Chapter Nineteen

True to their claim, the brothers’ wounds were barely visible by mid-morning.  Oscar explained that, had he not tended to them with a special cleaning liquid that their grandfather concocted, their wounds would not have healed so readily and would have left scars.  As it was, their bodies were fairly devoid of marks that would mar their beauty.

I kept it to myself that, had Noah been scarred, I would have loved him just the same because my brief moment of intimacy with him was just that.  Brief. Just as he’d held me close in his bed while sleeping, only to keep a good distance from me in my waking hours, his intimate demeanor disappeared as soon as we returned to the main floor of the house and he was reminded of the danger that I was in.

His shifting of behavior around me made me question his true reasoning for caring for me.  Was it the same love that I felt? Or, was it guilt over the fact that he’d inadvertently exposed me to th