound crazy to say it out loud. The house isn’t sentient, but that’s how it feels. It didn’t do a particularly good job of the project, though. There’s too much left. Too much scorched wood and blown-out insulation and paper scraps curled over everything.
Instead of consuming its secrets, it’s exposed them—their charred remains floating in the salt-tinged wind, waiting for someone to read them.
It would be the most unsettling thing about today if I hadn’t just left Jane on the beach.
Left her there, with tears in her eyes and her body half folded like I’d hit her. I didn’t. I wouldn’t. I’m not my brother. I’m not Rhys.
But that’s bullshit, because I’m just as bad. Just as unpredictable. Worse.
I said that I didn’t love her. I lied to Jane’s face. What I said in the literal heat of the moment when the house was burning down was the truth, but I called it a lie.
What the hell kind of consummate bastard follows that up with I need you?
The kind I am, apparently.
I’ve been staring through the punched-out hole in the wreckage of the house for too long. It’s not what I came here for. For several long moments, I can’t remember why I came. Who gives a damn? I never should have walked away from Jane the way I did.
My first priority should be driving back down from the cliffs and offering her an explanation. But there’s no explanation I’m willing to give. I won’t subject either of us to that scene.
Paige is the one who needs her, not me.
And the last thing Jane needs is for her asshole of a boss to come knock on her door with his heart in his hands, begging for her kindness and her body.
