Part 33 (1/2)
No other soul on the planet would have skewered her so completely. There was a peace in being so known and understood, even if that meant being excoriated.
”You were right,” she whispered. ”About all of it. I was-am-a coward.”
He turned to her swiftly. And then he gave a short, humorless laugh.
”Before you do any more self-flagellation, Olivia-not all of which is unjustified-the truth of the matter was that I had to leave Pennyroyal Green. With or without you. And I only realized that recently. Perhaps in the end . . . perhaps in the end it was all for the best.”
His voice was quiet, too, and almost drifting. That's when it occurred to her that he'd said what he wanted to say to her, and perhaps he, too, was feeling empty and cleansed.
But who were they now?
And were they finally-as he'd said-finished?
How could anything that took them away from each other be all for the best?
But she knew, too, that once Lyon had spoken to his father about her, Isaiah Redmond would have made good on his threat to ruthlessly clip Lyon's wings: stripping him of his allowance, bullying him into a marriage Isaiah considered appropriate, threatening him with the loss of everything he loved unless Lyon did precisely what Isaiah wanted him to do.
It would have been intolerable for Lyon and intolerable to witness.
”Yes. I see what you mean, Lyon. I do believe you are right about that, too. You had no choice.”
To her surprise, he laughed, a genuine laugh. It tapered into a pleased sigh.
”Oh, Liv. I could almost hear your brain rifling about to arrive at that conclusion. I never did have to explain anything to you. It was always such a luxury . . . You have no idea. Being with you . . . it was like . . . like slipping out of tight shoes. Only infinitely more thrilling, of course.”
She smiled. G.o.d, she knew what he meant. Before him and since he'd gone away, she'd either contracted or ever-so-subtly contorted her very being to accommodate nearly everybody else.
She was only ever wholly herself with him.
It was a bittersweet realization.
”And you weren't completely wrong about me being . . . my father's creation,” he added. His voice was thicker now.
”I'm seldom completely wrong,” she murmured. ”And your father managed to create a few magnificent things. You, for instance.”
Somehow she could feel he was smiling. Just something about a change in the air. As if his mood was her personal weather.
He sighed companionably, and then unfolded his long body and languorously stretched out beside her, his hands clasped behind his head to pillow it.
He did all of this slowly, as if to emphasize how very tall, how very strong, how very dangerously male he was.
That few inches of s.p.a.ce between them almost pulsed. And yet it might as well have been the whole of the Atlantic Ocean.
”Lyon?” Sobbing had sc.r.a.ped her voice raw.
”Mmm?”
”I'm so, so very sorry I hurt you.”
Words she had longed to say for so long.
He said nothing.
She held her breath.
For so long the peace they'd created began to gather into tension again, began to ring in her ears.
Forgive me, she silently begged. I need your absolution.
”I thought you despised me.” He'd been gathering his thoughts, clearly.
”I never-”
”And you know . . . I always thought I would die before I hurt you. I would certainly want to kill anyone else who'd dared to hurt you. And yet at the same time I wanted to hurt you. I wanted you to care that I was gone.”
He stopped talking.
His breath seemed held.
”Oh G.o.d. Lyon. I cared.”
Cracked, whispered words. Yet they managed to contain the desolation of the years without him, and her whole heart.
He sighed, and tipped over on his side, propped his head on his hand, and stared down at her. His face was all shadows and moonlight.
”I'm sorry, too,” he whispered.
And that was done, then.
They let his words hover softly in the air for a while.
”I would have found a way for us, Olivia.”
”I know. I don't think I ever truly doubted you. It's just . . . you were older than I was. More experienced. Always a little quicker. Sometimes . . . it was too much. Sometimes I felt . . . caught up in something, a little pushed. I just wasn't ready to make that kind of decision that night.”
He took this in with a long breath.
And he sighed. ”I was so certain of the rightness of it, I suppose. Of my own rightness. I was so very arrogant. Young and invincible and all that.”
She smiled. ”What did we know about love?”
And there it was. The word. Somehow it was easier to say now that they were utterly empty of pretense or defense. She'd lost her fear of it because it was simply truth, something that just was, like the sand below them and the sky above them.
”Love is like a loaded musket,” he mused. ”And yet it's available to everyone. It's always . . .” He mimed thrusting out a gun. ”'Here you are! Try not to kill yourself or others with it.' They oughtn't allow young people near it.”
But they were still speaking of love as if it were separate from them, as if it were part of the scenery, a reminiscence, not a thing that belonged to them now.
She laughed. ”Ah, but the species would never perpetuate if the young weren't idiots.”
He parted his mouth as if he meant to say something. And then stopped, and gave his head a little shake. ”The things you say, Olivia. I just . . .” He gave his head another little shake.