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“What happened when the…phone…rang?” he asked.
The memory returned, but it wasn’t as dark and as hard anymore. Somehow, she had more distance from it, more strength to deal with it. “My aunt picked it up and talked, and then she leaned against the wall and slid down on the floor. She was pregnant, and her belly was big and round. She stared at me with wide eyes full of pain and sadness and fear. And”—she choked a little—“even disdain, I think.”
“Disdain?”
“My uncle and she were our only relatives, so she knew what my parents’ deaths meant. She had three kids of her own, another on the way, and she’d just gotten two more mouths to feed.”
Rogene sighed. There had always been this tension between her mom and Aunt Lucy. They were sisters, but her mom had always been “the smart one” or “the educated one.”
“Over the years, she’d have another,” she said. “So she eventually had seven children to take care of, to feed, to help with homework. And my uncle had to support all of us. Five is already a handful, and of course, their own kids came first. David and I were always second. Which meant, I took care of him this whole time.”
His eyes warmed. “I ken what ’tis like.”
“I’m sure you do…from what I heard.”
“Were ye safe?”
“Safe? As in, was I abused? No, thankfully I was not. Ignored, mostly.”
He stared into space for some time, thoughtful. A muscle under his eye twitched.
“That’s how I learned to not rely on anyone but myself,” she said. “David has a learning disability—it’s called dyslexia, which means he has difficulty reading and writing.”
“Oh.”
“In the beginning, we didn’t know, so he got bad grades and complaints from teachers. When he got diagnosed, he got assigned a special teacher who taught him ways to cope. I helped him do homework, learned all those exercises with him. He’s still doing amazing, given he learns in a different way. But he’s too smart for this disability, and he’s suffering because of it, I know that.”
Angus sighed and chuckled. “I can relate to the feeling, lass. And I think ye’re right nae to rely on anyone but yerself.”
“Well, it comes with difficulties. I have problems with my PhD because I don’t trust people. Especially when it comes to my mom’s research. My supervisor told me that because I won’t let anyone work with me on my research, I’m failing. And I may not graduate. They may take away my scholarship, which would mean I wouldn’t have any means to support myself and David.”
Angus nodded. “Ye do have yer brother to go back to.”
She bit her lip. “I do.”
“Ye have yer duty,” he said slowly. “I can relate to that more than ye ken.”
Their eyes met again and something passed between them—heat, desire. There was also tenderness and regret in his steel-gray eyes.
And an understanding. A connection that ran deeper than lust and longing.
A feeling of being known.
Chapter 19
The beautiful lass by his side was a sight worthy of a lifetime. Her story woke up something he’d never realized he wanted.
To share about his worst experience, too.
His family had witnessed it for years, and yet they rarely talked about it. But he wanted to tell her.
Could he trust her with this? Could he tell her about the worst humiliation of his life?
As she was telling him about time travel—he felt it, the truth of her words. No one could come up with all those lies. No one could create all those stories of science and machines and phones. And he’d seen it with his own eyes, the thing that made those pictures, as she’d called them. It had shone in a way he’d never seen anything shine before. And if that wasn’t magic, he didn’t know what was.
So, no matter how strange and ludicrous it all sounded, he believed her. Hard facts—her clothes, her speech, her phone—and the connection to her that he felt in his heart made him trust her.
The thought brought him both relief and pain because it meant he was falling for a good woman, not a thief and a spy. But it also meant that their time together would soon come to an end. It meant she didn’t belong in this time.
