mouth to bury that sound. “Everywhere, people were shouting, ‘They are riding upon us. Shame. Break. Breakkkk.’”
Those screams and cries that would haunt him until he drew his last breath, she heard, too. All along, since their first meeting, he’d believed them so very different, only to realize in this moment . . . their nightmare was a shared one, the both of them more alike than he’d have ever believed.
Pressure weighted his chest, restricting his airflow so he could manage nothing more than sharp little sporadic bursts of shaky inhalations and exhalations.
With his thumb, Hugh wiped at the crystalline trails that wound down her cheeks. Only there were more that just took their place.
“Everyone dispersed,” she said in a deadened voice. “There was a wall . . .” Hugh stared blankly over the top of dark curls to the drawn floral curtains that kept out the full force of the sun. He’d been at that high stone fixture. How close they’d been to one another that day; had hers been one of the hands he’d touched, then, when people managed to break free . . . ? Had she been one of those cursing and spitting at him, and running the other way, toward danger, out of fear that he’d cut the men and women at the wall down? “When I managed to break free, I fell . . .”
Darkness crept across his vision, briefly blinding, as he saw her on the ground as frantic spectators fled . . . trampling her. No. “Lilaaa,” he groaned. He could manage nothing more than that, just her name.
“People stepped on me. Crushing me.” She clawed at the neckline of her gown. “I couldn’t breathe. People ran over me. Eventually, I realized they’d stomped all over my hand.” He looked blankly down. Her broken fingers. “I was so sure I’d die there, and I just recall thinking . . . this is what the end is. This is what it is like to die. Someone’s boot scraped over my head.” Her shaking fingers crept up to that scar at her forehead. “Someone hauled me to my feet. I don’t know who he was. And I felt this overwhelming relief, but then he had this crazed look in his eyes, and he was holding on to me, and I couldn’t get him to release me.” Lila exhaled a long, slow breath between her compressed lips. “Someone jolted us, and I fell free. But then I was being pushed forward and then thrown over a wall.” Her shoulders moved up and down in a little shrug. “And then it was over.”
And then it was over.
How simply she spoke about a day in time that had been in no way simple.
He stood immobile, paralyzed by her telling.
Fearing that if he moved, he’d splinter apart and break off into nothing.
And in that instant? It was a fate he preferred to the thought of her that day . . . and him . . . the guilty party whom she’d run from. When she’d only ever come to him for help.
Clasping her hands as in prayer, she concentrated on those white-knuckled digits. “Please, don’t look at me like that,” she whispered.
Groaning, he reached for her and drew her into his arms. Even as he’d no right. Because he was the one responsible for her suffering.
He held her close, his heart pounding so hard in his chest she surely felt that organ’s beat against her ear. And he just held her close. Not wanting to ever let her go, and also knowing he could never truly have her. It was the same fact he’d walked into this household with that morn, and when he left, the truth would still hold, but for entirely different reasons.
Now, he understood her . . .
And in a way, he wished he didn’t.
With one arm, he held her close. Hugh pressed a hard kiss against her temple. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” For everything. For more than she knew. For more than he could ever confess to her.
Lila edged herself back, and he grieved over even that slight divide. “That’s not why I told you this,” she said, her tone short. “I told you so you might understand. I cannot go out in crowds. Not the way you need me to. I’m trying . . . for my sister.” Her words grew almost frantic, tripping over the others. “So I can be with her at an event she feels she needs to attend.