Beautiful Ruin (Nolan Brothers #1)

by Amy Olle

  She risked a glance at Noah. He appeared pale, stricken, and her heart gave a painful wrench. A flash of longing sliced through her, a sharp yearning to be away from this moment. But it was no use.

  Her time for hiding was at an end.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Words formed, dried, and turned to ash in her mouth. Her hands started to shake, and she balled them into fists to stop their trembling.

  He stared, glassy-eyed.

  “I’m sorry,” she blurted.

  He blinked several times. “You’re sorry.” He repeated her words as though he struggled to grasp their meaning.

  “F-for everything… for the way I acted and th-the things I said. For Drew, and Phoebe.”

  A flash of alarm chased across his face, and her heart ached at seeing it.

  She pushed a shuddering breath between her lips. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to freak out about you two.”

  On a curse, he grasped her hand in his, and together they charged through the pub and down the narrow hallway to Shea’s office. He barred the door behind them, and when he turned to face her, his presence filled the small space.

  She retreated farther into the room.

  Dark eyes tracked her.

  Her heart thundered with defiance, yet the part that loved Noah insisted she work to mend the wounds she’d inflicted. She drew a shaky breath and considered how she might tell him.

  Noah jumped in first. “What you saw was the entirety of my relationship with that woman.”

  The suffocating despair tightening her chest eased a bit. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you. When you asked me to talk to you—” The words jammed in her throat and she lifted her shoulders. “I panicked.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry I hurt you—”

  “Mina, it’s okay—”

  “It’s not okay.” She swallowed her outburst. “I don’t want to hurt you, Noah. Not anymore.”

  He watched her with hooded eyes.

  She steeled herself against the fear. “I want to answer your questions.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “I want to. I want you to understand why I... why I’m...” Her voice broke with her misery. “I want you to understand.”

  He’d grown unnaturally still.

  “You said I treated you badly in high school, after our first time together. Do you remember you said that?”

  He inclined his head. “I remember.”

  “Well, I didn’t. Until a few weeks ago, everything that happened after that Halloween party was just...” Her hand moved through the air as if to capture the words. “Lost to me. Like the memories were misplaced or something.”

  She exhaled sharply and started talking.

  With broken sentences and a tremor to her voice, she stumbled over the awful words. She told him how the rape occurred during that school break, and how, in the year that followed, there were more.

  She told him how it’d taken her years to trust anyone or to let anyone touch her.

  How she’d spent her twenties trying desperately to fill the hole inside her with other men and food and even alcohol. Anything to make her forget what she’d lost. Make her numb to the fear and loneliness.

  She told him how, before he’d returned, she couldn’t recall a time when sex wasn’t lonely or painful or humiliating or any of those other things that made her stomach sick to think about.

  Noah showed no condemnation as she spoke, only a sorrow that threatened to set loose the tears she choked back.

  Finally, there were no more words. Her head ached and her muscles screamed with the tension of holding herself rigid.

  His dark eyes shone in his pale face, as someone who’d suffered a severe shock.

  “Noah?”

  He startled and blinked.

  Her heart tried to pound its way out of her chest. “Say something,” she whispered. “Please.”

  With a slash of movement, the fleece of his jacket enveloped her.

  He buried his face in her hair. “I’m so sorry, a chuisle mo chroí. So goddamned sorry.”

  “I wasn’t trying to keep secrets from you.” She pulled back. “Some things I remember and some things... I don’t know if they really happened or not. Maybe they’re memories, or it’s possible they’re only nightmares. The truth is I don’t want to remember.”

  He slipped a hand beneath her hair and massaged the tight muscles of her neck.

  She wrapped her fingers around his wrist. “I was afraid if you knew—”

  “I know—”

  “That it’d change things—”

  “I know—”

  “But I wanted to tell you so you might be able to forgive me for hurting you. It’s not that I don’t trust you, or love you. I do. It’s just...”

  “Hush now, mo chroí.” He pressed his lips to her forehead.

  Adrenaline leached from her body and she leaned into him.

  “Thank you for telling me.” His voice croaked with emotion. “I’m so proud of you.”

  “I’ve never told anyone.”

  A broken curse fell from his lips. “No one knows?”

  “I tried to tell my mom once, but I said very little before she cut me off. After that, she sent me to live with Rose. I want to believe she was trying to protect me, and not punish me, but...”

  His thumb rubbed the spot at the base of her ear.

  “Drew found out,” she said.

  Noah’s thumb stilled.

  Her stomach pitched. “That’s why they were fighting when my eardrum was shattered. It was Jeremy.”

  A hiss of air leaked from Noah.

  “Drew drove me to the hospital. My ear hurt so badly, and I was scared.” Her voice trembled, but she rushed on. “He cracked jokes the whole way. I don’t know how I would’ve gotten through it if he wasn’t there, trying to make me laugh.”

  “Then I’m glad he was there for you.” Noah carefully blanked his features. “And Jeremy? How did he die?”

  Mina twisted her hands in front of her. “He became self-destructive. Even before the first time he... he hurt me, he drank, did hard drugs. But after, he was out of control. He was reckless in everything he did. He’d drink and drive, get high and take stupid risks. He liked to play with guns. Once, he overdosed.”

  Moments ticked by while she picked and discarded words. Finally, she settled on the naked facts. “He shot himself in the head.”

  Noah squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Our family was devastated,” she said. “He was their golden boy.”

  “Mina, you are not responsible for anything that happened. He was sick.”

  “I know that. I do.” She risked looking at him. “But I’m not entirely innocent, either, and I haven’t been for more years than I can remember.”

  “Don’t say that.” He nuzzled her ear to soothe the bite of his tone. “Don’t you dare say that, a mhuirnín.”

  She wanted to argue, but exhaustion overwhelmed her. She rubbed her eyes with her knuckles.

  He pulled her head down to lie across his thighs. “No. No more talking tonight, Mina.”

  She cracked open her eyes. A warm, heavy sleep wanted to pull her under, but she fought her way to the surface to see Noah crouched before the fireplace, placing another log on the flame. The fire’s soft glow washed over his face and hair.

  Watching him, she became aware of a tiny pulse of feeling in her chest. She waited while it strengthened and bloomed into something she could name. Relief? No, something more. Like hope, but not as strong as that.

  She’d spoken the truth aloud, and the world hadn’t collapsed around her.

  She couldn’t help but wonder if life might go on after all. If, in fact, it was possible to pick up all the scattered pieces of herself and fit them back together again. Not in the same way, but in an entirely new way that was different and unfamiliar but whole, nonetheless.

  One word, which whispered from a place deep inside her. One word that meant nothi
ng and everything. The sliver of shame extracted, perhaps the wounds of her past might begin to heal.

  Maybe.

  He couldn’t think for the denials screaming in his head.

  NO! Not this. Not her.

  She regarded him with solemn eyes. The sofa dipped beneath his weight as he sat beside her and closed a hand around her ankle. He traced small circles with his thumb.

  “I need to go out for a little while.”

  Her gaze sharpened. “Okay.”

  He dropped a kiss onto her forehead. “Sleep. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  He pushed to his feet but dithered by the door until her breathing changed, deepened. A moment later, her soft snores carried over to him. He slipped through the door and into the dark night.

  A black sky heavy with clouds blocked out the moon and stars. He drove along the darkened lakeshore, his mind descending further into chaos.

  He whipped his truck into an empty parking spot outside Lucky’s.

  Noah caught a glimpse of the wild-eyed man in the glass-paned window before he hauled open the door and stepped inside. The cozy scents of warm bread and pub food made his stomach roil.

  One by one, he picked them out of the crowd.

  Jack poised before a dartboard, about to let loose a flying dart.

  Luke reclined in a booth near the front, a beautiful blonde snuggled into his side.

  Shea stood behind the bar, chatting it up with the line of older men seated on barstools.

  Noah’s feet moved under him, carrying him across the room as though he treaded through waist-deep water.

  Dimly, Noah noted Jack’s arm drop harmlessly to his side.

  The charmer’s smile fell from Luke’s lips.

  He heard Shea’s raspy voice toss a throwaway comment toward the men, and then his bright eyes appeared in Noah’s field of view.

  “What can I do?” He placed a Guinness on the bar before Noah.

  Noah’s throat closed. He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, saw how it trembled, and curled his fingers into a tight ball.

  “You’d help me?”

  “Anything,” Shea said. “Name it.”

  Tell me how to do battle with ghosts.

  Nothing could erase what had happened to her. Nothing could give back what was lost. Taken. Noah shook his head and raised the glass to his lips.

  Luke and Jack slid onto stools on either side of him. Their voices swirled around him while he stared unseeing at a spot on the wall. Jack razzed Luke about the third woman he’d brought to the pub inside a two-week period, and Shea questioned Jack about the finer points of the NHL lockout, over which they’d now canceled the entire season.

  Voices still unfamiliar to Noah but somehow comforting, and as he sat among them, listening, something inside him shifted. He couldn’t make sense of it, not in those moments, but one simple, disturbing truth crystallized in his mind.

  He belonged to them.

  To this cold, turbulent place.

  To this woman.

  A realization that might’ve dawned too late.

  Or was it only an impulse born of shock and despair? Of his desire for her? The desire of a man for a woman.

  He needed to accept the possibility she might never belong to him. To any man. His heart recoiled at the thought, even as his mind understood the truth of it.

  He’d pushed her. Past the point she was willing to go. Faster than she was willing. In doing so, he’d only added to her hurts. It was possible the only way he could help her now was to leave.

  He listened to his brothers talking around him, and his chest ached.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Noah settled at Mina’s dining table with the stack of final exams. He’d planned to score the essays on the plane and log his students’ final grades remotely from Ireland.

  His flight was probably somewhere over the Atlantic by now.

  He spent the next hour working through the pile. Near the bottom, he came across a test with barely legible handwriting. His hand paused over the paper a moment, and then he reached for the pages. Without having to check the student’s name in the top right corner, the poorly spaced, oddly shaped letters told Noah he held Damion’s exam in his hand.

  Noah’s palms grew clammy. He shifted forward in the chair and, resting his forearms on his knees, started to read. Damion’s poor penmanship made scoring his answers slow going, but soon enough, a bloom of pride unfolded in Noah’s chest. Once done reading, he turned to his laptop, pulled up the class register, and with clumsy fingers, input the score to tabulate Damion’s final grade.

  The number leapt off the computer screen. Noah sat back, laced his fingers together behind his head, and stared in wonder.

  The kid had done it. After almost failing the first half of the semester, he’d aced the second half and pulled out a B in the course.

  A slow smile curved his lips. Of all the career successes Noah had amassed over the years, this one was the sweetest. The purest.

  Just then, his computer chirped at him and the online chat window popped open. Noah accepted the chat request from his graduate student, Caleb.

  The video feed opened and Caleb’s image filled the screen. The week prior, Caleb had arrived on site to oversee the logistical setup of Noah’s next excavation in Ireland.

  Caleb provided a detailed update on the team’s progress and provided answers to Noah’s questions. Every locale possessed a unique set of peculiarities that the team had to manage, and this site was no different. A half hour later, they were wrapping things up.

  “So, we’ll see you in a few days?” Caleb asked.

  Noah hedged. “I’ve been held up a little longer than I anticipated.”

  Over the granulated feed, Caleb’s forehead creased with thin lines. “What should I do about the consulate? They wanted to meet with us Monday.”

  Noah dropped his head. “Can you try to reschedule?”

  Caleb went ahead and voiced the question Noah had been wrestling with for the past twenty-four hours. “When will you be here to meet with them?”

  Noah chewed the side of his thumb while every cell in his body rebelled at the thought of leaving.

  Caleb filled the silence. “Should I set something up for you for next week?”

  “I’ll... keep you posted.” Noah disconnected the chat and opened a new window online.

  He logged into the airline’s website, and a few clicks later, he’d postponed his flight for a second time. His hand hovered over the keyboard, one key stroke from submitting the final request.

  The screen door creaked open and Noah looked up as Mina slipped inside.

  His hand dropped away from the laptop.

  Her shy smile devastated him. “Ignore me. I don’t want to interrupt.”

  He kicked out the chair leg and motioned with a slight tip of his head. “Sit with me?”

  She approached slowly and perched on the edge of the chair.

  “I’ve completed the final report for the excavation.”

  Her face lit up. “Can I read it?”

  Noah scratched his jaw. “There are a couple of things I want to talk to you about first.” He met her gaze. “Things that may be difficult for you to hear.”

  The animation left her features with a swiftness that sickened his heart.

  He shifted in his chair. “Let me start by saying little of what I’m about to tell you is gospel truth. It’s an educated guess built around a sprinkling of facts.”

  She studied his face a moment. “You think you know who the treasure belonged to.”

  “Yeah, I think I do.”

  “Tell me. I can take it.”

  “It starts with your four-times-great-grandmother, Rachel. She grew up in Virginia, and when she was about fourteen years old, Indians raided her family’s home. She was captured and taken.”

  A small gasp slipped through her lips.

  Noah watched her closely, gauging her response. “I haven’t found anything that ref
erences her time in captivity, but she turns up again ten years later in Detroit, where she was ransomed from the Indians by a trader named Adam Winslow.”

  Mina gave a small shake of the head. “Ransomed?”

  “Bought.”

  The color drained from her face.

  “Rachel’s father had hired Adam to find her, but by the time they returned to Virginia, her father was dead.”

  “That’s so sad.”

  Noah agreed. “Three years later, Adam shows up in the census records, living here on the island.”

  The smallest hint of a smile touched her plump mouth. “That’s what you found out back? Their home?”

  Noah nodded and pulled a folded paper from his stack of working files. He laid it on the table between them.

  “Here’s a rendering of the layout of the buildings. It’s a typical early-American settlement, and there’s some evidence that Adam ran a shipping operation from here.” Noah licked his dry lips. “But he became notorious for his other activities.”

  “The Winslows were loggers.” Mina sat forward in her chair. “Did he own a logging business?”

  “Sort of. He was a timber pirate.”

  She blinked at him. “Pirate?”

  “He intercepted ships stocked with lumber—stole them, actually—and sold the cargo himself. Apparently, he excelled at his chosen profession.”

  “He was a thief.”

  “It appears so, though his pirating activities weren’t limited to timber.” Noah stared at his hands, searching for the right words. “There is at least one account”—his voice faltered and he cleared his throat—“that claims Adam kidnapped women and transported them to Chicago.”

  The color seeped from Mina’s complexion.

  Noah gulped. “Where he sold them in the illegal sex trade.”

  “Oh. My. God.” Her hand flew to her mouth, and she stared at him with huge, round eyes.

  Seconds ticked by.

  “Are you okay?”

  Her hand fell away and she nodded.

  He propped his elbows on his knees. “This is not to excuse Adam’s actions, but life was different for them. Every day was a fight to survive out here.”

  His words did little to banish the shadows from her face. “What about Rachel? Any idea what happened to her?”