“I’m not sure which I hate more—seeing the evidence left behind by what he did to you or seeing you hide from me.”
“I need you to know without any doubt that I didn’t encourage him.”
Leith stops walking and grabs my hands, forcing me to stand face-to-face with him. “I never, not even for a second, thought that you did.”
“He told me after he attacked me that I was out of my mind if I thought that Fellowship brothers considered me anything more than…” I stop because I don’t want to say the rest. It’s so degrading.
“Anything more than what?”
I look away when I say the word. “Fuckable.”
Leith shakes his head. “That couldn’t be further from the truth. You know that, right?”
“No brother has ever said anything like that to me before.” I lift my shoulders and lower them. “But I don’t know. Maybe that’s what they think of me.”
It’s always possible that our secret trysts weren’t so secret. The brothers could somehow know that I asked three men to have sex with me at the same time.
“I hear everything said about everyone at the pub. No brother thinks of you that way.”
“Well, one good thing about what happened is that it gave me a reason to get out of there and never work for him again.” Although I will miss the children terribly. And I’ll never stop worrying about their well-being.
“I’m thankful you’re no longer there but not at the expense of what you had to go through.”
“I’m jobless. Again.” And with no prospects for new employment.
“And I still don’t have a head barmaid worth a damn.”
“We’ve had this conversation more than once.”
“I wouldn’t call it a conversation. You told me that you couldn’t come back, but you never gave me a legitimate reason why.”
I can’t bring myself to tell him the whole truth, so a partial will have to do. “I saw a lot of things happen in that pub. Some of them were very painful, and I choose to not place myself in a position where I will have to go through that again.”
“I hurt you and I know that. I have to live with it every day of my life, but I swear to you that it will never happen again.”
“I don’t think that you would ever deliberately hurt me. It’s all of the unintentional things that I worry about.”
“Intentional or unintentional… I swear that I will never hurt you again.”
“My decision to not come back is a form of self-preservation.”
“All right. I’ll leave it at that for now, but you should know that I’m never going to stop wanting you to come back.”
The truth is that I don’t want Leith to ever stop wanting me to come back. “You’re sweet for saying that.”
“If you won’t come to work for me, what do you plan on doing? Where are you going to live?”
“I don’t know yet.” But it’s something that I have to figure out soon. Bleu says that she’s grateful for the help that I’m giving her with the babies, but I can’t stay with them forever. I’m a disruption to the routine in their home life.
“You wouldn’t have to worry about a job if you married Maddock Hendry.”
Shite. Sin told him about the meeting with Maddock. I wish that he hadn’t done that. I would have liked to have had a few more interactions with Leith before we are forced to discuss that.
“You’d never have to work as a barmaid or nanny again. Hell, you’d have your own nanny. Maybe even two with all of the kids that you want to have.”
“I’ll never have a nanny. I will mother my own children.”
“Lorna Hendry. It has a nice ring to it.”
“Please don’t say that.”
Why would Leith say something so horrid to me? Is he lashing out? Or maybe feeling me out to get my thoughts on meeting with Maddock Hendry?
“You’d be the wife of a council member. Sister-in-law to Kieran Hendry, leader of The Order. The proposition must be an attractive one.”
“He hasn’t propositioned me. We’ve never even been properly introduced.”
“A proper introduction isn’t necessary. Ask Westlyn. I’m sure that she can validate that.”
“Kieran and Westlyn’s situation was different and unique.”
“Maddock Hendry might not have propositioned you, but he has propositioned your leader on your behalf. And Sin is going to grant his request.”
Is that anger I hear in Leith’s voice? Frustration?
“Sin has no choice. And do I need to remind you that neither do I?”
“Choice or not, I don’t want you to spend time with him.”
I’m certain that Leith must hear the quick sharp breath that catches in my throat. It’s too loud for him not to hear it. “Why do you not want me to spend time with him?”
“You know why.”
Oh no. We’re not playing that game.
“Wrong, Leith. I don’t know why.”
“Are you going to force me to say it?
“I think that I deserve that much.”
I want to hear him say it. I have to hear him say it.
“You expect me to show my cards when you’re going to be spending time with another man?”
“I didn’t agree to any of it. My leader told me that a man from our alliance wants to get to know me. Sin can’t refuse him because I don’t have a mate. I have to go.”
“I know, and I’m sorry that I’m acting this way. I don’t know any other way to handle it.”
He still isn’t telling me what I need to hear. Maybe because he isn’t feeling the way that I am.
“Spending time with Maddock is exactly that—spending time together. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Unless he decides that he wants you and makes an offer. Or hell, you might even decide that you want him.”
“Maddock isn’t going to want me. And I’m damn sure not going to want him.” The thought of being with a man other than Leith is ludicrous to me.
“You are beautiful and intelligent and kind and interesting. Of course, he’s going to want you to be his wife.”
“Trust me. He won’t.” Because I’m going to ensure that he doesn’t.
“What are you planning to do?”
“I haven’t decided for sure.” But it’s going to be bad enough to get me out of spending any more time with him.
“Please don’t do anything that you’ll regret.”
“What I would regret is doing nothing and have him make an offer for me—one that Thane and Sin can’t refuse.” That would be devastating.
“You’re in good favor with Thane and Sin. You shouldn’t risk angering them.”
Have I read all of this wrong? Does Leith not care about me the way that I care about him?
“Do you want me to be married off to Maddock Hendry? Because if it makes no difference to you, I need to know now so I can move on with my life.”
Leith squeezes my hands and looks up, down, and up again. Stalling. And then his eyes are on mine. “I would sooner die than see you marry him or any other man.”
We’re getting somewhere now. Finally.
“My life was a happy one until my parents died. In a flash, the life that I had known was gone. I was so sad, Leith. And I know that I didn’t go about it the best way, but I found happiness again… with you. And then in another flash, that was taken away from me and I was left miserable again.”
“You haven’t been the only miserable one.”
“I’ve been incredibly unhappy the last four years, but I feel a shift happening—a change between us. And I won’t let that slip away because some man that I don’t know thinks he wants me as his wife. But I need you to tell me that you feel what’s happening between us and that I’m not imagining it. Because if you don’t feel the same, I might as well leave The Fellowship and marry him.”
“You’re not imagining anything. I feel things changing between us.”
Oh my God. What a relief.
He bre
athes in deeply and slowly exhales. “Through everything that has happened, happiness is the only thing that I’ve ever wanted for you. If I thought that Maddock Hendry could make you happier than I could, I would step aside. But I don’t think that he can. We aren’t done, Lorna. And we’re never going to be done. You and I are always going to come back to each other no matter what happens.”
Finally, he gives me something real.
It’s not I need you.
It’s not I love you.
It’s not I want you to be my wife.
But it’s enough. Enough to keep me holding on, hoping for more, and wondering where we go from here. “It’s been so long. I don’t know where we pick up.”
“We’ve seen that nothing good comes from our past, so maybe we don’t try to pick up with anything from that point. We aren’t the same people that we were four years ago. Is it all right to start fresh with who we’ve become?” Leith says.
I think a fresh start is a brilliant idea but as much as I want that, I don’t think that we can proceed without first having a very difficult conversation that neither of us really wants to have.
“As much as we’d like to pretend that the past didn’t happen, it needs to be brought to light once and for all so we can move beyond it.”
Leith groans. “I’m tired of the hurt that goes along with our past. And I know that you must be tired of it too.”
“I am, but we’re broaching the topic under different circumstances this time. This isn’t about rehashing the past and being hurt by it. It’s about discussing what went down so that it never happens again.”
“I’ll do whatever it takes to get it right this time.”
I’m not sure that he really wants to do this. Hell, I’m not even sure that I want to, but I feel that it’s necessary if we are to have a healthy relationship moving forward.
“Where do you want to start?”
He clears his throat. “The night of Logan and Emilia’s wedding. And I want to go first.”
I’m actually relieved that he wants to begin because I have no idea what to say. “Go.”
Leith gestures to the furniture in the courtyard. “Is it okay if we sit? I want to be able to look at you while we have this conversation.”
I nod instead of answering because I fear that my voice will fail me.
I sit beside Leith on the loveseat and we face each other. And I’m finally going to be able to explain what happened with Sin in the storage room.
“I told you that night that I wanted you to be mine. Only mine. But what I didn’t tell you was why.” He pauses and there’s a noticeable increase in his breathing, which causes mine to increase as well.
“What did you not tell me?” I whisper.
His thumbs stroke the tops of my hands. “I was in love with you.”
I was in love with you.
Was.
Does that mean that he loved me four years ago but doesn’t anymore?
“I wish I had known.”
“I was planning to tell you, but I needed to set things straight with Sin and Jamie first. I had scheduled a get-together with them, to come clean. I was going to tell them it was over, that you were mine, and they could never touch you again. But before that meeting happened, I found you in the storage room with Sin in a one-on-one. And it broke my heart because I thought that I was the only one you were seeing outside of the group.”
“You were the only one that I was seeing outside of the group.”
“I wasn’t the only one that night.”
Four years later and I can still hear the pain in his voice.
That night, that dumb, stupid night. I’d give anything if I could take it back. “That was the only time that ever happened. And I swear that I didn’t want to be with him. You were the only one that I wanted.”
“We had declared our feelings for each other, and then I found you with him not even twenty-four hours later. You can’t imagine how much that hurt me. I felt so betrayed.”
The thought of Leith feeling that way because of me makes me ill.
“I can’t begin to imagine what that must have felt like, and I’m so sorry that you saw us like that, but it wasn’t a walk in the park for me either. I didn’t want to be with him. I loved you too, Leith. I wanted to be with you. Only you.”
“You could have told him no.”
Yes, I suppose that does look like an easy option. But it wasn’t an option at the time.
“You make it sound so easy, as if people went around telling Sinclair Breckenridge no all of the time, but what you’re failing to remember is that Sin was different back then. He wasn’t the man that he is today. He was used to getting everything that he wanted. And he had already decided what he was going to get from me when he came into that storage room.”
“I’d give anything if I’d just told him that night what was happening between us. Things would have gone much differently,” he says.
Me too. Leith wouldn’t have cut off communication with me. He wouldn’t have spent the next three years breaking my heart by parading women in and out of his office for me to see. He wouldn’t have torn me to shreds by calling me a whore who was unfit to be the mother of his children. And we wouldn’t have spent the last four years apart.
“Our lives would be very different.” So much happier. I’m sure of it.
“Where do you think we’d be today if we hadn’t lost the last four years?”
That’s something that I think about a lot. “I’d like to think that I’d be your wife, and we’d have at least one baby. Probably two at this point.”
Leith chuckles. “If you had your way, you probably would have talked me into a third by now.”
He isn’t wrong. I’ve told him more than once that I want at least four children with no more than two years between them. But I’d be happier with more. I said four because I didn’t want to scare him.
“We’d probably be rocking our children to sleep right now instead of having a conversation about what could’ve been.” The world is missing out on our little ones. They should be here with us instead of not existing. And that makes me want to cry.
“I didn’t mean any of those horrible things that I said to Sin. I was lashing out because I was in pain, and that wasn’t fair to you. I was angry and jealous that another man was trying to come between us, but I was also terrified that you might want him too.”
“Noah will make a good husband for someone, just not me. I never wanted him. Even with all of the women coming and going in and out of your office, I still only wanted you.”
“Those women didn’t mean anything to me. I was using them as a filler for the emptiness I was feeling inside without you, but then I figured out that none of them could ever replace you. When they couldn’t make me happy, I used them to hurt you because I thought that would make me feel better.”
“It worked. I was in agony knowing what you were doing with those women behind your office door.”
“You didn’t choose to hurt me by being with Sin. I couldn’t see that then, but I see it now. Everything that I did to hurt you was my choice. And I’m sorry, Lorna. So fucking sorry. Can you ever forgive me?”
“Of course. Can you forgive me?”
“All is forgiven and forgotten,” Leith says.
“Forgotten?” How can that even be a possibility?
“The past is the past and it is forgotten.”
“I would love to forget, but I don’t think that I can.” I lower my face because I can’t look at his eyes. “I’m so ashamed of the things I’ve done.”
“You believe that you’re scarred and broken and that no one can love you the way you are, but what you’re failing to see is that this man wants you just as you are. I know everything that you’ve done and I don’t care.”
Leith places his fingers beneath my chin and forces me to look at him. “No more shame. No more punishing yourself because of the past. Abandon it and we’ll start fresh today. Right here and now. No more look
ing back.”
I want that—to abandon the past and all of the pain that goes along with it. “No more looking back.”
The clouds are parting, and the sun is shining on us for the first time in years. No more gloom. Fate is pulling us together again, and Leith is no longer out of my reach. He is here now, and he is my destiny. This beautiful man was made to be mine, and nothing can keep us apart.
Our new beginning starts now.
Chapter 5
Leith Duncan
Our trifecta table at Duncan’s is growing. It has become a quad and sometimes a quint since Mitch married Shaw and Kieran married Westlyn. Sin’s younger brother and the new Order leader are joining our group. But I don’t mind. I like both of them.
Kieran isn’t here tonight, so it’s just our original three plus Mitch.
“Lorna looked happy when she came back into the house last night. In fact, she looked very happy. Things must have gone well during your walk?” Sin says.
Jamie punches my upper arm. “Judging by the look on his face, I’d say that they did more than walk.”
He isn’t entirely wrong. I’m grinning like a fool—a fool in love. But he’s mistaken about Lorna and I doing anything more than walking.
I would have loved to have taken her right then and there. And I thought about it. Fuck, did I think about it. But I can’t take a risk like that with her. Too much is at stake.
“We didn’t do anything other than walk and discuss our relationship.”
“A civil conversation. Definitely not a shag, but for you and Lorna, that’s good progress.”
Mitch knows that Lorna and I have a rocky past, but we’ve never told him about the foursomes. We agreed to never share that secret with anyone, but Sin and Jamie broke that agreement when they decided to marry. Neither wanted to keep something like that from their wives. I was angry at first, but I see now that it was for the best. I understand because I wouldn’t want there to be any secrets between Lorna and me if we married.
“Talking with Lorna last night was great. But it was part of a fucking game of one step forward, two steps backward.” It’s like the universe is constantly working against Lorna and me, and I’m not able to get ahead.
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