Page 38 of Rejected
“Would you stop dying long enough to look up at me?” she demanded.
He blinked, trying to draw in enough air.
“I am all right,” she repeated, as if talking to a child. “But another man has possibly been killed at the hand of my brother.”
“I don’t care about another man,” Laurie gasped, his voice raw, cut to threads. “I don’t care about anything other than you being alive and not covered in blood…”
“We both know that’s not true,” Jo said quietly, more so to interrupt whatever he was going to say next than for any other reason. His eyes would not leave her face, not even to blink.
The look of pure anguish on his face would give her nightmares for the rest of her life.
“Are you hurt?” he asked tightly.
“No, you fool. I was trying to make sure that Justin had not killed that poor sod.” He frowned at her use of the vulgar word. He had never frowned before when she’d used it—and she often did. “What is wrong with you?”
“I told you, I got dizzy.”
“Why?”
Why was he suddenly getting dizzy around her all the time? What was wrong with the foolish boy? Laurie pressed his lips together, but his indifferent, frozen exterior slipped for just a second, and pure, primal terror was underneath.
“Why were you screaming?” Jo asked.
“Because I was afraid that I—” he looked away, making a sort of choking sound.
“What, Laurie, what?”
“I would lose you,” Laurie replied, rather explosively.
“Well, you won’t,” Jo replied drily. Suddenly, she was so exhausted, she wanted to sit down on the grass as well. “You are the one that left, anyway.”
“I had—” he interrupted himself, casting a quick glance over her. “You are trembling. Come on, let me wipe that blood off you. I can’t stand to look at it.
He was trembling and it was destroying her. After all these months of silence, of freezing her out, he was standing here, about to fall apart in front of her.
“I don’t need your help,” she said quietly, and he nodded, a muscle ticking in his jaw.
“What will happen to Justin now?” she asked.
“It depends on whether the other man dies or not,” Laurie replied. “If he does, Vidal shall be hanged.”
At the sound of her brother’s new name, ‘Vidal’, a name that had so long belonged to her father, Jo shuddered. She stumbled and Laurie’s arm shot out to steady her. He stopped short of touching her. His sleeves were rolled up, and thick veins stood out on his lean muscles, and she felt something deep and bottomless awaken within her. Something like hunger.
Do not think of that kiss by the water.
Do not think of that kiss by the water.
Do not think—
“I am sorry,” he said. “I know you love your brother.”
“I do love him,” Jo replied. “But I am not sure I like him so much. Haven’t done in a while. He has changed so much since he fell in with those London aristocrats.”
Laurie chuckled drily and stood to his feet. “You are the only one who is brave enough to say what we all have been thinking.” He looked down the hill, towards the church behind which her father was buried. “And I worry it is only going to go downhill for him now. There goes his last chance of redeeming himself.”
“You mean my father?” Jo scoffed in the most unladylike manner she possibly could. “Justin spent his whole life until now trying to gain his approval, but it was always a hopeless case, from the very beginning. Papa barely even saw him. He may have died two days ago, but he left us years ago. He and Mama both died the day Beth did. We have been raising ourselves since then.”
He shuddered next to her, and dipped his chin to her shoulder, like he did when they were children. It was such a familiar, simple gesture; she did not know why it sent a knife to her chest. A stab of longing for something that was over—and could never be retrieved—hit her straight through the heart.
