Off Kilter (29 page)

If he was surprised by the opening, he didn’t let on. His expression was calm, relaxed, but his gaze was focused entirely on hers.

“I always wanted one of those,” Roan said. “Was thankful later on, when I briefly had a crush on a girl who rode religiously every afternoon, that I’d given horses a pass.”

Her lips curved briefly. “We had help for that sort of thing. I could just go brush him and love him and enjoy his company. I didn’t have siblings, so I would tell him all of my darkest secrets and sorrows.”

“You had dark secrets and sorrows as a little girl?”

It didn’t surprise her that he’d picked up on that. She nodded. “My deepest, darkest secret at the tender age of five was that I longed for a mother. That I didn’t have one was also my sorrow.”

“Did you ever know your mother?”

She shook her head. “Not in any real sense. She died when I was a toddler. I had plenty of pictures, and stories from my father and the household help, but no real memories.”

“Did your father want to remarry?”

She shook her head. “He was devastated, losing her. She had more than a few health problems, but she contracted pneumonia early in the spring the year I turned three, and she was too weak and …” She let her gaze drop to their joined fingers, and he began rubbing his thumb lightly along her index finger. “My father wasn’t really the same after that, at least that was what the staff whispered about all the time. I had no real sense of him any other way. And he was happy enough around me, or certainly tried to be. I loved him very much and felt very much loved in return. I had everything I wanted and a very comfortable life, but I wanted a mommy. I think that hurt him … in a lot of ways.”

“How old did you say you were when he passed away? Six?”

“Six and a half. Car accident. He swerved and ran off the road. When I was older, and understood more about pain and loss, I wondered, every once in a while, if he’d swerved intentionally.”

“Would he have willingly left you behind like that?”

“I don’t know that he thought of it that way. His despair was overwhelming, at least that’s what I learned later, when I asked questions.”

“He didn’t get help? From people he could pay to listen?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

He continued stroking her fingers, letting her find her own way into the story. The real story.

“Then he passed, and I didn’t have a mother or a father. I had George. Our estate and financial manager. My father trusted him above all others, and having chased away most of his closer friends with his grief, he’d appointed George as my guardian. I’m sure he thought George would do right by me. At least, I choose to think that. My father might have been lost in his own grief, and I suppose that was selfish of him, but I don’t think he ever meant to harm me.”

“So, before the age of seven, you’d lost both parents. And before you turned eighteen, you’d lost everything else. I can’t imagine feeling so let down by every single important person in my life. I know people might not think it’s fair, or right, but I can’t believe you weren’t just a little mad at both your mum and your dad for leaving you to fend for yourself.”

“It’s more understandable for someone in your position,” she said, “you were willfully abandoned.”

“Didn’t some part of you, rational or not, feel the same way? Weren’t you angry at your father, who you do have direct memories of, and most certainly George?”

She nodded. “I know I told you it was my anger at George, and what he’d done, that eventually introduced me into the world that would become my entire career.”

“What led you from embezzlement and fraud to the kinds of stories you went on to tell?”

“Opportunity. I felt very much like a crusader when George was sentenced to a healthy stay in prison. Initially I went after corporate fraud, embezzlement on a much bigger scale, thinking if going after George helped me, one individual, tackling an entire company would help a whole bunch of people. I was fortunate because contacts came my way due to the glare of media, and I took full advantage. I was back in London following up a story when that terrorist bomb blew up a busload of people in Madrid. I’m not entirely sure why I dropped everything and went, but I did. That was when I truly thought I’d found my mission, my purpose. There couldn’t be anything more important than taking on injustices being perpetrated on such a grossly horrifying scale. One story led to another, and I went to places I’d never dreamed I’d go. I was so taken with how oppressed people were so otherwise hopeful, and how their country was often such a place of beauty …” She trailed off, and finally lifted a shoulder. “It was an evolution, but I truly felt like I had a very specific calling. The more successful I was at it, the more determined I became, and the higher and deeper I reached.”

“You’ve done some remarkable work, shed light on things that were important for people to know about.”

She nodded, accepting his compliment. “I feel that I did. Or I wouldn’t have kept going, especially when …” She trailed off again, finding it difficult to finish. “But I didn’t tell you that part to toot my own horn. I’m telling you about my beginning, and my childhood, because there is a link from one to the other that isn’t limited to my being betrayed as a kid, then growing up to crusade against other injustices. That’s the obvious linear path. The less obvious one is that I also chose to remain quite singular and removed from everything and everyone around me. On the one hand, I was interacting with the entire world, a range of people that would boggle anyone’s mind, so—contrary to popular belief,” she added, with a surprising, but brief
smile, “I did have people skills. But they were skills designed to elicit information without really giving any of my own, or any part of myself really. I told the stories of hundreds, if not thousands of people … but no one got to know my story.”

“I’m more aware of that than you might know.” He tightened, just slightly, his hold on her hand. “I told you I’d looked you up, read about you, read some of your articles, and I’ve looked through a large number of your photos. As I became more interested in you, I dug deeper, wanting to know more. And you’re quite right, even in this information age, and despite the fact that you’ve won multiple awards, there is next to nothing to be found anywhere about you personally.”

“Which is exactly my point. It wasn’t that I was hiding myself, or choosing extreme privacy, though both of those things were often necessary in my line of work. There wasn’t any ‘me’ to be exposed. I
was
my work. I didn’t form relationships beyond the fleeting ones I needed to get the job done, and what contacts I did maintain were only for their potential use in future work. The only person who could claim to know me was Kira. Even then, I was a horrible friend to her. I didn’t know how to be a friend. I mean, I tried, but whereas she was a natural at fostering that type of bond and keeping it strong, I sucked at it. It’s only due to her perseverance that we have any relationship at all. And that all goes back to the pony.”

His brows furrowed in confusion, and she realized that somewhere in the past five minutes, she’d let her guard down. She’d been talking to him, much the same way she encouraged people to talk to her. She didn’t know if it was the strength of his hand in hers, or the comfort of his steady regard. But at some point, the dread had started to dissipate.

“Other than Kira, and maybe some of the house staff, the only meaningful relationship I developed was with a damn pony. And all he needed from me was the occasional carrot and apple that I sneaked out of the kitchen.” She looked at Roan more directly, almost challenging him and his easy comfort and support. “So what I’m saying is that I don’t know the first thing
about fostering a relationship, about doing all the things people are supposed to do so that other people care about them, and continue to care. I ducked it. I told myself I couldn’t get involved because of my job, but the truth of it is, a lot of the avoidance was based on fear.”

“You’d lost everything you cared about. Except maybe the pony. So who can fault you?”

“I can. I mean, I chose my profession. I chose a path that would only challenge me in the ways I was willing to be challenged.”

“Which happens to be ways that require the kind of mental strength and fortitude that very few, if any of us, have. You’re remarkable for what you can do, and what you have done. Dinnae beat yourself up for the things you didn’t excel in.”

“Basic human relations? That’s a pretty big thing.”

“You just got done telling me you were amazing at human relations. So what if it wasn’t the long-term kind? Even if you’d wanted to, how on earth would you have kept up?”

“Other journalists did. Hell, most of them had families, wives, friends.”

“And none of them was you.”

“You mean none of them were hiding. None of them were feeling sorry for themselves and their lot in life, and glossing self-pity over with a veneer of public works and a side of humility.”

“You did what you did to get through your life, your path. And did a lot of good for others along the way. As I said, dinnae beat yourself up for that.”

“It’s just …” She sighed.
Here it is. The moment of reckoning.
“Maybe if I had, maybe if I’d worked on that part of me sooner, even acknowledged I needed to work on that part of me, I wouldn’t be in the place I am now. Which is no longer being able to do the one thing I know how to do.”

“And why is that, luv?” he asked, gently and with such sincere concern.

When she tried to tug her hand away, purely on protective
instinct, he tightened his hold. Then he slowly righted himself, never letting go, and scooted until he was facing her. He straddled her crossed legs with his own, then tugged her forward, until she was in the circle of his legs and body. He didn’t otherwise hold her, other than their joined hands, but he did lower his mouth next to her ear when she dipped her head and pressed it against his collar bone.

“Ye were tender and gentle and kind all along, weren’t ye?” he murmured. “You’re exactly the kind of person who fosters relationships and nurtures friendships. You want that, just like we all do. Only you were taught, very young, that you can lose the things most precious to ye. So ye stopped reaching, stopped nurturing. No one will fault ye for that, Tessa. No one wants to be hurt like that again. And again.”

“I was a child then,” she said haltingly. “I grew up. I should have gotten over it. I did, briefly maybe, with Kira … but—”

“But then the rest of your world was ripped out from under ye. It’s a testament to the tenderness and the heart in ye that you chose the path ye did. Helping others. The kind of others who are experiencing the worst sort of suffering there is. Who does that, Tessa, if no’ someone with a big heart? Ye’ve let yerself love every single person you’ve written about, even if ye didn’t know it. It’s why you wrote about them with such passion, such honesty, and such truth that the rest of us, reading your words and seeing your pictures, couldn’t help but be moved. Ye simply wouldn’t—or couldn’t—let them love ye back.”

He cupped her cheek, but let her continue to press her forehead to his shoulder, keeping her face averted. She felt him kiss the top of her head, a sweet, tender kiss, pressed there once, then again. “But that doesnae mean you’re not worth love. I know this. Because I’ve been falling in love with you from the first time I saw you smile. Maybe even before that, but that was the first moment when I knew the real power of you.” He kissed her hair again, then nudged until he could press another to her temple. “So, if yer heart is all done feeling the pain of others,” he said, so quietly it reached only her ears, “if it can’t
take any more, that’s okay. It’s done its job, and done it well. Now it’s time for your story.”

She felt something inside her crack then, and it fissured so rapidly she couldn’t contain it, couldn’t keep it from shattering into a million tiny pieces. The sob, when it came, almost choked the breath from her. She thought she might pass out from it if she didn’t release it.

So, she did.

When the wracking sobs came, and came, in terrifying, gulping, breath-stealing waves, he held her, and rocked her … and did absolutely nothing to stop them.

And she let him. God help her, she let him.

R
oan felt like he was holding on for dear life. Her dear life.

How she had become so dear to him, so quickly, he had no idea. But he’d been telling the truth when he said he was falling in love with her. She tugged at him so hard, in places no one had ever come close to reaching.

Maybe it was because her future was unclear, and his was not, that he felt such a sense of urgency with her. As if they had to figure things out between them quickly, or else life would interfere, and tear them apart before they knew enough to make the big decisions they were going to have to make.

But right then, the only thing that was important was holding on.

He didn’t know much—hell, anything—about how to handle that kind of situation. But he did know her. Or he was beginning to. He didn’t think she’d want sympathy, or coddling.

Her keening made his brain shut down and he closed his eyes, then squeezed them shut and gathered her closer. The sounds she was making were so raw, so … wrenching, it was like someone was tearing strips off her. It had to be cathartic, he told himself, praying like hell he was right. He doubted she had done that before, maybe ever. Certainly no one cried like that, grieved like that, fell to pieces like that, so profoundly … more than once.

So he held on, and would keep holding on, for however long
it took for her to work all the way through it, and get every bit of it out. He could only hope the tears would cleanse, heal, help … and not drag her to a place she couldn’t crawl out of. No, no that wasn’t her. She’d been fighting that fight for a very long time. And she was losing, but she’d tried to find a way—the right way—to stay in it. She wouldn’t let grief get the best of her.

She’d told him yesterday that she’d finally figured out what she was going to do. He hoped with everything he had, even if it meant leaving Kinloch, leaving him and never looking back, that whatever she’d found to walk toward was going to take her away from her past. Away from anything that could cause her so much pain ever again.