Page 52 of Finding the One (River Rain #7)

“Put me down!” I shouted, wriggling in his hold as he started walking through the woods.

“Stop moving or you’ll hurt yourself more.”

“Dair, put me down this instant,” I demanded.

“Hot bath. Some ibuprofen. And a stiff whisky will do ye,” he decreed.

What he didn’t do was put me down.

I went limp in his arms and asked the tree canopy. “Why? Why did you forsake me?”

“Ye need to give up those heels, lassie. They’re fucking up your back.”

That earned him the glare to end all glares.

“I am never giving up my heels. I’ll be a hundred and five and toddling around on my heels.”

“Then we best stock up on ibuprofen.” He paused. “And whisky.”

“Or, say, you don’t chase me across the English countryside and tackle me to the forest floor,” I suggested sarcastically.

His arms gave me a slight squeeze and he muttered, “Aye. That probably didnae help.”

“You think?”

“Hear this, love,” he said, still walking, “ye can try to run around the world to get away from me. I let you slip through my fingers once. That’s not going to happen again. I’ll grab hold any way I can.” His eyes came down to me. “So dinnae run next time.”

“You’re the worst ,” I declared.

“Aye,” he said softly. “But you love me.”

I looked away.

“She loves me,” he whispered.

He was intolerable .

Not long later, the house started to come into view, and if I had my bearings correct, I’d been all of maybe twenty feet from seeing it.

Ugh.

“You wearing a poncho?” Dair asked like he’d just noticed it.

“It’s a Max Mara raincoat with poncho-like detailing,” I corrected.

His grin returned. “My Blake in a poncho.”

“It isn’t a poncho . It’s a Max Mara raincoat with poncho detailing ,” I repeated.

“It’s a poncho, love.”

Argh!

Treverton fully formed, and with it came the sight of Christine outside, wearing a thin puffer coat and, for some housekeeper reason, wringing a dishtowel.

When she caught sight of us, she rushed forward.

“Oh my goodness, is she hurt?”

There went my English aristocrat street cred.

“She took a tumble,” Dair told her.

“That’s a nice way of saying, he tackled me,” I added.

Christine’s eyes grew wide.

Dair chimed in again. “She needs a hot bath, with salts if ye got them, a generous tumbler of whisky and a bottle of ibuprofen,” Dair said.

“I’ll start with the bath,” she said and scurried away.

“Now you’ve worried Christine,” I accused.

“It wasn’t me who took off running.”

“No, it was you who chased me.”

He sighed and we were inside.

The warmth against my chill skin felt prickly.

I did need a hot bath.

Seriously.

Carefully, he crouched while tilting me, and let my legs go, but when I was on my feet, he held me steady with his arm around me.

“I can stand, Dair.”

He let me go only to slip the raincoat over my head (which would make one assume it was a poncho, when it was not ).

Raising my arms hurt my back again.

Even so…

“I can take off my own stupid coat, Dair,” I snapped.

Before I could even begin to back away, he picked me up again.

It twinged my back.

Not good.

But again…

Even so.

“Dair, put me down,” I demanded.

He stopped in the hall and looked at me.

“Do you love me?”

Oh no.

A direct question.

I looked over his shoulder.

“Blake,”—he gave me a squeeze—“are ye in love with me?”

I turned on him as best I could in my position. “I don’t know how, since you’re insufferable, but I am.”

Oh my God.

Did I just dip down two inches because his shoulders sagged in relief?

I didn’t have time to assess if I was correct.

He bent his head and kissed me.

He smelled like leaves and rain and Dair, and tasted like heaven, so I kissed him back.

Who could blame me?

When he broke it, he said, “Ye can share what ye want. Ye can hold what ye like. I ken who my Blake is. I love her, she loves me. From here on, that’s all that matters.”

Oh God.

I was not going to cry.

Regrettably, my eyes did not take direction.

So I shoved my face in Dair’s neck and wept all the way to the bathroom.

I was lying on my back on a heating pad on my bed.

Dair was lying beside me, on his side, up on a forearm, his thumbs moving over his phone screen.

I’d had my bath, my whisky, my pain pills, and yes, Dair had undressed me and set me in the tub himself. He’d then gone to get the other stuff from Christine, along with my book, and made me stay in there for a full hour, coming in occasionally to add more hot water so it would never go cool.

And yes.

The man hadn’t even let me reach to the faucets of a bathtub to warm up my own bath.

Therefore, by the time he decided I was done, my back was feeling a whole lot better.

Even though I insisted this was the case, he toweled me down and brought me panties and pajamas, helped me into both, and then he took me to the heating pad.

As in, carried me.

Where I was now.

I heard the whoosh of him sending the text, he twisted, put his phone on the nightstand, and came back to me.

“Talked Mum down from disowning me, though to do it, I had to promise we’d be at her dinner table for Sunday supper.”

My brows went up. “Sunday supper?”

“Aye. We’ll fly up Saturday night from Dublin.”

Um…

“Dublin?”

“I’m calling a match there Saturday. You’re coming with me.”

My eyes narrowed. “I am?”

“Ye are, lass,” he stated blithely. “We’ll fly out Friday from Bristol. Fly to Edinburgh Saturday night. Have dinner with Mum and Davi Sunday. And if ye need to be here, we’ll load up Sorcha and drive down Monday.”

“Have it all planned, do you?” I asked.

“Well…aye,” he answered like my question indicated I had a screw loose. “In the meantime, you’re resting that back.”

“It’s just a tweak, Dair. I’m fine,” I dismissed it.

In answer, his hand came to my face.

And I lay very still under his touch as he tenderly swept a thumb under my eye, only for his hand to move to my side where he glided his knuckles gently over my ribs.

“My woman’s not sleeping,” he said softly, and my breath hitched. “Only days since she left me, I can see she’s lost weight. She runs from me, I tackle her after she wrenched her back. And I made her run from me. Twice. Not doing such a good job at looking after you, my love.”

My love .

Now totally finding it hard to breathe.

“Dair,” I whispered.

“What I said earlier, about making a promise to Mum I’d sort this, that wasn’t what drove me back to you. I told myself I was giving you time. But I hurt ye and I didnae ken how to fix it. I was going to come to ye as soon as I figured out how to fix it.”

He was going to come back to me.

I started to turn to him, and he scowled.

“Stay still,” he rumbled.

“Honestly, I feel better,” I assured.

“You need to rest it and you’ll be resting it,” he commanded.

Whatever.

I settled back and started, “Dair?—”

He interrupted me.

“Though, feel it necessary to note, I might have had a clue in how to fix it if you’d answered one of my texts or phone calls.”

Oh dear.

“I only say that because it needs to be said,” he went on.

“This shite is not going to happen to us again. I take full responsibility for fucking that up, and I earned your response. I’ll never fuck up that huge again, but I can’t promise never to fuck up, and you can’t either.

But if we get into it, I need you not to shut me out so we can work it out. ”

This was needed advice for us to have a healthy relationship, so I nodded.

He again didn’t hide his relief from me.

God, I knew honesty and candor was hard on some occasions, but even if it was, it worked a whole lot better than the other way around.

“When we were on the train, and you asked me if you needed to make it official, ye didnae mean spending more time in the UK. You meant being with me.”

How he’d misinterpreted that at the time hurt in a way I didn’t want to remember it, because I’d already sensed he was pulling away, but since he brought it up, I couldn’t stop myself from sucking in both my lips.

Not that he would, considering he was only maybe twelve inches away, but Dair didn’t miss it.

“Christ, I fucked this,” he muttered.

“We’re working it out,” I reminded him.

“Aye, but just to say, we’re flying to Dublin, then to Edinburgh, and then collecting my dog and coming back here if ye need to be here. Because I dinnae mistake ye now, lassie. And we’re making it official.”

“I think, before I agree, I should know precisely what that means,” I said carefully.

“What you meant it to mean at the time. We’re doing this. I’m with you, you’re with me. Always.”

Oh boy.

“Do you think we’re going too fast?”

“Did you drive away from me with tears in your eyes and hurt I put in your heart and spend five days not sleeping or eating?”

I did.

“I ate.” That wasn’t a lie. I just didn’t eat very much.

“Babe,” he growled.

“No one saw me,” I blurted.

His head ticked. “Sorry?”

“No one saw me. That’s why I sold the pictures. All my life, I felt like I’d gone unseen.”

“Baby.” Now he was whispering.

I sucked it up and carried on.

“After I narrowly missed living a wretched life with a man like Chad, the man my mother wanted for me, I took a long, hard look at myself. How I behaved. How I treated people. What I’d done.

Who I was becoming. And I realized that was why I did it.

I didn’t care if the attention was negative. I just wanted people to see me.”

“Ye dinnae have to explain this to me.”

“I know. But sharing it with you is like explaining it to myself. And I do need to do that.”

He nodded, and his hand was still at my ribs, so his thumb started stroking.

And at his nod, his touch, it struck me, he was listening.

Really listening.

And he saw me.

Before our blip last weekend, he was the first one in my life who really saw me .

And that strike was like a bolt of lightning, because I felt safe here with Dair, telling him these things, unlike how I felt my whole life, including when he laid me out in his living room.

But I was safe now.

With him.

And now that we were beyond that blip, with all he said while I was lying on those wet leaves, I knew I’d always be safe.