“His coat has been singed, but overall he’s fine. We rode fast,” Grimm said quickly.
“I thought I’d lost you,” Jillian repeated. Gazing into his eyes, she was struck by the sudden and terrible understanding that although he’d burst from the flames, miraculously whole, her words had never been truer. She had lost him. She had no idea how or why, but his glittering gaze was teeming with distance and sorrow. With goodbye.
“No,” she shouted. “No. I won’t let you go. You are not leaving me!”
Grimm dropped his gaze to the ground.
“No,” she insisted. “Look at me.”
His gaze was dark. “I have to go, lass. I will not bring destruction to this place again.”
“What makes you think this fire is about you?” she demanded, battling her every instinct that told her the fire had indeed been about him. She didn’t know why, but she knew it was true. “Oh! You are so arrogant,” she pressed on bravely, determined to convince him that the truth was not the truth. She would use every weapon, fair or unfair, to keep him.
“Jillian.” He blew out a breath of frustration and reached for her.
She beat at him with her fists. “No! Don’t touch me, don’t hold me, not if it means you’re going to say goodbye!”
“I must, lass. I’ve tried to tell you—Christ, I tried to tell myself! I have nothing to offer you. You doona understand; it can never be. No matter how much I might wish to, I can’t offer you the kind of life you deserve. Things like this fire happen to me all the time, Jillian. It’s not safe for anyone to be around me. They hunt me!”
“Who hunts you?” she wailed as her world crumbled around her.
He made an angry gesture. “I can’t explain, lass. You’ll simply have to take my word on this. I’m not a normal man. Could a normal man have survived that?” He flung his arm toward the blaze.
“Then what are you?” she shouted. “Why don’t you just tell me?”
He shook his head and closed his eyes. After a long pause, he opened them. His eyes were burning, incandescent, and Jillian gasped as a fleeting memory surfaced. It was the memory of a fifteen-year-old who’d watched this man battle the McKane. Watching as he’d seemed to grow larger, broader, stronger with every drop of blood that was shed. Watching his eyes burn like banked coals, listening to his chilling laughter, wondering how any man could slay so many yet remain unharmed.
“What are you?” she repeated in a whisper, begging him for comfort. Begging him to be nothing more than a man.
“The warrior who has always—” He closed his eyes. Loved you. But he couldn’t offer her those words, because he couldn’t follow up on what they promised. “Adored you, Jillian St. Clair. A man who isn’t quite a man, who knows he can never have you.” He drew a shuddering breath. “You must marry Quinn. Marry him and free me. Doona marry Ramsay—he’s not good enough for you. But you must let me go, because I cannot suffer your death on my hands, and that’s all that could ever come of you and me being together.” He met her gaze, wordlessly beseeching her not to make his leaving any harder than it already was.
Jillian stiffened. If the man was going to leave her, she was going to make certain it hurt like hell. She narrowed her eyes, shooting him a wordless challenge to be brave, to fight for their love. He averted his face.
“Thank you for these days and nights, lass. Thank you for giving me the best memories of my life. But say goodbye, Jillian. Let me go. Take the splendor and wonder that we’ve shared and let me go.”
Her tears started then. He had already made up his mind, had already begun putting distance between them. “Just tell me, Grimm,” she begged. “It can’t be so bad. Whatever it is, we can deal with it together.”
“I’m an animal, Jillian. You doona know me!”
“I know you’re the most honorable man I’ve ever met! I don’t care what our life would be like. I would live any kind of life, so long as I lived it with you,” she hissed.
As Grimm backed away slowly, she watched the life disappear from his eyes, leaving his gaze wintry and hollow. She felt the moment she lost him; something inside her emptied completely, leaving a void she suspected she might die from. “No!”
He backed away. Occam followed, nickering gently.
“You said you adored me! If you truly cared for me, you would fight to stay by my side!”
He winced. “I care about you too much to hurt you.”