This wasn’t what she’d come here for. She’d come for Henry and...well, yes, to engage in a casual sexual affair with the beguiling, charismatic man who’d mesmerized her from the first moment she’d set eyes on him. The primary emphasis on casual. She hadn’t intended for things to become deep or meaningful.
Certainly not for him.
Or for her.
Her heart berated her for her foolishness now. The surging pain in her chest crawling up her throat until she almost choked on it. It contracted around her chest until every breath screamed for release as if she’d run a marathon. Squatting on her haunches, she wrapped her arms around her ribs as a sob heaved upwards.
What had she done?
How long she sat there on the side of the road, she didn’t know. Headlights blinked in the darkness, distant and then blinding her through the glare of unshed tears until a car pulled to a halt next to her.
Nothing like the boxy Rolls Tris had let her drive in the days following his assertion at the ball that he’d let her do so. The experience had terrified her with the car’s lack of responsiveness and control. Not that Aila’s old beater of a car was any safer.
Brontë pulled open the passenger door and climbed into the Vauxhall, glad the lights from the dash weren’t bright enough to illuminate the wreck she knew she had to look like.
“Thanks for coming to get me. I wasn’t thinking ahead about coming back and being stuck out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“That’s what friends are for, aye?” Aila looked from the road to her and back again. “Why did ye no’ hae someone take ye back to the city before hitting the return button?”
She shrugged. “I’d have to get a ride to the train and then another ride to the theater. I thought this would be faster.”
Aka I wasn’t thinking at all.
A shaky sigh escaped her, and her perceptive friend noticed. Her canny gaze raked over Brontë. “Ye a’right? Ye look awfy wabbit.”
Good enough excuse. “I am tired. It’s been a long day.”
“Did ye get it done then?”
“Yes, Henry’s safe again.”
Until the next time.
“And?” Aila looked at her again with a dip of her head. “’Mon then, spill it.”
“Tris was a complete gentleman.”
He’d shown her that a gentleman was about more than opening doors. It was about having a care for her and her feelings. He’d changed her perception about that, and so many things.
And what had she done for him?
“Och awa’ an’ dinnae talk pish.” Aila laughed in response. “I can always tell when yer lying, ye numpty.”
There’s a wealth of lies and secrets that keeps me from giving ye my whole heart.
“Truth now,” her friend persisted. “Ye shagged him this time, aye?”
Ye think that’s all this is, lass? Lust?
Brontë buried her face in her hands. What? Was she going to replay that verbal catastrophe a hundred times over? “Yes.”
“And...?”
There’d be no dodging Aila anymore than she’d been able to escape Tris in the end. In all truth, she needed someone to talk about it with. To make sense of how it all got so out of hand. “It was powerful...not rough, but...I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it. He trembled...that first time. I mean his arms, his whole body...”
Aila left enough of a pause for her to go on, but Brontë couldn’t find the words.
“Maybe he was inexperienced?” Aila suggested. “Gad! Dinnae tell me ye popped his cherry?”
Brontë shook her head. “It wasn’t like that, though I’m not surprised you’d go there. No, he knew what he was doing.”
I ken how to make yer body sing.
She leaned against the door, blindly watching the Highland countryside whizz by, and replaying that first time in her mind. God, yes, he knew what he was doing. “It was...intense. Passionately intense. Like it shook him to the core.”
My father once told me love could make the strongest man quake with passion.
“And ye?”
“Each time was better than the one before,” she confessed softly.
Even as the depth of emotion between them swelled with each day they were together, even as the connection became so profound it brought tears to her eyes, she’d taken solace in the knowledge that the only risk was her own. Her heart the only casualty of her carelessness.
He’d felt the power of it right from the start.
“Each time? How many were there?”
“I’ve been there for almost two weeks.”
There was no way she was giving up the complete details, even to Aila. Honestly, Brontë didn’t think she possessed the words to adequately describe the earth-shattering ecstasy of making love with Tris. Of connecting with him. Becoming a part of him.
She’d given him everything. What kind of fool was she?
She’d walked into it with eyes wide open, seen it coming and hadn’t seized the opportunity to run from it any of the dozens of times she’d had the chance. Despite the fact that the whole thing was doomed from the start. She’d known that. Known it wasn’t going to last. The end would’ve come soon enough for them even if the hundred years between them hadn’t been a deal breaker.
She’d known that and set herself up for heartbreak any way.
It never occurred to her that she’d take Tris down with her.
Strong, confident Tris who had his whole life waiting for him. Plans to mold it into a perfect future. To save the world, or at least help it along the way. Tris, who chafed at the fact that his family tried again and again to steer him into a marriage he didn’t want. An obligation he wasn’t ready for.
That was what she knew of him. Her take away from every conversation they’d had on the subject. He wasn’t looking for longevity yet. For commitment.
How could she have known what was in his mind and heart?
How could she have known to spare him?
The pitch of the tires on the road changed, louder in volume and higher pitched, drawing Brontë from her reverie. Spotlights illuminated the slashing white diagonal cables of the Queensferry Bridge. Beyond them in the distance she could make out the distinctive red suspension of the Forth Road Bridge. The one that didn’t exist in Tris’s time.
She didn’t exist in Tris’s time.
Maybe that was for the best.
She only wished she’d realized it sooner.
Chapter 29
Present Day
SHE’D NEVER REALIZED that fireplaces were proportionately sized to the room they were meant to heat. Then again, she’d never lived in a house where they were the primary heat source. Not even a radiator. It made sense, Brontë supposed. A fireplace the size of the one in Glen Cairn’s drawing room would set the heat in her bedroom to surface of the sun, while hers wouldn’t put a dent in the gallery.
Gad, the things one’s mind turned to in order to avoid dwelling in misery. Distraction and misdirection. Anything to keep her mind from turning where it shouldn’t.
And what was she doing anyway? Swiping through the pictures she’d taken in the past under the pretense of work-related research since she’d left her drawings behind in her rush to leave. Pretending to indifferently peruse the long-range photos when in fact every nerve in her body was strung like a live wire in anticipation of seeing Tris pop up on the screen. Staring at him wasn’t going to change anything. Neither would thinking about him.
The past two weeks had proven that to her. More time was all she needed before she could face the situation she’d left behind more objectively, without an excess of sentiment clouding the picture. Dropping her pencil on to her sketchbook, she pushed them away with a disgusted grunt. It wasn’t as if she were making any progress with them anyway and a bottle of wine was calling her name.
The bottom half of the bottle at least. The top already consumed in the name of nostalgia and penitence. Leaving the drawings behind on the couch where she’d l
azed away the better part of her night off, she picked up her empty glass and made her way to the kitchen. On the counter, a moody pinot noir beckoned her. She pulled the stopper off it — how optimistic to think she’d need to reseal it — and poured the remainder into her glass. When it was filled to the brim and a splash left in the bottle, she drank the rest straight out of the bottle. No point in pretending she wasn’t going to drown her sorrows in the whole thing at this point, was there?
Obviously, this heartrending grief would fade eventually. If she hadn’t left when she did, the shine would have rubbed off their affair soon enough, as it always did. He’d grow bored with her — hadn’t she already assumed he had? — or she’d lose interest in him once the rush of lust faded.
Ye think that’s all this is, lass? Lust?
Who was she kidding? Brontë wandered back into the living room and stared out one of the rain-splashed windows at the dark garden behind the house. It hadn’t been lust that kept her second guessing herself the whole time she was there. That had been fear that she was falling too fast and in too far over her head. And it wasn’t lust that kept her thinking about Tris. Lust didn’t touch the soul and tear at the heart. It didn’t make a person know they’d found something in another person that they’d never known they’d lost. Themselves.
Amid all the arguments, poking and prodding, Tris had given her something she’d never known before.
Peace.
Tris fought with her and riled her, true. He also debated with seasoned genius, made her laugh out loud, sparked her competitive spirit, and her imagination. Until that last day when her doubts and second-guessing had come crashing down around her, he’d given her validation, and a renewed sense of purpose and managed to reshape her doom and gloom perspective of the future into one of optimism. Even eagerness.
She’d never known that a relationship could make her feel good about herself.
Maybe that was Tris’s gift to her.
And what had she given him? What had she left him?
Brontë gulped down half of her wine to douse the spark of guilt. She had no idea.
She hadn’t read from Hazel’s diary since she returned. Henry’s future was in no way secure. Banishing Wyndom from Glen Cairn had been nothing more than a temporary fix. If he were determined to see to Henry’s demise — and if she’d been correct in her assessment, he was — he’d find another time/way/place to do the deed. With time on her side, she’d been hoping to achieve a level of detachment before she checked.
And if need be, consider her options.
No, the true reason she hadn’t read the diary yet was that she’d didn’t want to read on and discover how quickly and thoroughly Tris had gotten over her. She didn’t want to learn that he’d fallen in love with another woman and married. That he’d lived a happy life without once thinking of her.
She needed to stop lying to herself. Retrieving her phone, she opened one of the candid photos she’d taken of him. A smile formed on her lips despite the sorrow settling deeper in her heart. As much as it would break her heart more and dreaded seeing the words on paper, she truly hoped he’d done exactly that. That he had found true happiness and lived a long fulfilling life. She wanted to be able to imagine that gorgeous smile of his gracing his face every day of his life and know laughter and joy each step of the way.
What she truly didn’t want to read about was the aftermath of her disappearance, for that was how it would appear to them. Gone without a trace. Hazel and Henry would worry. Tris would believe it had all been his fault. There would be a search for her, perhaps letters written to relatives in New York asking for information about her.
Then the truth would out. They’d discover the fraud she was and know the anger born of betrayal. She should have left a note.
Wait, she could still go back and do that. A parting farewell requesting that they don’t look for her. It would be kinder than leaving them all to wonder. Brontë nodded. Yes, when she went back to finish off her mission to save Henry, she’d do it without their knowledge and without involving them. They could move on — disappointed in her, but content. Maybe they’d remember her fondly.
To Tris, she would write a more personal letter. Apologize to him for not seeing sooner how she would eventually and inevitably hurt him. Try to make him understand that she hadn’t seen it coming any more than he had.
A text chimed on her phone and Brontë swiped on it, eyes widening with surprise. A message from Jake? Of all people? Now? Her throat tightened in astonishment, then choked on a disbelieving laugh when she read it. An apology. After all this time. Not only that but a confession that he realized he’d made a mistake in cheating on her and giving up on them.
He wanted another chance.
A month ago, a message like that would have thrilled her. There was a fair chance she would’ve jumped simply to wallow in disillusionment again within weeks, maybe months. A month ago, she would have said Jake was the love of her life.
Now she knew better.
What had kept her bulldozing her way through their relationship hadn’t been any deep-seated love for the man himself. She’d loved the idea of him...of them. Beating the odds and creating something that would last. What she’d missed most following their breakup hadn’t been Jake himself — she couldn’t even recall the color of his eyes or his smile at the moment — rather the potential for something more.
Jake was a dream. A prospect she’d tried to mold into something more. All her past boyfriends had been the same. Her attempts to create the perfect man. The perfect relationship.
There was no such thing. Aila had been right about that.
It had been a mistake on her part to expect him to transform into something he could never be. Perfect for her. He’d made the same error in the end. They all made mistakes. Mistakes that couldn’t be undone.
She’d made a fair share of her own, most without the luxury of being able to undo them.
Not to say she hadn’t tried.
The single rash impulse that compelled her to stay in the past a single day longer than necessary had snowballed into an avalanche she couldn’t dig her way out of. Following her return from the past, when the reality of the suffering she’d engendered along the way had truly sunk in, Brontë had tried to fix the mess she’d made without forsaking Henry in the process. There’d been no way for her to travel back, disrupt her interaction with Henry, Hazel and most especially Tris without failing to accomplish the initial motivation of her journey. If she waylaid her former self, she lost Henry. If she made herself known to them as she already had, nothing changed. Going back and trying to tell herself not to do this or that in the first place hadn’t worked either.
The paradox of time travel. It wasn’t possible to go back and kill your own ancestor, nor could one go back and convince themselves not to do something utterly stupid when it was that exact idiocy that made them ask in the first place. She’d weeded through the tangled web again and again and it continued to confuse her.
Without the option to undo, concentrating on what she could do was what mattered now. With resignation weighing heavy, Brontë set her phone aside and pulled Hazel’s diary out of her purse where it had silently judged and condemned her since her return. Settling back into the corner of the sofa, she set her wine glass aside and cradled it in her hands.
The brown leather cover remained as aged and cracked as ever. There’d been one day she’d seen Hazel carrying it with her. The leather had been supple then, lighter in color with gold embossing that had long since faded away. The crisp pages crackled when she opened it. Noting that the pages were full all the way to the end thrilled her. As she browsed through the pages, one entry dated seven months after she left caught her eye. An outpouring of praise and gushing affirmations of Hazel’s newborn son and Henry’s heir, Phineas. The smartest baby ever conceived. How proud Henry would have been of him.
Would have been.
Will be, she silently promised and leafed farther back. Lit
tle had changed for all her efforts. Though she’d discovered it took some time for personal memories to trickle down to her — perhaps because she was outside the time loop — she had few new memories of the distant cousins she had in the MacKintosh family. Whatever else she’d accomplished, Hazel remained disconnected from the clan. With a touch of remorse, she turned another page and Tris’s name leapt at her. Dated a week before she left, it read:
‘I find myself enjoying the time I spend with Tris not merely as Henry’s friend but my own. Brontë’s influence, I think. As the days pass, I’ve discerned an aspect of his character I failed to take notice of in the past. Sincerely, I find myself most contrite, as well the entire family should, for my deficiency in acknowledging his desire to be something more than son, brother and friend.’
He wanted greater purpose. As she’d teased, to change the world. Like Hazel, Brontë failed to understand how such a close, caring family couldn’t comprehend what Tris strived for when she’d seen it in less than a week. That her time there helped others see him for the person he truly was buoyed her spirits and she turned the pages forward with a trace of positivity.
She’d only found the date she was looking for when she heard the front door open. A moment later her grandmother breezed into the room, all smiles.
“How was your night out with the girls, Granny?” Brontë asked though the answer was obvious.
“Wonderful. Long overdue.” Violet dropped her purse and shed her raincoat. She was down to a single walking cast. Though she couldn’t drive yet, relying on friends for transportation, she was far more mobile. And happy. “If ever there was a motivation to avoid breaking a leg or two, missing a few months of book club is it.”
“What are you ‘reading’ this month?” Brontë asked her. “A nice cabernet and the last season of Grace & Frankie?”
Her grandmother clucked her tongue, though her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Never mind that. I want to hear about your date.”
Angst and displeasure escaped with an audible groan. She’d had two reasons for going out on another date with Del, aka Mr. Verbosity. The first to distract herself from the steadfast misery that encompassed her life these days, with an added dash of punishment and penance in the process. And secondly, to prove to herself that she could potentially move on someday. She’d floundered in both regards.
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