Wee Preview: Atonement Chapter 40
He’d never knocked before.
Not once in his life.
For a long moment Jamie stood frozen on the front step, staring at the bronze handle he’d opened thousands of times without a second thought.
There was a nick in the door, about knee-high, from a BB pellet where he’d shot at a squirrel on the front porch as a cocksure eejit of ten. A crack in the third step where his toe had caught as a toddler, sending him face-first into the concrete and earning him his first trip to the A&E. A neon green smiley face he’d painted on his mam’s window box that had never quite faded completely, despite the hours she’d made him stand out here scrubbing it with a toothbrush and turpentine.
Just beyond the heavy oak door, he heard the sounds of life inside — of family, of home. Maggie and Wee Jamie were shrieking with laughter as they ran circuits around the main floor; he listened for a few passes, then closed his eyes with a shaky huff of a laugh when he realized they were pelting one another with the Nerf guns he’d bought them for Christmas.
A Dhia, every last fiber of his being wanted to throw open that door with a clatter and swing the bairns right off their feet as they ran past. He ached for the feel of those warm, lean little bodies wrapping around him like vines, bouncing and wriggling on each hip as their peals of Uncle Jamie, Uncle Jamie! echoed off the stone walls.
Head bowed and jaw tight, he kept his eyes closed as he reached instinctively for his wedding ring, clutching the silver band as he would a rosary. It was a poor substitute for his wife’s hand, warm and solid in his. But he’d insisted:
“Jamie, I can’t let you go in there alone.”
“Aye, ye can. You have to trust me on this, mo ghràidh. If ye’re standing there beside me, they’ll no’ hear a word I say. Please, just wait here and let me go in first. I’ll come for ye once they’ve heard the full story, I promise.” He’d twined his pinky with hers, and winked — enough to elicit a weak smile from Claire, however fleeting, before she leaned in to give him a slow, thorough, fortifying kiss.
He could still taste her on his lips. Smell the faintest whiff of her perfume on his jacket. He’d spent the previous night and the early hours of that morning moving with her and in her, burying himself so deep that he lost any sense of where he ended and she began. She was branded into his marrow now, into the lining of his lungs, the raw red matter of his soul. He no longer had the fear of losing her, for he could not; he carried her with him, an intrinsic part of his being, and would until the day he died.
And for the love of her — the need of her — Jamie Fraser found himself a sassenach on his own doorstep.
Shoulders squared and his heart in his throat, he lifted a fist and knocked.
