#he literally broke up into a million specks of light when he died

[number-1-kuaidul-fanboy]

Was listening to Poets of the Fall while writing and got hit hard by this song's lyrics just... perfectly describing my feelings for Kuaidul. (Song is Angel by Poets of the Fall):

"This tear I cry Falls like healing rain Softly soothes my pain This surrender it feels like I'll Kiss the feathers of a hummingbird in flight Breaking up into a million specks of light Take the shape of an angel in the night Carry you to peaceful fields"

[nathanielbuildsatesseract]

(1/2) Hello! I suppose I should send this question to your Ayn Rand blog, objectivistnerd, but it appears to be on a hiatus: Did Gail Wynand kill himself at the end of The Fountainhead? The possibility of it didn't strike me when I read the book, but then I read a few reviews mentioning his death. Also, the 1st prize essay for The Fountainhead Essay Contest 2015 said that "Gail died the man who could have been". Looking over the last scene he appears in, there does appear to be textual evidence

(2/2) hinting that Wynand was going to commit suicide (ct. Chapter 19): his was “a face known, closed, and never to be reached again”,“a face that held […] the stamp of the next step, when even pain is renounced”, and the allusion to a figure atop a medieval tomb; he will never see or communicate with Roark again; and that “there’s no one” to whom Roark could return the original investment. Suicide isn’t a Randian thing, but if Wynand wasn’t going to die why should he not see Roark ever again?

This reply took so long for the same reason @objectivistnerd was on hiatus for so long: because I am lazy and generally bad at finishing effortposts.

When I read the book, I didn’t get the impression that Gail was going to kill himself. This is significant in part because I watched the movie first (yes, yes, I know). My impression was more that he would go on living and managing the remains of his media empire, which would not be a particularly long endeavor given his age.

In the screenplay, however, Gail did kill himself, before Roark had even left the room after their last meeting. Considering Rand wrote the screenplay, it’s pretty explicit that Gail is not long for this earth.

Additionally. there are many contextual clues which suggests that his days are numbered. That said, he strongly implies that he intends to live at least long enough to see the Wynand Building constructed:

“I wish it understood that I shall not have to see you. There will be an agent to represent me in all technical and financial matters. You will deal with him. You will hold all further conferences with him. Let him know what contractors you prefer chosen for the job. If you find it necessary to communicate with me, you will do it through the agent.”

To me, this says Gail isn’t going to kill himself himself immediately, but it’s also clear that his own mortality is on his mind. A few paragraphs later, he says:

“It is an open secret that the so-called Wynand Empire is dead. It is sound and doing as well as ever throughout the country, with the exception of New York City. It will last my lifetime. But it will end with me. I intend to liquidate a great part of it. You will, therefore, have no reason to limit yourself by any considerations of cost in your design of the building. You are free to make it cost whatever you find necessary. The building will remain long after the newsreels and tabloids are gone.”

At several points beforehand the Wynand empire is likened to Wynand’s life. When he buys out the Banner and ends the strike:

Wynand stood by his chair at the head of the table. He looked like a drawing from a men”s magazine, fastidiously groomed, a white handkerchief in the breast pocket of his dark suit. The directors caught themselves in peculiar thoughts: some of British tailors, others—of the House of Lords—of the Tower of London—of the executed English King—or was it a Chancellor?—who had died so well.

A few paragraphs later, one of the director’s says, “[y]ou ain’t what you used to be”:

Wynand thought: I never used to be, I’ve never been here, why are you afraid to look at me? Don’t you know that I’m the least among you? The half-naked women in the Sunday supplement, the babies in the rotogravure section, the editorials on park squirrels, they were your souls given expression, the straight stuff of your souls—but where was mine?

Those unfamiliar with Rand might not appreciate how significant such a statement really is. Objectivists take the word selfless literally. Altruism is death, and Gail is coming to terms with the fact that he never really lived. He spent years catering to the hoi polloi’s whims, and when he finally took up a crusade of his own, got burned for it.

“Wynand, you know it’s that—or you have to close the Banner. You can’t keep this up, even if you bought us all out. Give in or close the Banner. You better give in.”

Wynand heard that. He had heard it through all the speeches. He had heard it for days before the meeting. He knew it better than any man present. Close the Banner.

He saw a single picture: the new masthead rising over the door of the Gazette.

“You had better give in.”

He made a step back. It was not a wall behind him. It was only the side of his chair.

He thought of the moment in his bedroom when he had almost pulled the trigger. He knew he was pulling it now.

“All right,” he said.

Closing the Banner is spiritually equivalent to suicide, is what that last paragraph is saying. Remember, our first introduction begins with Gail holding a gun to his temple.

The passage where Gail wanders the New York at dusk really needs to be read in it’s entirety. I was tempted to quote the whole thing—disjointed thoughts, symbolic imagery, Gail’s internal monologue, all of it. Here’s an attempt to summarize:

It’s only a bottle cap, thought Wynand looking down at a speck of glitter under his feet; a bottle cap ground into the pavement. The pavements of New York are full of things like that—bottle caps, safety pins, campaign buttons, sink chains; sometimes—lost jewels; it’s all alike now, flattened, ground in; it makes the pavement sparkle at night. The fertilizer of a city. Someone drank the bottle empty and threw the cap away. How many cars have passed over it? Could one retrieve it now? Could one kneel and dig with bare hands and tear it out again? I had no right to hope for escape. I had no right to kneel and seek redemption. Millions of years ago, when the earth was being born, there were living things like me: flies caught in resin that became amber, animals caught in ooze that became rock. I am a man of the twentieth century and I became a bit of tin in the pavements, for the trucks of New York to roll over.

[…]

My city, he thought, the city I loved, the city I thought I ruled.

[…]

My masters, the anonymous, the unselected. They gave me a penthouse, an office, a yacht. To them, to any one of them who wished, for the sum of three cents, I sold Howard Roark.

[…]

He was in Hell’s Kitchen.

The facades of the buildings around him were like the walls of secret backyards suddenly exposed: decay without reticence, past the need of privacy or shame. He heard shrieks coming from a saloon on the corner; he could not tell whether it was joy or brawling.

He stood in the middle of the street. He looked slowly down the mouth of every dark crevice, up the streaked walls, to the windows, to the roofs.

I never got out of here.

I never got out. I surrendered to the grocery man—to the deck hands on the ferryboat—to the owner of the poolroom. You don’t run things around here. You’ve never run things anywhere, Gail Wynand. You’ve only added yourself to the things they ran.

Then he looked up, across the city, to the shapes of the great skyscrapers. He saw a string of lights rising unsupported in black space, a glowing pinnacle anchored to nothing, a small, brilliant square hanging detached in the sky. He knew the famous buildings to which these belonged, he could reconstruct their forms in space. He thought, you’re my judges and my witnesses. You rise, unhindered, above the sagging roofs. You shoot your gracious tension to the stars, out of the slack, the tired, the accidental. The eyes one mile out on the ocean will see none of this and none of this will matter, but you will be the presence of the city. As down the centuries, a few men stand in lonely rectitude that we may look and say, there is a human race behind us. One can’t escape from you, the streets change, but one looks up and there you stand, unchanged. You have seen me walking through the streets tonight. You have seen all my steps and all my years. It’s you that I’ve betrayed. For I was born to be one of you.

[…]

He stopped. He saw a paper out spread in the gutter before him, front page up. It was the Banner. He saw Roark’s picture. He saw the gray print of a rubber heel across Roark’s face.

He bent, his body folding itself down slowly, with both knees, both arms, and picked up the paper. He folded the front page and put it in his pocket. He walked on.

An unknown rubber heel, somewhere in the city, on an unknown foot that I released to march.

I released the all. I made every one of those who destroyed me. There is a beast on earth, dammed safely by its own impotence. I broke the dam. They would have remained helpless. They can produce nothing. I gave them the weapon. I gave them my strength, my energy, my living power. I created a great voice and let them dictate the words. The woman who threw the beet leaves in my face had a right to do it. I made it possible for her.

Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness. Alvah Scarret can be forgiven. He had nothing to betray. Mitchel Layton can be forgiven. But not I. I was not born to be a second-hander.

At this point, Gail has realized and accepted that everything he’s worked for, his entire life, has been a lie. He wanted power, but never held it. He wanted influence, but could only amplify the mob’s whims, not direct them. Defending Roark in the Banner was an attempt to redeem his second-hand life, using the entire apparatus for something he knew was good and right. But it failed, like it was destined to fail. Virtue is independent of outside perception.

At this point, we come back to the issue of suicide. I don’t think that self-destruction is necessarily anti-Objectivist.

In Atlas Shrugged, suicides are mentioned frequently, and almost exclusively by people who we’re supposed to support. A nameless inventor after Directive 10-289. Cherryl Brooks when she realizes how evil her husband really is. John Galt even states flatly that he’d kill himself to prevent any harm coming to Dagny.

If achieving your values is impossible, then ending your life is considered a potentially rational choice. Cherryl and the nameless inventor were wrong, but in context they couldn’t know that. Galt may have been right, but the issue never came up. Suffice to say that suicide may be justified on the Objectivist grounds.

To complicate matters: Gail Wynand is old. This that era, even healthy men rarely lived past their mid-sixties. He hasn’t achieved any of his values, with the possible exception of marrying Dominique, and there isn’t much time to start anew. Maybe ten years, fifteen if he is extremely fortunate.

I think this is important. Gail’s age was brought up in several places. On his way to see the site of the house Roark builds for him:

Something tore past across his vision, and he was a mile away before he thought how strange it was that he should have noticed it, because it had only been a clump of weeds by the road; a mile later he realized it was stranger still: the weeds were green. Not in the middle of winter, he thought, and then he understood, surprised, that it was not winter any longer. He had been very busy the past few weeks; he had not had time to notice. Now he saw it, hanging over the fields around him, a hint of green, like a whisper. He heard three statements in his mind, in precise succession, like interlocking gears: It’s spring—I wonder if I have many left to see—I am fifty-five years old.

This is our first indication that Gail might expire naturally within a few years. He contemplates his mortality:

They were statements, not emotions; he felt nothing, neither eagerness nor fear. But he knew it was strange that he should experience a sense of time; he had never thought of his age in relation to any measure, he had never defined his position on a limited course, he had not thought or a course nor of limits. He had been Gail Wynand and he stood still, like this car, and the years had sped past him, like this earth, like the motor within him had controlled the flight of years.

No, he thought, I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because i have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered—and that I love it, that is the unanswered in my life. But I loved it.

If it were true, that old legend about appearing before a supreme judge and naming one’s record, I would offer, with all my pride, not any act I committed, but one thing I have never done on this earth: that I never sought an outside sanction. I would stand and say: I am Gail Wynand, the man who has committed every crime except the foremost one: that of ascribing futility to the wonderful fact of existence and seeking justification beyond myself. This is my pride: that now, thinking of the end, I do not cry like all the men of my age: but what was the use and the meaning? I was the use and the meaning, I, Gail Wynand. That I lived and that I acted.

In this light, his ending is all the more tragic. He really thought he could get away with it. He really thought that he had lived an independent intellectual life when, in fact, he had been playing along for years.

Gail’s past is brought up again and again throughout this section, emphasizing that he never really progressed. He’s still Stretch Wynand from Hell’s Kitchen and  secretly knows it.

There’s another passage, when he fires Toohey, that also gets the point across. Once again we see the equation of the Banner and Gail’s life:

He heard a rumble, the vibration in the walls of his office, in the floor. The presses were running off his afternoon paper, a small tabloid, the Clarion. He smiled at the sound. His hands went faster, as if the sound were energy pumped into his fingers.

He had dropped his usual editorial “we.” He wrote: “… And if my readers or my enemies wish to laugh at me over this incident, I shall accept it and consider it the payment of a debt incurred. I have deserved it.”

He thought: It’s the heart of this building, beating—what time is it?—do I really hear it or is it my own heart?—once, a doctor put the ends of his stethoscope into my ears and let me hear my own heartbeats—it sounded just like this—he said I was a healthy animal and good for many years—for many … years …

“I have foisted upon my readers a contemptible blackguard whose spiritual stature is my only excuse. I had not reached a degree of contempt for society such as would permit me to consider him dangerous. I am still holding on to a respect for my fellow men sufficient to let me say that Ellsworth Toohey cannot be a menace.”

They say sound never dies, but travels on in space—what happens to a man’s heartbeats?—so many in fifty-six years—could they be gathered again, in some sort of condenser, and put to use once more? If they were re-broadcast, would the result be the beating of those presses?

“But I have sponsored him under the masthead of my paper, and if public penance is a strange, humiliating act to perform in our modern age, such is the punishment I impose upon myself hereby.”

Not fifty-six years of those soft little drops of sound a man never hears, each single and final, not like a comma, but like a period, a long string of periods on a page, gathered to feed those presses—not fifty-six, but thirty-one, the other twenty-five went to make me ready—I was twenty-five when I raised the new masthead over the door—Publishers don’t change the name of a paper—This one does—The New York Banner—Gail Wynand’s Banner …

“I ask the forgiveness of every man who has ever read this paper.”

A healthy animal—and that which comes from me is healthy—I must bring that doctor here and have him listen to those presses—he’ll grin in his good, smug, satisfied way, doctors like a specimen of perfect health occasionally, it’s rare enough—I must give him a treat—the healthiest sound he’s ever heard—and he’ll say the Banner is good for many years.

The juxtaposition of the apostasy, Gail’s heartbeat, and the Banner—it’s no coincidence. Gail is writing for his life, trying to redeem himself. But as we saw above, it doesn’t work.

I think Gail might have gone on living if Dominique had stayed with him. But that was thematically impossible, both because she loved Roark and because Gail would have no longer been able to accept undeserved love.

Notably, Gail accepts Dominique’s infidelity as penance for his own failure:

Wynand drove to his country house. Dominique was there, waiting for him.

She stood up as he entered the room. She stepped forward, so that there would be no furniture between them; she wished him to see her whole body. He stood across the empty space and looked at her as if he were observing them both at one, an impartial spectator who saw Dominique and a man facing her, but no Gail Wynand.

“Well, I’ve given you a story that will build you circulation, Gail.”

He had heard, but he looked as if nothing of the present were relevant. He looked like a bank teller balancing a stranger’s account that had been overdrawn and had to be closed. He said:

“I would like only to know this: if you’ll tell me: that was the first time since our marriage?

“Yes.”

“But it was not the first time?”

“No. He was the first man who had me.”

[…]

“He loved you.”

“Yes.”

“Yet he built this house for us.”

“Yes.”

“I only wanted to know.”

He turned to leave.

“God damn you!” she cried. “If you can take it like this, you had no right to become what you became!”

“That’s why I’m taking it.”

He walked out the room. He closed the door softly.

That’s it. Gail lost everything. His paper, his wife, and “the one encounter in my life that can never be repeated.” And he’s not even mad about it.

It’s tragic, in part, because it was inevitable from the start. Roark was the one man that Wynand never managed to break. Gail said it himself: 

[T]here’s not a man living whom I can’t force to do—anything. Anything I choose. The man I couldn’t break would destroy me. But I’ve spent years finding out how safe I am.”

It turns out that he wasn’t so safe after all. Gail tried to break Howard, and Howard brushed it off easily, almost casually. Howard played Gail’s latent virtue off himself—”Is this what you want?” “Good God, no!”—and that was that. 

Howard became Gail’s friend thanks to the same virtues which saved him from Dwight Carson’s fate. That same integrity showed that a better life was possible, and Gail’s attempts to redeem himself in other’s eyes broke him. His life was less than it could have been. His choices were wrong.

In summary, I think that is a wealth of textual evidence to support that conclusion that Gail Wynand dies shortly after The Fountainhead closes. While this could occur through “natural” causes i.e. losing a general will to live, I think active suicide is more likely. He will probably wait to see the Wynand Building erected and his estate largely liquidated, but I think the general direction points towards death in the near future.

[internallydeceased]

In the Mist - Chapter 4

Read previous parts here

New Beginnings Sussex, Virginia 29th March 1858

The North Star can always be found among the millions of other tiny specks of light, its presence just a little bit greater than the rest. It’s a fixed point in the sky; never moving, never fading. The stars are a map of light; and people trusted it to guide them, should they lose their way.

Claire. Sorcha; her name literally meant light. He laid there, staring up at the ceiling as if he were gazing at the stars.

She was his North Star.

He had been lost for so long, never knowing what he wanted, or even deserved. He was a broken man who was surviving, but never living. He had lost his home and his family: everything that mattered. He didn’t care where he ended up or what happened to him. What did he have left?

Then one morning, he woke to find her face hovering over his, the one that tore him from the torment that lived in his dreams.

Before that, he was trapped in the dark, no light to guide him out.

But She was the light.

He couldn’t sleep even if he wanted to, his heart beating erratically in his chest and his stomach dissolving into thousands of butterfly wings. There was nothing except her.

And it had only been two days.

Two days.

Forty-eight hours, and he would never be the same.

It had been a year, but everything was as vivid as if it had happened the day before.

I was afraid that when I opened my eyes I would still be in that room, and that this was the dream.

Though it might as well have been a dream; my body was free, but I was not.

The physical wounds had healed and faded, but emotionally, they festered; refusing to heal.

I thought I had escaped, but truthfully, I never really left.

The tavern was rarely ever closed–they needed every penny they could get just to keep the place running. It was a sanctuary, a place that gave people second chances. So many people relied on it not only for financial income, but because for some, their lives depended on it.

But today was one of the rare ones.  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, only blue. It was a day that finally felt like spring. Flowers began to blossom, trees began to bloom, grass was beginning to turn green again; the world was alive.

The girls took advantage of the break and nice weather, finally free to be themselves. The world was at their feet; they had their entire lives ahead of them; the possibilities were endless.

Jamie couldn’t help but smile, seeing the utter joy in their faces as they savored the light of a new day.

But none of them were Claire.

As he mounted the top of the stairs, he could hear the shuffling of footsteps coming from Claire’s room. It was just past noon, and it became clear to him that he hadn’t seen her since the night before.

He stood outside her door, trying to decide whether or not to interfere, or leave her be.

Then he heard… crying?

And before he knew it, his knuckles were pounding against the dark expanse of the wood, announcing his presence.

He heard a sharp intake of breath and then… nothing.

“Claire?”

Silence.

“Claire?” He tried again. “Are ye alright?”

Silent footfalls and then the door opened just enough so that she could peer through the opening.

It was obvious that she had been crying, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were red; lashes still wet with tears.

She swiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand and cleared her throat. “Y-yes, Jamie?”

She had tried to sound strong, and look it, but her voice wavered and trembled as the words left her mouth. Additionally, her face was transparent: the pain bright as day, as though he was looking through a window into her very soul.

He felt an ache in his chest, his heart practically breaking as he looked at her. What had happened to make her feel like this?

“What’s wrong, lass?” His eyes searched hers, looking for a way in.

Let me help, mo nighean donn. Please.

Her brows furrowed and she turned her gaze to the floor, so that he couldn’t see her face. She nodded, opening the door further to let him in.

He stepped inside, closing the door behind him. Claire sat at the edge of the bed, her knees tucked up beneath her chin with her head bent in such a way that the dark waves of her hair hid her face from view.

Jamie stood a few feet from the door, shifting from foot to foot; unsure of what to say while silent sobs wracked through her body.

Cautiously, he stepped towards her before sitting beside her, the mattress shifting beneath his weight.

He fought with himself, debating whether he should just sit there and wait for her to speak, or to listen to his heart and wrap his arms around her and hold her until she stopped crying.

But she was in nothing but her shift, and being here in this room–alone–with her would certainly ruin her reputation and everything that she had built.

She was upset and vulnerable, and he could so easily take advantage of that.

His jaw clenched in decision and he wrapped his right arm around her shoulders, pulling her towards him. The dam broke and the tears ran freely, nothing to hold them back. She couldn’t remember the last time she let herself feel so freely: a way in which she did not hide every little thing she felt. The walls of her fortress came crashing to the ground, leaving her naked and exposed.

Jamie held her tighter to him, her head resting against his shoulder, staining his shirt with tears.

“Shhh, mo nighean donn. I’m here. I willna harm ye.” He whispered into the clouds of her hair before gently kissing the top of her head.

They sat that way for a long time, until her breathing slowed and tears no longer flooded her eyes. His left hand laid flat against her back, his fingers moving in soothing circles as he held her. It was almost as if he was shielding her from harm–he would let it all land solely on himself if it spared her the pain.

Slowly, she raised her head so that she was looking directly at him, their faces only inches apart. Then she was leaning towards him, and he towards her, as if some outside force were pushing them together.

Their lips met, and the rest of the world melted away: along with every painful memory, every broken dream, every ounce of wariness disintegrated until nothing was left, but them. Only them.

They lost themselves in each other and, for a moment–just a moment, there was hope: that she would be okay, in the end. That the future would be brighter than the one that was so greedily taken from her. That she could be the person she had eventually lost sight of.

And then it was gone; the kiss ended abruptly as she jumped back and stood in front of him, eyes wide and mouth agape.

Jamie looked at her, his brows knitted together in confusion. Had he done something wrong?

She backed away until her back hit the wall, her chest heaving as her breathing picked up again.

“I’m sorry…” She whispered, and then she was on the floor.

She turned her head away from him and bit her lip in an attempt to keep the sobs from escaping. She wouldn’t look at him–couldn’t. Jamie stood and started towards her, one hand extended in front of him as if he were trying to calm a spooked horse. Kneeling in front of her, he placed his hand to rest on her shoulder. She flinched away from his touch, scooting further into the corner.

“It’s alright. I won’t hurt ye.”

He paused for a moment, giving her the chance to respond. When she didn’t, he continued.

“Ye can tell me what’s wrong, Claire. I promise, I won’t – I will not - judge you. Whatever ye tell me will never leave this room, I swear it. Let me help ye, mo ghraidh.”

She turned to face him, a river of fresh tears streaming down her face.

“If I tell you–” She clenched her jaw, trying to rein in her emotions.

“If I tell you,” She tried again, this time gaining her composure. “You will never look at me the same.” Her eyes shifted to look sharply into his. It was clear to him that whatever her situation entailed, it was serious.

He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry, and murmured, “Tell me.”

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, the images so clear in her head.  

“My real name is Claire Beauchamp, and you’re one of the only people left to know that. Here, I go by Julia Lambert, for reasons you will soon understand.” The tears stopped flowing from her eyes, and her face was stone, void of any emotion. She didn’t look directly at him, but instead at the space next to him, as if he had disappeared and she was bearing her soul to the empty confines of the room.

“I was raised by my parents, Henry and Julia, not too far from here. My father loved my mother and I deeply, and he never thought himself superior to women.” A faint smile appeared as she remembered her childhood, but it quickly faded. “I suppose that our views were very different from other families, and I’m grateful for that.”

She licked her lips before she spoke again. “They died when I was six. Everything I knew had been ripped out from under me, and the happy little girl I used to be went with them.”

She glanced at Jamie as she said this, her face didn’t need to express anything; it was all there-- in her eyes. Looking away again, she continued.

“Uncle Lamb was the only family I had left–he raised me for the remainder of my childhood despite the fact that I had stopped being a child the minute my parents died. But living with him wasn’t much different than with my parents: their values and beliefs remained one in the same.”

“He respected me the same way that my father did. He taught me to stand up for what I believed in and to chase after what I wanted. He used to say, ‘If you can dream it, squirt, you can be it.’ And so I did. I wanted to be a nurse, to help people. I could do for others what I couldn't for my parents. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, a smile creeping onto her face.

“I loved being a nurse,” she said. The smile faded as she exhaled. “Uncle Lamb eventually became ill, and there was nothing I could do to save him. He was all I had; it was because of him that I had a roof over my head and that I believed in myself. But between the both of us, we barely had enough to keep that. So when he died, I knew I would’ve been forced out onto the streets.” She closed her eyes, bracing herself for what came next.

“So he arranged a marriage.” She opened her eyes but shifted her gaze to the floor, her hands clutching the thin fabric of her shift so that her knuckles turned white. “To a soldier.”

“Johnathan. Wolverton. Randall,” she hissed through clenched teeth.

Jamie’s ears pricked at the name, his eyes wide as he stared at her.

“Did ye say Randall?” He asked, voice barely above a whisper.

She turned her attention toward him, her eyebrows knitted together as she gazed at him. “Do you know him?”

Now it was Jamie’s turn to remember, his usual calm blue eyes turning to ice as he stared at his hands. “Aye,” he murmured, his voice deep–hard.  “Aye, I ken the man well.”

Claire crawled towards him, taking his large hand in hers.

“So you know what he's capable of?" Her attention was fully on him, her mind returning fully to the present.

Jamie’s face hardened as he looked up at her, into those deep, swirling pools of whiskey. He nodded, his thoughts grimly imagining what he could have done to her.

He brought his other hand to grasp their joined ones, squeezing as he spoke. “Did he hurt ye?” He was no longer looking at her, he couldn’t. He couldn’t imagine what he had done to her, this amazing, perfect, woman.

She swallowed, “Yes.” Her voice was flat, Jamie knew him. Then realization dawned on her; What had Randall done to him?

She squeezed his hand in return. “Did he hurt you?”

Jamie could only nod, his mind no longer in the room with her. Instead, he was back inside the walls of Wentworth prison, his hands chained to a post as the whip came down onto his back with such force, such fury.

Her hand came to cup his cheek, forcing him to look at her. “He’s gone, Jamie. He’s not here. He can’t hurt us now.”

She never imagined herself saying those words, because to her, Randall was still very much here.

She crawled closer to him, so that she was practically sitting in his lap, her arms wrapped around his neck. All she could do was hold him, and him her.

And they sat that way for a long time, struggling to rid themselves of the same man that had single-handedly broken them both.

read the next part here!