Page 30 of Torin and His Oath (Torin and the Princess #2)

LEXI

C ooper came back while I was sitting in the living room in the nest I had made in the chair.

I heard him speak with Andrew and then he went into the kitchen and moved around in there.

I waited for him to come say hi, but then he didn’t and it was awkward because it dawned on me that he wasn’t speaking to me.

I finally got up and went down the hall. He was opening the silverware drawer, looking for something. I said, “Hey.”

“Hey.” He didn’t turn around.

I said, “Can we talk?”

He turned around, brow up, a kind of irritated expression on his face. “Sure, babe, bout what?”

“Feeling better, still weak, but yeah, feeling better.”

“Good, glad to hear it.” He looked around, anywhere but at me.

“You’re mad at me.”

He exhaled. “The security guard is coming in an hour, we ought to talk about what you need, what your security looks like so I can give him orders.”

“Yes, we definitely should, but maybe we can talk about what’s bothering you?”

“What’s bothering me is that you had an affair.”

“But I didn’t, I?—”

“Of course you did, I can see it in the way you’re acting.”

“I didn’t, I didn’t do anything with, um…” I gulped, because it slammed into me that I was lying, because I had kissed him. I had been living with him, touching him, laughing with him, and it had meant a lot.

He said, “You can’t even look me in the eyes and say it. You can’t finish the sentence — you had a freaking affair with that guy. I told you. I told you this was happening. He took advantage of you while you were kidnapped. How do we even know he didn’t arrange for you to be kidnapped?”

“Of course not, that’s not what’s happening. Torin had nothing to do with it.”

“Well, it still worked out very well for him.”

“I didn’t sleep with him! I wouldn’t do that to you.”

He huffed. “This isn’t real, you know. You barely know him and he’s not coming back, he said he wasn’t.

So whatever is going on, it’s not a real relationship.

Not like ours.” He wagged his finger between us.

“We’ve been together for years, we live together, and we’re a team. At least I thought we were.”

I sank into a chair. “I don’t think we’ve been a team for a long time, Cooper. You’re trying to get a business off the ground. I’m puttering around my ancestral home. We just… we have been in a doom loop for a while.”

“That’s not true. Look, I’m sorry I didn’t ask you to marry me, I didn’t realize, I know I’m dumb as hell. I get that, I didn’t know. I didn’t understand what was happening with the dinner at Fall’s Landing, I didn’t get it?—”

I said, “Jen told you? That sucks.”

“Yeah, she told me, I feel like a fool.”

“Yeah, well, not as foolish as me. It’s embarrassing.”

“I’m so sorry, Lexi. Can we figure this out? I’ll be better. I’ll pay more attention. We can get married. I mean… we can start planning what that would look like, right? In the future…”

I nodded, more along with his words, than their meaning. Then his voice trailed off.

I said, “I don’t think so, Coop, I think we both know that this isn’t working.”

He shook his head. “Don’t tell me what I think, I already said I was in the wrong.

I see that — I did a lot of thinking out on the porch.

I see how alone you’ve been and how much I ignored you, focusing on my own shit.

I see it, I’m…” He shook his head sadly.

“Can you forgive me? We can try again. I’ll be better. Let’s talk about getting married.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think we should keep going.”

“But…”

I frowned. “And honestly Cooper, why would you want to marry me now?”

I waited, and he didn’t answer.

“Because you didn’t want to marry me, until you thought you had lost me.”

“That’s not exactly what…”

“From my position that’s exactly what it looks like. You had no intention of asking me, didn’t even consider it. Never crossed your mind, even when I was saying, ‘Oh I thought the fancy dinner you planned was important.’ Even then you didn’t think of it, that’s how far out of your mind it was.”

He said, “I admit it, I’m dumb.”

“If Jen hadn’t mentioned that, you know what you’d be thinking right now?”

He groaned. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

“You’d be pissed. You wouldn’t be talking about wanting to marry me, you’d be yelling at me about being unfaithful and?—”

“Were you?”

“I already answered that, no. And it’s not about Torin at all, not really, just me and you — we aren’t working. I don’t want you to ask me to marry you just because Jen told you that I expected you to ask. You know?”

He shook his head. “If I had come back from my meetings and Torin had never been here and I had taken you out and asked you to marry me would you have said yes?”

I nodded. “Yeah, but that seems like forever ago and a lot has happened since then. Things that clarified my mind on us. It doesn’t have anything to do with Torin, not really.”

“But Torin was here. I bet if Torin hadn’t been here and Jen had nudged me and I had asked you… I bet you would have said, yes.”

“Maybe, but we can’t turn back time, and seriously, Coop, you had just gotten bad news. Even if Jen had nudged you, you might not have done it.”

“What do you mean?”

“That this whole talk of marriage is a reaction to Torin.”

He said, “He’s not coming back, you know that right?

He told me to ‘protect you’ and said he wasn’t coming back.

He said he wouldn’t bother us again. He seemed pissed and like he was gone for good.

I can’t believe you’re throwing everything away for a guy you barely know who you’ll probably never see again. ”

“I keep saying it’s not really about Torin at all. I was thinking this, months ago. I was just trying to make it better, to ignore it, but we’re not really that great together?—”

“God damn it, Lexi, I love you! You don’t even sound like yourself. This is what I was saying, he’s gotten all up in your head and you’re letting yourself be swayed by him. The minute I saw you serving him ice cream at dinner, I knew I was losing you. I just can’t figure out why. What can I do?”

“Nothing, not really, I get that we both want different things.”

“We don’t though, we both want to live here, to make a life here. He’s not going to do that with you… I’m here, we love each other, come on, Lexi.”

“I think I made up my mind.”

He just breathed, then he said, “Dammit.”

He looked really, really sad.

He chewed his lip. “I think you need to talk to Jen, just think this through, let’s not get rash.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m not myself, literally. A week ago I was Lexi, now I’m Alexandria, some kind of princess and there’s a security guard on my porch.”

“Not yet. There will be…” He cocked his head. “You believe him?”

“I don’t know, it doesn’t make sense, but it’s the only thing that does make sense.”

He said, “When he said that the little girl had been stolen away I swear to God a chill went down my spine.”

“Mine too.”

He said, “And you never told Torin about that dream?”

“No, he had no idea.”

He leaned against the counter, and nodded, as if our conversation was done. “Can we… Can we just say we are taking a break, like we’re not together, we’re figuring it out? I would like a chance to win you back, I think I can do it. I think if you give me a chance to try to win you over…”

I narrowed my eyes. “I’m thinking that it’s not really a good idea to keep living together.”

He nodded. “So, you’ve just had a kidnapping and you think I’m going to just move out and leave you here alone? This doesn’t… I’m not down with it.”

I said, “Yeah, I know, it’s…”

“Just leaving to go over to the feed store I had to ask Andrew to come over to watch over you, I just, you know… I love you. I can’t walk away and forget that you’ve got medieval asswipes trying to get at you.”

“What do you propose? You’ve hired security for me — thank you by the way.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You want to live in the back-shack or something?”

He looked everywhere but at me, then nodded. “Yeah, I’ll do that.” He joked, “I mean, I’ll have to air it out after Torin was living there, but yeah, I’ll set up down there. Until we know that you’re safe.”

I nodded. “Okay, yeah, I agree, I would feel a lot safer. Thank you.”

He nodded sadly and looked down at his feet. His face screwed up and his nose reddened and then he grimaced, beginning to cry. I hadn’t known him to cry before, it was shocking and I faltered for a moment.

“Aw, Cooper, I’m sorry.”

He struggled to recollect himself. “I know, I didn’t mean to, it’s just been a lot of crap ass failures this week.”

“Not really failures, maybe just setbacks. You’re not surprised by my ending us, right? Not really. ”

“I’m not surprised, no. Doesn’t mean I accept it.”

He grabbed a kitchen towel from the drawer and wiped his face brusquely. He tossed it down. “I’m going to move into the back-shack, need anything to eat? Hungry?” He was back to not looking at me.

“No thanks, but I am tired, I probably need to lie down.”

I sat in the living room, dozing on and off, with Dude curled up by my feet, listening to Cooper traipse up and down the stairs to the bedroom.

The sounds of moving made me feel melancholy and a little depressed.

Maybe I wasn’t entirely sure if I was making the right decision.

I had upended my life, why … just because I had time traveled?

Because a man named Torin had been charming?

It had been two days and already the memory of being in the past was growing hazy. I wondered if it was even true. Had I been in th e sixteenth century? In Scotland, truly?

The food, the inn, the tastes and smells, the flickering glow of the candle flames, and peat burning in a hearth, it all seemed like a dream.

Like the dream I had been having of the little girl in the house, being taken away.

It was not a distinct memory. When memories were carved into our minds in familiar places around known faces, they are crisp and fresh, but these were hazy, as if the backgrounds were out of focus.