A Kiss For Midwinter (Brothers Sinister #1.5)(22)

She looked up into his eyes. “I can’t be angry with you,” she snarled. “You haven’t done anything wrong, and if I were angry with you, it would be irrational.”

“Not irrational. Just not very fair.”

“If I were angry, it would mean that I still hurt, that I still cared about what happened to me. It would mean that I hadn’t put it all behind me. And I have.”

Her eyes dropped and she looked at her fists, as if just realizing that she had been hitting him. Her hands flexed. Her face turned up to his, stricken, as she recalled what she had just said. “I have,” she repeated. “I don’t think about it all.”

He couldn’t say anything.

“Do you know what I hate most about your eyes?” Her voice had fallen to a whisper, and he couldn’t make himself look away. “When I look into them,” she said, “I see my own reflection in them. Mirroring back all the things—” She choked.

Her skin turned white. That meant the capillaries in her skin were constricting. He could almost have guessed her pulse from the labor of her breath. She’d be feeling cold and light-headed right about now.

“Breathe deeply,” he suggested.

She didn’t. Instead, she doubled over, as if she were the one who had been struck. She held her stomach.

“Oh, God,” she whispered. “I haven’t put it behind me.”

He stepped closer to her. She made a sharp, keening sound, wind whistling between her teeth. She wrapped her arms around herself. He wanted to touch her, to lay a hand on her shoulder. But just as he was on the verge of reaching out, she straightened and looked in his eyes.

“I am angry.” She said those words carefully, trying them on as she might put on a hat in a shop. She must have found the fit to be superior, because she gave a little nod. “I’m furious. Absolutely furious. I could kill Tom Paggett, if he were here.”

Tom Paggett. Jonas made a mental note of the name. He was already wondering what to do about the man, when Lydia burst into tears.

It was absolutely the last thing he’d expected. She didn’t cry daintily. She stood in place, fumbling in her skirts for a handkerchief. And finally, Jonas let himself move. He took those final steps toward her and did what he’d longed to do for so many months.

He put his arms around her. And to his utmost relief, she not only let him, she curled her hands around him and pulled him closer.

For that moment, he could let himself glory in the feel of her—the sweet softness of her, the feel of her warmth against his body. He could simply hold her and pray.

He could almost have cried alongside her.

Those gut-wrenching sobs—even if he’d cared nothing at all for her, they’d have tugged at his heartstrings.

“Shh,” he whispered. “Shh. I’m sorry.”

He knew she didn’t care who he was—that she was too anguished in that moment to do anything but weep, and take what little comfort he could give. He was nothing more than a shoulder to her.

Still, he was glad that it was his arms enfolding her, that his lapels took the brunt of her grief. He was the one who stood there as she wept, the one who felt when those shudders began to subside. Each minute that passed seemed precious. When the sobs faded to sniffles, he wiped her eyes with his handkerchief.

“I don’t know why you’re doing this,” she sniffed as he dabbed at her cheeks. “You’re being kind, but you always make fun of me.”

He ran his hand down her shoulder. “I never make fun of you.”

“You say such horrid things about me.”

“I never say horrid things about you,” he contradicted. “I tell you exactly what I think of you, and you never believe me.”

“You’re sarcastic and contradictory.”

He sighed and breathed in the smell of her, sweet and uncomplicated. “Well, yes. That, I must admit to. But half the things I say to you in sarcasm, Lydia, I really mean. I just can’t bear to leave them unsaid.”

“But if you don’t think badly of me…”

He didn’t answer. He wanted her to lift her head at this moment. He wanted her to look him in the eyes and realize that he loved her. He wanted her to love him back. For now, he’d settle for this—for Lydia in his arms, Lydia finally talking to him like a man rather than a monster to be scorned. For once, the size of that dreadful Christmas tree seemed welcome, affording them this small amount of privacy. He could hold her, and nobody would see.

“You told me,” she said accusingly into his chest, “that I was welcome in your bed.”

He looked up at the top of the tree. For a brief moment, he contemplated giving her a polite response. But… No use pretending he was anyone other than who he said. “You are,” he said quietly. “Any man who says otherwise is probably not being truthful. And my faults usually run to too much truth, rather than too little.”

She sighed; he could feel her chest move against his. Lovely feeling, that.

“I only mind a little bit,” he said. “As I said before, I wonder sometimes how you can have a kind word for any man at all. You’ve singled me out. I’d rather be special in some way than no way at all.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said.

“I know.”

She hid her face against his shoulder. He’d never noticed before how much a breath could say. It seemed more than the transportation of air to lungs. The act of breathing with another person—of accepting silence together, of simply living in tune with the rhythm of someone else’s existence—was deeply intimate. They said more to each other with quiet respiration than they’d managed in sixteen months of bickering.