Mirror of My Soul (40 page)

stayed just as close to her.

Marguerite stood, looking out at the movement of the water, the blue sky, a

formation of pelicans soaring above.

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“Your adopted parents were good to you.” She spoke as succinctly as if they’d been having an interactive conversation all along, though Tyler saw her lick her dry lips, swallow.

“Yes, Mistress. I love them.”

“That doesn’t matter. Children will love a monster if we think it’s family. We love against everything that says don’t love.” She stared at the water moving around her ankles. “Did you know I’ve spent years donating my grandparents’ inheritance to different charities, not in spite of, but for love of my family? I wanted to help pay their karmic debt, to hope they find healing and peace together sooner, become who they were…before. Even though I can’t bear to look at a photo of them.”

Her gaze turned to him briefly. “But your adopted parents were good to you. I’m glad. I was worried.”

She nodded, as if settling something with herself, then began to unbutton the front of the dress clumsily with her right hand. She stopped, impatience in her gaze. Glanced toward Brendan. “I want this off.”

The tone, so close to that of the imperious Mistress they knew she could be, startled both men. Brendan’s gaze shifted to Tyler. “With your permission…?”

She looked at Tyler. “Will you trust me?”

He studied her quiet expression, the weak sway of her undernourished body. “To a point,” he said at last. “My heart wants to trust you, but my fear for you…”

Breathing a sigh through his nose, he gave Brendan a curt nod. “She can’t lift the left arm.”

Brendan moved before her, unbuttoned each button carefully. She was completely naked under it except for the clavicle brace on her upper body and she lifted her chin as the dress fluttered back, showing that she was feeling the breeze on her skin, perhaps even enjoying it. Brendan eased her arm out of the sling so he could guide the dress off her entirely, as she’d demanded. He was as slow and patient as Tyler could wish, but Tyler saw the press of Marguerite’s lips, the tremor run through her. It made him wonder if he should have given her more pain medication this morning, since he’d been too shook up from last night to give her more than the bare minimum.

“My deepest apologies, Mistress,” Brendan said. When he began to guide her arm back into the sling, she shook her head and moved forward, taking a step sideways to move around him. When she stumbled unsteadily, both men moved in, their hands

brushing as they made sure she didn’t fall. But she proceeded forward into the water.

Wearing only the necklace and the brace, she took one step deeper, then another.

The men stayed right with her. Marguerite’s eyes remained on the horizon, but she felt them around her, their concern and caring a bulwark on either side. She was absently surprised that Brendan hadn’t backed away when Tyler had moved closer, but both were apparently determined to keep her safe. Her mind rolled the thought around, but was curiously blank, peaceful. The cool touch of the water on her skin soothed as she felt it slide over everything she was. Blood, muscle, sinew, scars, beliefs… Marie 203

Joey W. Hill

Peninski. Marguerite Perruquet. A trusting child, a scarred teenager and now a woman who had lived an interesting life, to say the least. As her mind moved over the memories Brendan had stirred, they brought her forward to more recent images.

Chloe’s laughter, the children playing in her park. Tyler’s amber eyes, his easy touch. Brendan’s beauty. His devotion. The tea combination that Mr. Reynolds would bring in next. The embrace of the sky as she leaped out into the vastness of it. The impatiens she had decided to plant by the kitchen door in that bare shady spot that needed it, that was now only a mud puddle. A life without fear. A life filled with love and friendship. And suddenly, she found she wasn’t quite so tired anymore. He was gone. And she was free. Perhaps always could have been free, the moment she decided she was.

She’d reached her waist now. Tyler’s palpable apprehension was like a warm

blanket that wrapped around her, making her feel safe, loved. She turned and reached out her uninjured hand. When he took it, she let her knees go and dropped below the water’s surface, immersing herself, but keeping tight hold of his hand. Knowing that he would not have permitted it otherwise, but she didn’t reach out to him only because of that. As she let the silent Gulf waters embrace her, she remembered.

Remembered her and David in that cocoon of warmth, the hold of their mother,

perhaps
the
Mother, when all things were possible and perfect. Tyler’s strong fingers reminded her that he’d filled the aching emptiness the loss of her brother had left her with for twenty long years.

His hand tightened on hers and she let him draw her toward him and up. She

found the strength to push off the sand with her own feet. Surging out of the water into sunlight and the fire of his eyes, she felt it move in her, tears and happiness both.

Tyler caught her as she pressed against him, soaking what remained dry of his

shirt. The water lapped at the hips of his jeans. She turned her head, her eyes reaching out to Brendan, bringing him to them. The man took her taped hand, his fingers holding hers gently as she pressed her face into Tyler’s neck, breathed him in. Renewal. Rebirth.

When there was love like this they were possible, no matter what the darkness.

Quiet determination rose in her to plant those impatiens, nurse the blooms and bring them to life. Giving them the chance to be as vibrant as they could, in whatever amount of time the world would give them. The fear she’d always felt in Tyler’s arms was simply gone. Komal was right. Of all the things to fear in the world, the fear of being loved and loving back was the most absurd.

“Master, please forgive me,” she murmured. “Forgive me for not being strong

enough.”

Tyler pressed his forehead to hers, a shuddering going through those lean muscles as he closed his eyes. “You tore my heart out, Marguerite.”

“I know.” She kissed his cheekbone, his closed eyes. “Thank you for loving me

beyond your heart. Can you forgive me?”

“If you promise never to leave me. If you agree to marry me.”

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She lifted her head then, felt joy flood her. “That’s blackmail,” she said, her voice not quite steady. “And you’re as persistent as a terrier.”

“Angel.”

“Irritant.”

He smiled then, caressed her wet hair. “Say yes, or I’ll dunk you and hold you under until you agree.”

“Brendan will protect me from your bullying.”

Brendan chuckled, dared to run a hand down her back. “I think you should agree, Mistress. He looks determined to have his way.”

That surge was the last of her strength. As her feet came back to rest on the sand, her knees buckled. It was Tyler who lifted her this time. Striding out of the water, he laid her down in the hammock again. “Brendan, will you go in and find Sarah, ask her for some towels?”

The man nodded and left them alone. Lying in the hammock, Marguerite could not take her gaze from Tyler’s face. With her vision clear for the first time in days, she saw the deep lines of worry, the drawn tension of his mouth. The fierce resolve in him had been held in place past endurance so that the strain showed in every line. She remembered Sarah’s words, how he sat on the landing, avoiding sleep so the vision of a dancer whose toes had given out on her, strangled her into a willful death, would not haunt him in dreams.

She’d asked for forgiveness, but only now did it hit her, the magnitude of the request. She could feel again, see everything clearly, the water’s cleansing having loosened the guts and blood gumming up the dam to her emotions.

The things she had said and done on that building and since came back to her, not just from her own mind, but because she saw them buried in his expression where they could fester into a cancer if left untended.

She struggled up, despite her weakness. When he would have stopped her, she

caught both his hands in her right one and dropped out of the hammock on her knees in the soft sand, bowing her head despite the pain that shuddered through her shoulder.

“Please forgive me, Master.” She repeated it, lifted her gaze to meet his. He’d squatted down and was holding her upper arms, apparently thinking she needed his assistance.

“I can never forgive myself for saying and doing such things to you as I’ve done. I know how much it must have hurt you.”

Her voice, low and broken, did something to Tyler. A wall shattered, behind which he’d stored his anger and worry, his gut wrenching, bowel-freezing fear. Because he heard her understanding of his pain, her knowledge of what she’d done, suddenly he didn’t know if he wanted to kill her out of fury, keep her chained to him until he didn’t feel the fury anymore, which might be by the time they were both well over a hundred, or hold her until every part of her was imprinted on him forever.

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She sat on her knees, weak from physical and emotional stress and hunger, a

woman willing to sacrifice life and more to save an innocent. A woman willing to sacrifice love. As he sat on his heels there long moments with her in her position of supplication before him, that thought repeated itself in his mind and love won out.

For he remembered the message she’d left for him. Chloe had insisted on calling and telling him as soon as they’d let her have a phone at the hospital. Sometimes it had been the only thing he’d been able to hold on to this past week, to believe somewhere deep inside her Marguerite was still there, wanting to be with him.

Marguerite had wanted him. Wanted to live with him. Which meant going onto

that building had been even more difficult for her than most, because she’d just newly discovered the desire to live for love and she was about to go do something she’d been certain would obliterate that dream. He had been stupid to lose faith for even a moment. He thanked God that when he had, some other strength he could not name had kept him going.

All of that flooded in, intertwining with his harsher feelings, rational and irrational thought warring in an impossible conflict, until love touched him with insistent hands, recalling one other memory that made the conflict meaningless.

He knelt, lifting her chin. “Marguerite, when you jumped, do you remember

anything that went right that should have gone all wrong?”

“You mean, other than us surviving that drop?” Her tone was dry, though her voice still shook with her emotions.

“It’s important. Remember for me, if it’s not too painful, angel.”

Marguerite thought back to the dive off the building, the shock of the dead wind freefall, her father’s abrupt release when she had expected more tenacity. The chute coming free…

“The whole jump was a miracle.” She shook her head. “My best hope was to get

Natalie to the ground in a way she had half a chance of surviving. BASE jumping, building jumping…” she amended the term for his understanding, “is very dangerous and very precise. Her additional weight, my father’s interference, even when I released the chute. I should have been dead. Natalie might have lived, but likely with crippling injury. I didn’t expect to make it.”

“I know.” And the anger and pain were in his voice. She reached up to him, aching, but he closed his hand on her wrist, preventing her from touching him.

“Did Chloe tell you?”

“She did. I understand. I do, angel. It’s just…it’s going to take me some time. Just let it go for now.”

So she subsided, but it was difficult, for she needed his arms around her. “Why did you ask me that?”

“Because.” He released her to run both hands over his face, a gesture so weary and un-Tyler-like that it almost frightened her. Then she squelched the fear. She would not 206

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be Nina. She realized now she relied on his strength, had become dependent on it in a frighteningly short time, but she would never let him think he could not rely on hers and he was due for some leaning. Some serious leaning.

It was a humbling thought, to realize the weight of the world could not break him, but the loss of her could have. The impact of that struck her hard yet it told her what he needed. What she needed to give him. But first she needed to be sure of her direction.

“Have I lost your love, Tyler?” She spoke the words softly, a gift she’d never asked for, never thought she wanted. Now her life seemed to hinge on it. There was an abyss moving inside her, frozen belief her only light. Her voice trembled like a sputtering flame, unable to let him finish whatever it was he was trying to find out because she needed to know right then.

Shock coursed over his features, but she continued on.

“You’ve cared for me, yes,” she managed carefully. “As I’d expect you to do for me, or Leila, or Sarah or Violet, any woman you care about in similar circumstances. I just need to know.” Her voice broke. “Have I hurt you past bearing?”

He pulled her into his arms and lay back, pulling her onto him so he held her firmly against his full length, her body wrapped in his arms, her head beneath his chin.

“When you jumped from that building, I died,” he said simply, his voice a whisper in her ear. “I was so certain that I was going to lose you that I haven’t known how to feel or think since, beyond the basic steps of caring for you. There’s this rage in me, this anger. Every time I touch you, I want to hold you so tightly that I’ll see pain in your face so it matches what’s raging inside of me. So I’m afraid to let it show. I don’t know what to do with it. I love you so much, Marguerite. There are no words for this kind of love.

It’s not pretty or romantic, it’s as visceral as sex or breathing, something undeniable, necessary to go on living, for anything else to matter.

“I…God…” His hands clutched her. She felt it ripping at him, the memories of one love lost mingling with one almost lost. It was going to tear his mind in two, break a man who believed he was supposed to be unbreakable.