Page 114 of Steel & Surrender

Brìghde’s stomach tightened. Heat crept up her neck. Saints preserve her—he was doing this here.

“I should have told ye about Alistair from the start. About what he wanted.” His jaw tightened. “I didn’t. That was a mistake.”

This comment drew confused looks from the surrounding crowd, yet Greig’s gaze didn’t waver.

Brìghde’s fingers curled into her skirts. A part of her wanted to stop him, to drag him outside before he said another word. But she couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.

He stepped closer. “I swear, none of it was a game to me.”

Her breath hitched. She searched his face for mockery, for calculation; for anything that would prove this was another mistake. She found none.

“Ye gave me yer time,” he went on. “Yer strength. Ye stood beside me when I was half a man and taught me how to stand whole again.”

Her chest tightened painfully. She remembered Ben More. The climb. The way he had looked at her at the summit. She’d wanted to stay up there with him, forever.

“And somewhere along the way” —his voice roughened— “Ye started to matter greatly to me.”

Her pulse stumbled.

The chapel seemed to shrink around them, the watching eyes pressing closer, the air growing thin.

“I’ve tried to move on with my life,” he went on, quieter now. “To let ye go.” A flicker of fear tightened her chest at this admission before he added, “But I can’t.”

Her lips parted, yet no sound came.

“I am not who I was before I met ye, Brìghde.” His throat worked as he spoke. “And I’ve no wish to be.”

Her vision blurred.

Damn him for saying the very things she had tried to convince herself were lies … for sounding so sincere.

Slowly, he opened his hand. Silver gleamed against his palm, and her breath caught.

“This is for ye,” he murmured. “A knot. No beginning. No end.”

She stared at it, her heart thudding wildly now.

It was beautiful.

“It’s the only way I know how to show ye what I can’t seem to say right,” he said, his voice roughening further.

Her fingers trembled as she lifted her hand—almost without meaning to—and took it.

His skin brushed hers, and heat shot up her arm. Her throat tightened.

“But I’ll say it anyway.” Her gaze snapped back to his face. There was no shield there now. No arrogance. No distance. Just Greig. “I love ye.”

The words echoed through the chapel. Gasps followed, but Brìghde barely heard them.

She had imagined hearing such an admission once; alone, perhaps, in the quiet of the forge. Not like this. Not with every soul in Duart watching her.

Joy flared—bright, terrifying—before fear crashed over it.

What if this broke her again? What if she believed him—and was wrong?

“Greig …” Her voice failed her.

He moved then, before she could gather herself, before she could retreat.