Secrets At Crescent Point, page 21
“Talk with me.” He moved, and then he was at my side, sitting next to me. Heat rolled off of him. “Please.”
Despite my closed lids, I knew what his expression must be, what those eyes would do to me if I let them. Turning away, I pushed off the stool and walked to the furthest side of the room, putting space between us. Heart hammering, I could not let him pull me back.
“What’s done is done.” I sat on the velvet settee. Running my fingers over the ornately carved wood, I kept my gaze on the door. “There is no going back.”
“Raven,” Siyah said as he stood and crossed the floor. Kneeling in front of me, he lifted my chin with his index finger. “Look at me.”
“Don’t,” I said, my voice shaking. “You don’t get to do this to me. You don’t get to make me cry for you anymore.”
“You don’t think I ached for you? Do you know how many times I packed to go to you?”
“Why didn’t you?” I batted his hand away and made to stand, but he stilled me with his hands at my sides.
“Because I…” He shook his head, jaw tight. “I was careless with something so precious that I–I didn’t know how to make it right.”
“So you moved on. I get it,” I said, unable to stop the tears that his words drew from me. “I saw you last night and again this morning with her. You don’t have to make it any more clear to me.”
“Last night? No, Raven—”
“Don’t deny it.” I shifted, but he blocked me, his expression pleading.
“Please let me explain.”
Too close, he felt suddenly too near. I pushed his chest. “Let me go, Siyah.”
“No, don’t run this time.” He cupped my cheek with his palm, the heat and strength of it sent a trill of longing that pulled through my core. “You don’t understand.”
“I don’t want to understand.” I buried my face in my hands, exhausted. Overwhelmed by what was happening, by him, I didn’t even have the words anymore. “I don’t want to hear why everything you fought so hard to avoid makes sense with her.”
“There is no her, not for me.” Leaning back on his heels, he pulled my hands away. His face was stricken, his eyes dark with pain. “Nothing makes sense without you, Raven. Nothing.”
“What?” I held his gaze, my chest tight, breaths coming in hitches.
His gaze flitted from my eyes to my lips and back, and then he stood.
“But s–she is carrying…they ordered a bridal crown. How can you say—?”
“What are you talking about?” Siyah’s gaze searched mine, confused. “Last night I took her to her family, she was upset and this morning, she came to see me and I met her on the shore. I spoke with her about you…about why I cannot—”
“But she carries your child,” I blurted, my face flashing hot at his surprised gaze.
“Raven,” Siyah shook his head slowly, his words soft. “How could you think that of me? I have never been with Lenora.”
“But…” I blinked, unable to form words and swallowing against the grip of embarrassment pooling in my gut.
“Come with me,” he said quietly and extended his palm. “I need to show you something.”
Taking his hand, my legs felt like lead as I followed him out of the main room and into a back office. It resembled his home with dark leather and simple elegance. Chocolate brown walls held more photos of Noble. He flipped back a portion of the carpet revealing a floor safe. Spinning the knob, he opened it and pulled out a wooden box. Beautifully carved and polished to a glossy sheen, it was something he’d made in high school, back when he sought to learn wood working from my father. He stood and his hand shook as he held it out to me.
“Siyah…”
“Please take it.” His voice was a rasp. “I need you to know.”
The smooth box, cool in my fingers, felt light.
He leaned forward, pressed a kiss to my forehead and was gone, closing the office door behind him.
I sank to the leather seat, my throat tight. I opened it slowly, holding my breath, and then my lips parted with surprise. Nestled within the box sat letters; dozens of them. No envelopes, only folded papers bound with dark twine. I reached in and pulled one from the binding, letting it fall open. Siyah’s masculine script traced my name across the top. I took another one out, looking at the dates. Almost forty letters in all, going back five years to the day I left. Each one began the same way.
Comoara Mea…My Love. You will never read this, but I have to somehow tell you…
A tremor shook me and I could barely read his words through my tears. He wrote to me his heart. In the days after I left. How he fled Noble and tried to forget. Each letter a raw and unflinching confession of loss and regret, and the search for redemption. He wanted to be the man I’d always thought him to be. He wanted to deserve what he had even though it was lost.
With each one, Siyah reached across time and miles of distance with his bared soul. He’d found faith. He’d found forgiveness. He’d come home to live with purpose. And still, month after month, he sat and wrote of a hollow in his heart that continued with my absence.
For almost two hours, I read his words, my soul quaking within me. In all the years I’d been with him, Siyah had never spoken so plainly of his love. He’d never told me that he believed he was made to be by my side. That his heart beat only for me. And every letter ended with the same promise.
There is no other for me. I know it to my soul.
I stood, letting the letters slip to my feet, gasping for breath. Pulling open the door to his office, I searched frantically for him.
He looked up from the couch, stood with his hands balled at his sides, his jaw tight.
I took a halting step towards him, and then another. “S–Siyah…” my voice broke as my hands reached for him.
Closing the distance between us, he took me in his arms, crushing me to his chest with the fierceness and passion I remembered from so long ago.
“I should never have let you go that night.” His voice was hoarse with emotion. “I’m not letting go again.”
“No,” I murmured against his neck. “Don’t let go.”
“Look at me, Raven.”
I did, and he cradled my jaw with his palm tilting my face. He brushed the softest whisper of a kiss along the swell of my lips sending a flare of fire through me. My fingers knotted in his shirt, I pulled him closer, my every fiber straining for him. His other hand at my hip, he steadied me as I trembled.
Siyah kissed me then, with all the years of longing and hope and devotion that burned through him. He took my breath away and a gasp escaped my fevered lips. Everything fell away in that moment. All the doubt and hurt until there was nothing but him.
“Wait,” he said through gritted teeth and pulled away.
Confused, I shook my head, trying to keep him close. Hands at my shoulders, he urged me gently, and I opened my eyes, bleary with his kiss. “Don’t stop.”
He let out a nervous sigh and took in a deep breath. “Yes. I need to stop, before I cannot.”
“But…”
“In my letters, I promised to honor…if I ever had one more chance,” he said and caressed my collar bone with his thumb, his touch sending a shiver through me. “I meant it.”
“Siyah, I’ve missed you much,” I said, my body still heated from being so close to him. “Don’t push me away now.”
“I’m not, little bird,” he said and took a step back, his face a mask of longing and restraint. “I am doing this right.”
“What does that even mean?” I could not hide the exasperation in my voice and I pushed a wave of dark hair from my face. “What are you saying?”
“That I mean to win your heart, your trust.” He took my hand in his and kissed my knuckles. His lips, soft on my skin, sent a flutter through me again. “As a man, not a boy who doesn’t realize what a blessing you are.”
“I don’t know what to say…” I lost my voice, overcome with the intensity of his gaze.
“Say you’ll let me prove that I can be the man you deserve.”
“You will lose Noble,” I could barely speak. “All you’ve worked for…”
Shaking his head, he wrapped his strong arms around me and held me to his chest. His heart beat against my cheek.
“All I want is what is right in front of me,” he whispered, breath warm at my temple, his voice broke. “The council will have me or not on those terms.”
“But…”
“Shh,” he soothed, stroking my hair. “I meant what I wrote. There is no one else for me.”
Hope soared in my chest, and I clung to him, tears spilling onto his sweater. Somewhere deep down a sliver of worry pierced my heart.
Please, Lord, let this be real. I can’t take losing him again. I won’t survive it.
34
We sat entwined on a settee he’d pushed over to the window. Watching the show of lightning as it zig-zagged across the purple sky, Siyah held me warm and safe in his arms. My nerves calmed, and I nearly dozed to the rhythm of his heart against my cheek. With my hand on his injured shoulder, I felt the ridges of the gauze and tapes underneath his shirt and fought against the fear threatening to rise again.
“It’s not that bad,” Siyah intoned, shifting so that I faced him. “It’ll hardly need stiches.”
“I’ve heard that before,” I said and frowned because he’d said the same thing after the car crash that changed our lives. “I mean…”
“No, you’re right,” Siyah said, a rueful smile playing across his tired features. “It was secrets that did us in before and now we face the same danger.”
“Oh.” I leaned back, looked at him from the corner of the couch, worried. “Secrets.”
Siyah sat up and took my hand in his. “My father told me that on the night you left, you took…something.” He waited, holding my gaze, expectant.
I couldn’t look at him and with my eyes downcast, I nodded. “He is not wrong. I took them, the rubies.”
Siyah’s face registered surprise. “I don’t understand. If you needed money, we’d saved enough to leave—”
“The tickets were bought,” I interrupted, my stomach twisting in knots. “I didn’t need them for that.”
“Then what?”
I bit my lip, not wanting to talk about it, not wanting to spoil the wonderful moment we’d just had.
He reached out, tilted my chin up with his finger, and searched my face. “Tell me.”
Taking in a shaking breath I began. “Remember the night of the crash, when you called me from the sheriff’s station…”
****
Five Years Ago
Working in my uncle’s silversmith shop, I poured the refined, melted metal into the mold, turning the handle of the white-hot ladle with a gloved hand. The jangle of the wall phone startled me and I blew my bangs from my eyes, annoyed at the interruption. My uncle, away at dinner, let me use his shop if I answered calls and cared for customers in his absence. Sighing, I set the ladle on the brace, pulled off my glove, and grabbed the phone as I sat heavily on the wooden stool.
“Stavalos Silver,” I answered. The call’s static almost made me hang up.
“R–Raven.” Siyah’s shaken voice came over the receiver. “I need your help. I’m in the hospital.”
Startled, it took me a moment to register what he was saying. “What?”
“I don’t have a long time, Raven,” Siyah said, his voice urgent. “There was a crash. I think the sheriff is going to arrest me.”
“I’ll get your father,” I said, jumping to my feet and reaching to turn the heating element off. “We’ll be right over.”
“No, he is not on Noble. He took Tomèo to the middle states yesterday.”
With Siyah absent from me so often lately, I hadn’t known. With his mother gone and both Deakon and Tomèo out of state, I panicked. There was no one to call. “What do I do?”
“I–I think I need a lawyer,” Siyah whispered. “They are telling me I need to speak to a detective.”
“No, don’t speak with anyone,” I said, gathering my bag. I tangled with the phone’s cord and gritted my teeth with frustration. “I’ll be there.”
“OK.” Siyah sounded defeated, tired. “I just need to sit down.”
Grabbing my uncle’s keys, I took his small station wagon down the back roads of Noble. I dumped the car in the back lot of the hospital and rushed into the emergency room, scanning frantically for Siyah. I saw the sheriff, Palmer, speaking with a man I knew from the village. He lived in one of the large hill houses. His daughter, Amy, stood next to him, her forehead bandaged. She looked shaken and pale. Her father and the sheriff argued behind the glassed-in break room. I could only hear muffled snippets, but what I did make out sent the hair on my arms spiking.
…that gypsy kid…his fault…Amy was not driving…
He pointed out to where I stood, and I followed his gesture to the curtained examination area. Through the split in the material, I made out a form on the bed and walked over, my hands shaking. Nurses milled between the patient areas, an orderly bumped into me, a tray in his gloved hands, all of it blurred as I neared the curtain. Pulling it back, I gasped.
Siyah sat in dirty, ripped clothes, his hair wet, face bleeding from the mouth. His feet dangled from the bed, one hand holding his middle, the other handcuffed to the railing. He looked up and his face blanched.
“You came,” he rasped, his voice cracking. “I hoped…”
“Of course I came,” I rushed to him. “What? Why is no one helping you?”
Holding the curve of his jaw in my palms, I turned his head, and then winced at the bleeding rip in his lip, the bruise under his eye. When I tried to pull his hand from his stomach, he grimaced, going pale. A bandage stretched across his abdomen, the gauze going pink.
“It is nothing, just a tear.”
“From what?” I asked, eyes wide.
“Glass, I think, from the car, when I climbed out.”
I grabbed his hand, the handcuff clinking against the metal rail. “Siyah…what are we going to do?”
“I think they will blame me. We were drinking and she crashed,” he said and his eyes held fear. “Her family is rich, powerful. Her father is an attorney.”
“They are blaming you,” I said, my anger welling as I peered through the slit in the curtain at the sheriff and Amy’s father. He was nodding in Siyah’s direction. “Right now, I heard them. Her father is telling the sheriff you were driving.”
“I was not.”
“But you were there,” I whipped back, realizing that it was Amy he went to while I waited at cafés and under trees carved with our initials. I shook my head, pushing down the hurt and betrayal. Now was not the time. “What can I do?”
“She hit a tree on lighthouse road.” He caught the look on my face and hesitated. “We were on our way back from a party.”
“Just you two?”
He nodded, and I gritted my teeth. The turnout on the way to the lighthouse was a favorite place for the village kids to go and be together without prying adult eyes.
“I need a lawyer,” Siyah said. “Sheriff Palmer said he will not let me go until I give a statement.”
“You are eighteen,” I muttered, suddenly understanding. Amy was my age, a minor. She would have her father present for questioning, Siyah would not. It wouldn’t take a lot to shift the blame in his direction, not by a trial attorney. I leaned against the wall, my heart racing. Palmer’s voice pulled my attention back to the room, and I watched him stalk down the hall. Turning to Siyah, I bit my lip, thinking. “I’ll be back.”
“Wait…”
I hurried after Palmer, my mouth dry, as I followed him down the back hall out to the doors of the ambulance bay. I poked my head out, didn’t see him. Confused, I almost missed the flare of the match in the shadows next to the building.
“You want something?” Palmer’s gravelly voice floated out to me.
“I, uh, I wanted to talk to you about Siyah,” I squeaked, stepping into the darkness next to him. “I heard what Amy’s father was telling you and it’s…she’s lying.”
He didn’t answer, his form still, and I wondered if he’d heard me. After a moment, he took a puff; the glow of his cigarette cast his craggy face in half shadow.
“Doesn’t really matter to me how I write the report,” he said.
“What?” I squinted at him, unable to make out his features. “Report?”
“The accident report.” He stepped towards me, the stench of alcohol and smoke on his breath. “I retire in a month.”
“Should I talk to the deputy—?”
His hacking laugh cut me off and he shook his head. “No, girl.”
I stared at him, lost. “What do you want?”
“Your family does those daggers, right? The jewelry?” He eyed me, his gaze brushing my body. I stifled a shudder.
“Yes, we make them.”
“Well, I tell you what,” he said and took another pull on his cigarette. “My nest egg could sure use some padding.”
“Nest egg?”
“Yeah, some shiny, untraceable stuffing.” He lifted his hand, the skin cracked and dry, and flicked my beaded earring. “An argument could be made that the girl was driving instead of your friend.” He smiled then, his tobacco stained teeth dark against his chapped lips.
“How long?” I managed. “How long will you give me to find…padding?”
“I have to write this accident up before morning.” He pushed past me, hiking his gun belt as he did. “You have until dawn…”
****
A round of thunder pulled me back from my recollection and I looked up to see Siyah’s tortured expression.
“That is why Palmer released me in the morning?”
I nodded, the tears hot on my face as I felt the shame and guilt of what I’d done come flooding back. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
