Alpha's Regret: The Seventh Time was Forever novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The First Night

He came to the mill at midnight, and he did not knock.

Rosalind heard the truck door shut at the bottom of the lane, and then his boots on the porch steps.

She was sitting up in the upper room with a blanket around her shoulders and Maud's lamp turned low.

She had not been able to sleep.

She went down in her socks and opened the door before he could lift his hand.

Dorian stood on the porch with snow in his hair.

He held a folded sheet of paper out to her with both hands.

"Read it," he said. "Please."

She read it under the porch light.

It took her a long time, because the writing was small and her eyes kept stopping on one line.

*He goes to her door every night at two and stands there.*

"Is it true?" she said.

"Yes."

"Every night?"

"Most nights. Since the first week."

She looked up.

"You stood outside my door."

"I stood on the other side of the wood. I put my hand on it." He swallowed. "I never opened it."

"Why not?"

"Because I could hear you cough."

His voice broke.

"I could hear your lungs, Rosalind. Every breath. I knew what was in them. I knew why. I couldn't walk in there and watch you die slowly in front of me, so I walked away. And then I told myself you didn't need me."

She put the paper down on the porch rail.

Her hand was steady, and she was surprised by it.

"I called you," she said.

He went white.

"The first night. After they carried me out of the vent house. I lay on a table in the healer's room and I called you on the link. For hours. I said your name until my throat bled."

"Rosalind."

"You shut it. I felt it close. I called again and it stayed shut."

"I know."

"You knew."

"I was at Ironwood's table. I felt you reaching. I felt the first call and I didn't understand it, and then I felt the second and I understood." He was shaking now, all over. "And I closed it, because I was afraid of what you'd say."

"What would I have said?"

"That you were dying. That you wanted me." He looked at her with his dull grey eyes. "That I should have been there."

"You should have been."

"Yes."

"I wanted you, Dorian. More than I have ever wanted a thing."

Her voice was flat and cold.

"And you'd shut the door, and I understood what I was to you, and after that I stopped calling."

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