by Tessa Bailey
“Sage,” Belmont whispered. “Come away from there, please.”
Her insides shook in sync with his voice. “I’ll come away if you do. If you stay away.”
His footsteps faltered.
“From the mine,” she clarified quickly. “Stay away from the mine.”
Color returned to his face. “You know I can’t do that.”
“Well, would you look at that?” Augie’s voice—coming from her right—was like a cold blast, straight from a fire hose. “Little Sage here has herself a boyfriend. A big one.”
Don’t you dare look at him, she wanted to scream. Don’t you dare think about him.
But she remained still as death, eyes trained on Belmont, no way of stopping what happened next. She already knew, because she’d envisioned it in sleep so many times, usually waking in a cold sweat afterward.
Belmont was only a few yards away now, the group of miners parting to let him through, no questions asked. But he stopped and turned narrowed eyes on Augie, no sound to be heard but the cackling wind as they took each other’s measure. “Are you the one who sent her down there?”
Sage caught the fleeting awareness slip across Augie’s expression. A look that said, Here’s one I won’t walk through so easily. And he would have been right one hundred percent of the time if the mouth to Belmont’s hell weren’t yawning wide open at her back. “I am, indeed. This is my mine.”
Belmont’s jaw bunched, his attention landing back on Sage. “Come away from there, please, or I won’t be able to stop myself from carrying you.”
And I know you don’t want that.
Those words remained unspoken in the wind, but Sage caught them right in the breastbone like a spear. Not wanting to trade any more words with Belmont in front of Augie, because he would use any information to his advantage, Sage went and stood by Belmont’s side. The desire to tilt back her head and absorb his eye contact was so fierce, she didn’t bother denying the impulse. “How did you find me?”
“The scrapbook.” His eyes raced over her face. “You left me a map. I just followed it.”
Still unsure if she’d left the book on purpose, or if her subconscious had guided her, she swallowed. “Did you go to my house?”
His answer came through in the silence, loud and clear. And he wasn’t the kind of man who could contain his sympathy, even if the recipient didn’t want it. He embodied truth. Total honesty was one of her favorite things about Belmont, but the shame was too sharp this time to appreciate it.
“Dammit, Belmont. You had no right.”
Surprise snapped his chin up. She never cursed at him. Ever. Well, maybe he didn’t know everything about her, now did he? Maybe no one did, because she’d kept her faults locked up inside, along with her guilt. With her back up against the wall and a desolate future stretched out in front of her, maybe she’d become the kind of woman who curses a blue streak. As soon as the shock faded from his eyes, confidence replaced it. I am going to make it right, they said. And he could. He could make everything in her world right, if she let him. “I need to talk to your former boss, Sage.”
“Not former,” she breathed. “And no. You don’t.”
“I understand now.” His heat reached her through the jumpsuit as he shifted, putting his back to the men and shielding her from the sun. “I understand why you hid this problem from me. You know I have a weakness.” He nodded at the mine without taking his gaze off her, the intensity of it stealing her breath, her reason. “You forgot something important, though, Sage. I have no greater weakness or strength than you.”
Her entire being attempted to take flight, but with an enormous effort, she reeled it back in. “I would never—” she blurted, then quieted in deference to the dozens of ears around them. “I would never associate the word weak with you, but everyone has one thing they can’t face. It’s nothing to be ashamed about.” A pounding began in her temples. “And none of that matters anyway, Belmont. Because this is my responsibility. Not yours.”
He’d stopped listening. Oh, he was hearing her and retaining, but the listening to reason aspect had gotten thrown out the window. She could see him switch off, could sense the decision inside him hardening like cement. This was Determined Belmont, and if she wanted to crack the wall he’d built, she would need explosives. But nothing would be accomplished right now, because he was already turning to face Augie, who looked nothing short of gleeful.
“I have two things to say to you,” Belmont said, his voice taking on the quality of granite, his back muscles seeming to grow larger, more powerful beneath his coat. “First, if you call her Little Sage again, I’m going to reach down your throat and rip out your tongue.”
It was almost comical, the way the miners’ jaws fell open. Some of them even shuffled away from the scene, wise enough to know Augie’s wrath would fall even on those who witnessed him being cut down to size. Even Sage couldn’t believe the threat Belmont had made. Since he was usually strong and silent, it was out of character for him to speak with such controlled anger. Then again, no one had ever sent her down into a mine on his watch before.
For Augie’s part, his expression never shifted from smug, the glint in his eye menacing, measuring. “Is that so?”
“It is,” Belmont answered, leaving no doubt about his sincerity. “If you want to communicate with her, you do it with respect. If you need help deciding what’s respectful, run it past me first and I’ll decide if it’s worthy of her ears.”
“Why don’t you cut to the chase?” Augie cut in, red creeping up his neck. “I won’t be lectured to on my own property.”
Belmont turned and held Sage’s eyes over his shoulder. There was an apology there, but his resolve was palpable. “I’ll be taking her place starting now.”
Chapter Seven
Sage’s hand was covered in dirt. It sat there on her thigh, dusty and brown…and there was nothing he could do about it. Right? A week ago, he would have pulled over the Suburban, taken one of the water bottles from his cooler in the back, and cleaned her. He could even see the rings of black beneath her fingernails, and knowing she carried any part of the dark, cold earth along with her turned Belmont’s stomach.
But he kept driving back toward her house, because she didn’t want his touch. He’d smothered her and lost that privilege. Hell, he’d never really been granted it in the first place. After meeting her parents, he could imagine how much it had bothered her. Being crowded by him, having her words picked apart, every one of her movements scrutinized. Explaining that he couldn’t stand to see her anything but happy probably wouldn’t help. It might even make it worse at this point, since he’d arrived in Sibley today and picked up right where he left off.
Fulfilling Sage’s needs wasn’t something he could help. Just like the human body couldn’t voluntarily drown itself. Eventually the brain forced that person to the surface for oxygen. That’s how it was for him. Remaining underwater wasn’t an option.
Sage sliding out of the mine through a crevice, holding an oxygen mask to her face.
Realizing his hands were strangling the steering wheel, Belmont commanded himself to relax, as much as possible. When he’d reached this point lately, he’d isolate Sage somewhere and hold her until his pulse beat normally again. But he couldn’t do that. So his hands continued to shake. Would they ever stop? Finding out she was working underground had been terrible enough. Then he’d arrived and found out she was trapped. Trapped. In a place he couldn’t reach her without a machine.
“Belmont,” Sage murmured. “I was fine in there the whole time.”
“Were you?”
No, said her silence. And he wanted to turn the Suburban around and murder the man who’d put her in harm’s way. “I planned Peggy’s wedding in my head.”
He wanted her to go on talking forever. Talk and talk until he couldn’t hear the sound of rubble being cleared away. “Big or small?”
“Small.” She tried to lean into his line of vision with her smile, but he
couldn’t unglue his eyes from the road. It was already demanding too much concentration just to keep the wheel straight, but her smile would blow that focus out of the water. “Fifth time’s a charm, right?”
“Yeah.” He experienced the sensation of pages on his fingers. “There was a cake in the scrapbook. On the third page. Peggy would like that one.”
He felt, rather than saw, Sage’s smile slip. “The stained glass design?”
“Elliott and his religion. She’ll want a way to show him she’s…supportive.” Sensing she wanted more, he cleared his throat. “Also, there’s a lot of pink in it.”
Sage’s laugh released into the car like a string of bubbles, but it faded too fast. “You just made a really dangerous enemy back there. I wish you hadn’t done that.”
Her disapproval made his right eye start to twitch. Under most circumstances, he would go out of his way to make Sage happy, but the current situation didn’t allow for it. Especially if appeasing her meant watching her go back down into the earth—and there was no way he would be able to live with the abomination of that. “He made an enemy out of me, too.”
Driving through town, every house seemed to be lit up with Christmas lights. Red ribbons were tied to lampposts, fluttering in the cool wind. Wreaths hung on doors. But the closer they came to Sage’s part of town, the more the festive atmosphere faded. When Belmont started down the road to her house, she laid a hand on his arm and said, “Wait,” forcing him to suck in a hissing breath. Oh God, they hadn’t touched in so long. His heart weighed down into his stomach, each beat heavy and loud, the temperature of his blood warming where it slid through his veins. Between his legs, the flesh that hungered for…whatever she could give it…bulged against the fly of his trousers.
A moan tried to break past his lips, but he disguised it with a cough. “You don’t want to go back there?” He sure as hell didn’t want her staying in that ramshackle house, either, but he would fight one battle at a time. Already he risked smothering her again, after inserting himself back at the mine. “I was going to check into a motel for the night,” he murmured, shifting when his erection started to pulse uncomfortably. Just the idea of her sleeping could do that to him. A vision of her reaching back to unhook her bra made his voice thick. “I could get you a room near mine.”
“I have a place,” Sage said in a soft tone, that dirt-covered hand slipping down the front of her jumpsuit. Were her palms sweating like his? “But I can’t let you stay there with me. I just can’t. You’ll—”
“I’ll what?”
“You’ll steal all my focus. All my resolve. If I let you.”
“It’s all right, Sage.” His heart bled. But somewhere among all the red was hope. There had to be hope if she was that affected by him, right? “I would never expect to stay.”
Another glide of those palms down her legs, just before she rolled down the window, bringing cold air swirling into the car. “It used to be guest quarters for one of our neighbors, but it was abandoned, or they forgot about it. But there’s plumbing and an old hearth.” She pointed through the windshield. “Take a left up ahead. The road is narrow, but we should be fine. It’s not far.”
This realization that he knew nothing about how Sage used to live—how she coped, what terrible memories she harbored, if they haunted her—pushed up under his skin like a sewing needle. Part of him was almost afraid to see this abandoned place where she’d been staying, because if it wasn’t safe in any way, he wouldn’t be able to leave her there alone. Not good, when he was trying to give her space.
It was only a bumpy one-minute drive down the uneven dirt road—path, really—before they reached what looked like a large brick structure. There were no steps leading to the front door, just a one-foot drop-off down to the ground. One window on each side, but they’d been covered with what looked like wrapping paper. Which was what reminded Belmont of the day. Christmas. And that he’d been holding on to a present for Sage since New Mexico.
Before Sage could climb out, Belmont reached under the driver’s seat and removed the small package. The decorative red paper and curly white bow had gotten somewhat tarnished on the cross-country drive, with people climbing in and out of the car with travel dust on their shoes, but he was more worried about her liking what was on the inside.
“Is that for me?” Sage asked.
Belmont handed her the present by way of answering. “Antique shop in Hurley.” He went back to gripping the steering wheel, even though they were no longer moving. “You don’t have to open it now.”
“I want to.” She rubbed the white ribbon between her fingers. The steering wheel creaked from the pressure of Belmont’s hands. “Thank you.”
“You haven’t seen what it is yet.”
“It doesn’t matter.” She sent him a sidelong look from beneath her lashes. “I don’t have anything for you, though. I didn’t expect…I just didn’t expect.”
“You should always expect from me,” he rasped. Dammit, the closeness of her was getting to be too much. Not holding her and breathing her in when she was right there, sitting so close, made him feel like a ticking time bomb, energy boiling underneath his surface. There were itches he couldn’t scratch in places he couldn’t reach. Everywhere. All the time. “Excuse me,” he near shouted, throwing himself out of the driver’s side.
The cold air tunneled down his throat, the pine needles crunching beneath his feet amplified in his ears. He kept his back to the Suburban and waited, listening through the open door as wrapping paper crinkled, the cardboard notches of the box disengaging. Her soft expulsion of breath made his eyes close, made him wish for that same sound against his neck. He was losing his composure, and there was nowhere to go, because he needed to see Sage inside safely and make sure she was comfortable.
Belmont’s boot heel made a divot in the ground as he turned, intending to move past the Suburban and inspect the small house for security. But he drew up short. Sage stood at the front fender watching him, the gift held in both hands. As long as he lived, he would never forget the picture she painted. So small and mighty all at once, in her dirt-streaked jumpsuit, holding the sturdy blue antique heart clock up against her chest. As if she were trying to press it inside to replace her own real one.
Tick, tick, tick. It was all that could be heard in the fall of nighttime.
“It made me think of you.” His own pounding organ rioted inside his rib cage. “You have to remember to wind it once in a while or it’ll stop working.”
She lifted the clock and tucked it beneath her chin. “I wouldn’t want that.”
“It wouldn’t be your fault.” He shook his head and strode past her. “You wouldn’t do it on purpose.”
At the door, Belmont closed his eyes and berated himself for not having the easy words for giving a gift. All he’d needed to say was, “You’re welcome, glad you like it.” That would have been fine. She didn’t need to know he’d bought the clock because he wanted to see his actual heart up on her mantel, and this was the only way to accomplish it and keep breathing. Keep living in her world.
Hearing her footsteps, Belmont pushed open the door and stepped in, searching the wall for a light switch and coming up empty. “Um,” Sage said behind him. “There’s no electricity yet. I’m still waiting for them to come turn it on. Just give me a second to light some candles.”
He took a moment to absorb the blow of her living in the dark. It had been nothing but blow after blow since he’d arrived in town. But Sage was the one who’d been enduring the darkness, not him, so he sucked it up and filed the rage away for later. When his pulse went back to normal, he turned and held out his hand, trying not to show a reaction to her touch as he eased her into the house. “Running water?”
“Yes, thankfully. Gas, too. They were both turned on yesterday.” She brushed against him slowly in the doorway, forcing Belmont to tilt his hips away so she wouldn’t know he was hard. “There’s a shower stall and toilet in back. The water came out brown at firs
t, but ran clear after about ten minutes.” He squinted into the muted evening light and watched Sage set down the heart clock gently on top of a narrow wooden shelf. Then she crouched down—groaning as she went, from soreness, dammit—and removed a few items from inside a low, squat hearth. Candles and matches. She lit six of them, all with one match, then set about placing them throughout the cabin.
Belmont closed the door behind him and took in the tiny room. Opposite the hearth was a twin bed, the covers neat and smooth. Tidy and careful, just like everything else she did. Beneath the bed, she’d stowed her suitcase. The one she’d been carrying when she’d gotten onto the train and gone speeding away from him.
“Are you warm enough at night?” he asked, watching their shadows dance on the walls.
“Yes.”
“Good.” He turned and checked the door for a lock, finding an old-fashioned deadbolt. Sturdy and well made. His boots clumped on the hollow ground as he made the rounds to each window, judging their security with a harsh eye. “If you don’t have electricity, how have you been charging your phone? If you need me…”
“If I need you.” She shifted, the floorboards creaking beneath her feet. “I won’t let myself, Belmont. There’s a reason I got on the train and it hasn’t changed.”
Belmont rubbed at the gritty feeling in his eyes, although the discomfort was lower, in the dead center of his chest. “If you have an emergency, though—”
“I’ll charge it at my parents’ house,” she whispered.
He gave a grateful nod, before bracing himself. “How bad was it, Sage?”
Her sigh was shaky. “They didn’t hit me, if that’s what you’re worried about. They just didn’t know how to raise me, so I did it myself.” She picked up a candle and set it back down. “They’re just lost in a different world. One they created in the mind they share together. As long as they have one another, they can face the daylight. They left me out of the equation, but I guess a child’s love for their parents…sometimes it doesn’t come with conditions. Mine doesn’t.” She paused. “Or maybe I’m confusing love for responsibility. I don’t expect it to make sense.”