“I can’t even make this right.”
Silence permeated the air, heavy and thick. Charles eyes were on his hands - his fingers bent, running over the hard wood of the table. With his thick brows pinched inward and his lips pressed in an even thinner line than normal, it was clear he was caught somewhere deep, deep in thought. Yet the lines of his face were held by a harder edge than normal. Something tense and tight, coiled in his muscles, making every inch of his body taut with readiness.
To fight. It was the only thing Charles was. It encompassed his very being; was the essence of his soul. He pushed to the bitter end when it came to what he wanted. He fought until his knuckles were bruised and broken to make certain he never had to face what he feared.
What he feared now was losing Eleanor. She was slipping away from him, caught on a breeze he couldn’t think fast enough to still. He could see her - see the exhaustion on her face, the heartbreak - and he couldn’t think how to stop it. Why couldn’t they be enough, the two of them? Why was a life of freedom, never answering to another soul, such a strange and unpromising future? For a moment, Charles glimpsed what they could have together if he and Eleanor were side-by-side, her father was never much on Nassau, leaving Eleanor to run the shipment and doll out information on potential prizes. If Eleanor was to run Nassau on the sand, why could she not trust Charles to run it on the sea? They’d be unstoppable, the pair of them.
“There’s no ‘making this right’.“ Charles said, standing abruptly from where he’d sat and looking at her, blue eyes savage and hard, looking at all he wanted in this world. His long legs ate the distance between them and his callused, sun-tanned hands lifted hers. He looked into her eyes, refusing to let her look away from his. “It’s right to begin with.” He urged, hoping she’d forget whatever nonsense was building in her head, telling her their relationship was nothing more than a mistake. Charles couldn’t accept that end, not when he didn’t think so of their togetherness. “We are right.” His fingers squeezed hers. “Together. Eleanor, there’s nothing we couldn’t do.”
