There with You (Adair Family 2)

I wondered if he sounded like that after sex?

Tingling between my thighs at the very thought, I had to stop from pressing my breasts to his back.

I was losing my goddamn mind. Control yourself, woman!

I tried to focus on anything but the low groans falling from his lips. “What does the tattoo mean?”

Thane tensed for a moment and then relaxed into my touch again as he replied, “It’s Celtic … it’s the sigil for curse breaking.”

Surprised, my hands fell away from his shoulders and he turned, forcing me to move back.

“Not what you expected?” He rubbed a hand through his beard, looking almost boyishly embarrassed.

Not from Thane. Mr. Practical and Sensible. Mac was the one filled with tales of magic and fairies. I shook my head. “What does it mean to you?” After my many talks with Robyn over the past six weeks, she’d confessed much to me about her relationship with Lachlan. One reason he’d held himself back from a genuine relationship with Robyn was that he was convinced the Adair men were cursed to lose the women they loved. He’d been irrationally terrified (not so irrational, I guess, especially considering their circumstances) that Robyn would die if he loved her back. Was Thane referring to the same family curse?

“Has Robyn told you much about our family?”

Wanting to be honest with him, I nodded. “She’s entrusted me with some personal things. I know about the Adair curse. Or so-called curse.”

“It’s something Lachlan came up with. Something that got into his head and almost ruined his chances with Robyn. The stubborn bastard.” He said the insult with affection I’d seen openly expressed between the two brothers. They were very close, like me and Robyn. “He thinks it goes way, way back. Our great-great-grandfather lost his wife to influenza six months after they were wed. He married again, but how much he’d loved his first wife and never truly recovered from her death was a tale passed down through the generations. His son lost his wife to childbirth and he never remarried. Then my mother died in childbirth, and our father never got over it. Our aunt Imogen stayed with us, helped raise us, but when she died, I think it finished our father.”

“Then Fran died,” I whispered, emotion thickening my throat. I still didn’t know how she’d passed. Robyn said it was up to Thane to entrust me with that information. That no one was coming out to say if she died of cancer or in a car crash or something that happened every day made me think her death had a darker edge to it.

“Then Fran died,” Thane repeated grimly. “Lachlan became convinced we were cursed, but I refused to believe that.” I could sense his penetrating stare through his dark sunglasses. “I refuse to be controlled by some greater fate. So I got the tattoo as a reminder not to let myself go down that path.” He shrugged and scratched his beard. “Seemed a good idea at the time. Now it just seems … silly, I suppose.”

“No, it doesn’t. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of believing you don’t have control over your life—if we don’t have control, then we don’t have to hold ourselves responsible for our failings, or even our successes. Some people use that as an easy way out. Or, like Lachlan, they let fear control their choices. I respect you haven’t allowed that to happen.”

We shared a long look, the air electric between us. “You haven’t either,” he murmured. “You took control of your life, yes, when it felt like it was spiraling?”

“Exactly.” I hadn’t divulged anything to Thane about why I’d taken off on Robyn, and I found myself wanting him to know, to understand. If Robyn didn’t think I was a coward, I was sure Thane wouldn’t either. And I wanted him to know that I really did understand his tattoo. That I understood him.

And so, somewhat guarded from view thanks to the windbreak, my eyes on Eilidh playing in the distance, I confessed to Thane why I’d left Robyn after she got shot. I didn’t go into detail about Austin—that was a conversation I hoped we’d never have to have—but I explained how I’d let my fear keep me away from her.

“I was ashamed of my cowardice,” I ended.

Thane leaned into me, his voice gruff. “You are not a coward. You were very young, and you didn’t know how to process your emotions. Emotional intelligence takes time. Do you think I was emotionally mature and self-aware at twenty-two, twenty-three?” he said. “You learned faster than many of us do, Regan.”

Grateful, I reached out without thinking and placed a hand on his bent knee. “Thank you for saying that.”

His large, strong hand covered mine, and goose bumps shot up my arm despite the lack of breeze. I inhaled sharply, and Thane’s fingers tightened on mine.