Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)

He glanced at her once, and then looked away. “At first, I thought only to get myself to water. As if I could become clean again by proximity. And so I found a dinghy and rowed out into the ocean.” He sighed. “Funny how I felt so trapped, with nothing about me.”


“Accidents happen at sea.” Kate took another step toward him, reached out her hand. But he sent her another quelling look, and her fingers curled up. “You were upset. You can’t blame yourself.”

“Don’t run from it, Kate.” His voice was dark, quiet. It echoed in the room. “You want me to trust you? You want to understand what I mean when I talk of darkness? Then listen to this. I had a pistol with me. And I held it to my temple.”

She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t even swallow the gasp of horror that escaped her.

“I was this close to pulling the trigger—and it wasn’t hope or comfort or help from anyone else that drew me back. It was simply that when faced with the stark choice between life and death, I discovered that I wanted to live. Truly live, not just stumble through life from point to point, waiting to be plunged into darkness again. So don’t you dare feel sorry for me. I survived.”

She grappled for words. “I don’t think you’re weak because you had a lapse—”

His eyes blazed. “No. I’m not. I’m here because I made myself strong. Because I knew if I intended to go on, I had to stop feeling as if I was a burden to everyone around me. If you want to know who I am, if you want to understand why I do what I do, then you need to comprehend that some part of me has never left that boat. And for me, the choice of whether to live the life I want is as simple as believing that I can do this all, without ever being a burden on anyone again.”

“It’s not pity when I offer to make you comfortable. It’s not an apology if I hurt for you when you tell me you’ve suffered. You aren’t weak if you let me care for you.”

“No,” he said in a clipped tone. “You’re quite right. It’s none of those things. But it is also not something I allow myself.”

And on those words he turned away. It wounded her, that dismissal. Strength, her husband could discuss. But for all that he’d promised to be worthy of her trust, he’d never once made a covenant to trust Kate in return.

She’d run up against the rock wall of this need of his—this need to be strong, no matter how much it hurt her—often enough that she knew how immovable it was. All she could do was bruise herself slamming against it, and her spirit ached enough as it was. And now she’d managed to uncover the why of it. The cold, hard truth that made him who he was. She knew enough to know that he wouldn’t change.

It would have been too simple to say she was hurt by the knowledge. “Hurt” sounded like a mere pain in her mind, a onetime twinge that flared up and would ebb away. What she felt was not so sharp as pain, but much more pervasive. Every inch of her skin ached to lean close to him, to pull his head toward her and smooth his brow. Every fiber of her being wanted to give him comfort, to tell him that he was strong, that he didn’t need to do this to himself. It wasn’t hurt she felt. It was worse. It was all the hopes that she’d nourished without evidence all these years turning to disappointment inside her.

She stepped forward until she stood over him. Ever since he returned, he’d been towering over her. Now, trapped on the bed as he was, she loomed over him. The darkness of her shadow, cast in the afternoon light, crossed his face as she stepped forward.

She wanted to yell at him. She wanted to grab him by the shoulders. If he hadn’t broken his leg, she might even have done it.

It wouldn’t have done any good.

“I don’t mean to hurt you,” he said.

No. He never had. “Of course not,” she replied as calmly as she could manage. “You just need to…to protect yourself first. I do understand, Ned.”

She just wished she didn’t. She shut her eyes to stave off the salt prickle of tears. She wished she were impractical enough to threaten to run away. But this was what marriage meant: that even though she’d entered into another pretense with him, she would stay. She would learn to stop asking to become a part of his life. She would pretend that his refusal to trust her didn’t hurt. It was another disguise, one as cloying as the one he’d penetrated. And one a thousand times more painful. Because in this masquerade, she had to pretend that his distance didn’t hurt her. Even though it would, every single day.

He reached out and touched her, even now giving her strength that he would not accept in return.

She closed her eyes and let the feeling of loss run through her. His fingers were still on her elbow, strong and warm and steady. That steadiness ached now, and that gentle circling of his fingers against her seemed to sting some deep place inside of her.

Before the hurt could build up, she took her arm gently from his grasp and left.