“Untouchable?” I almost laugh. “You want to ruin their pride?”
“No, little bird, I want to ruin theirlife.”
There’s anger in his tone, that same chilling voice he had when talking to the man who stopped us just outside of town. “Why?”
“Because I can.”
“Because you can or because someone took that from you?” I guess. “Because Aiden isn’t the only one who knows what it feels like to lose everything?”
He inhales, drawing himself up. “Very sharp, little bird.”
“What happened?”
“That’s a long story.”
“Then tell me the beginning.”
He shifts his stance, drifting closer to the window so he can look outside before he tells me, “My father died when I was young, even younger than Aiden was when he lost his. I don’t really remember him.”
“He was killed?” I guess, but he shakes his head.
“No, nothing so intentional,” he replies. “One day he simply fell ill. And a few days later… It was only my mother and me for a long time after that.”
“She was good to you,” I say, able to tell by the way he mentions her. “You loved her.”
“I did,” he says. “She was…beautiful. Strong. And she loved me fiercely.” He smiles softly. “Because it was only her and me, she had to work a lot, had no choice but to leave me homewith mainly a stack of books to keep me company. She loved the classics, the old myths and fairy tales most of all. Whenever she got home, she would pick up wherever I had left off, and we would read together. So many times that I can still recite them from memory.”
I think about the way Cypress likes to read by the fire, how delighted he seems whenever he has Aiden and me there to listen.
“As I got older, she started to worry that I would need someone to look up to. That I needed a father to guide me. I told her I didn’t. She was more than enough, but she fretted over me, and when she met a wealthy and seemingly good man on the street one day, she thought perhaps he could be the one. That he could give us a better life, an easier one.”
My chest starts to hurt, having a feeling where this is going, and I wish I could reach into the past and change the direction.
“The day after the wedding, he started hitting her, and I tried so many times to tell someone. Tried to get someone to help us, but he was well connected, had enough money to think he owned us both.” Cypress sighs. “No one would do anything. So I did.”
“Cy, how…how old were you?”
“Fourteen.”
My eyes close as the picture of Aiden as a lonely child with his brown eyes and brown curls shifts to the image of Cypress as a lonely teenager. That dark hair and angular face and those startling blue eyes forced to watch someone hurt his loved one.
“I shot him,” he says simply. “With the gun he kept displayed on his desk. The same one he used to boast had belonged to some general. Used to say it could have won the war if only he’d been there to wield it.” He grins, eyes flashing when he looks back at me from his stance by the window. “It certainly won mine.”
“You killed him?”
“I did. And then my mother told me to run.” His shoulders fall slightly. “And I did that, too. I wish I’d… I sent her a letter once. I don’t know if she ever received it. But I wanted to tell her that I was all right. That I had Aiden. That I was still looking for—” He lets out a softoofas I collide into him, wrap my arms around his shoulders, and pull him to me so that I can kiss him as if that alone could grant him absolution.
Not that he needs it.
The man who saved the person who loved him, who stepped into that stable to save me, who took me in when I had no one and who had cared for me every day since—that man could never be condemned in my eyes.
He hums his familiar song, cupping my face as he kisses me back, looking at me again with such clear affection that I feel like I could sink into it forever, that I feel like I could tell him now that I love him, too, because I know that I do. Sinner or saint.
“Cy, I…” I start to say it, and I reallycouldtell him. Iwantto. But it feels wrong without Aiden here. “I want you to tell me how to bring him back. How do I help him?”
Cypress frowns, wrapping his arms around me and swaying gently. “Aiden struggles sometimes. To not focus so much on what comes next because of what lies behind him. He keeps trying to protect himself from it. To protect us in any way he can.”
“I know he does,” I say softly. “You’re both in this trouble because of me. He must blame me—”