Night and Day (Stevens Book 11)

Chapter 24

When Katherine opened her eyes again, it was to find Alistair leaning over her and calling her name.

"Thank God!" he swore when she opened her eyes and looked up at him.

"You're alive," she whispered as she tried to reach up and stroke his face, but as soon as she lifted her arm, she cried out in pain.

"Where does it hurt?" he asked as his eyes skimmed her battered body.

"Everywhere," she whispered because even talking hurt. "I thought you were dead." Katherine felt tears start to fall at the thought of never seeing Alistair again. "I don't think I could manage with this life if you weren't in it."

"And it only took falling two stories through rotted floorboards to figure that out," Alistair teased as he squeezed her hand.

"I knew a long time ago," she denied. "Are you all right?" Katherine looked up and down his body, searching for injury.

"I took a significant hit to my head and have a doozy of a headache, but otherwise, only a few bruises. You, unfortunately, hit a set of stairs when you fell, which made your landing rougher than mine." Alistair looked at her once more, trying to assess the damage. "Can you wiggle your fingers and toes?"

Katherine attempted to do both and was successful. "Yes."

Alistair then gently ran his hands over her body and noted where she would cry out or wince. "I think you have some broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, a broken leg, and you hit your head pretty hard too, but that's all I can see on the outside." He frowned at the thought of what could be on the inside.

"If I'm broken beyond repair, will you still love me?" Katherine meant it as a joke, but her voice broke at the end.

"I love you, Katherine, but you'll be fine." He squeezed her hand again.

"I called Beth, and they're looking for us," Katherine said as the memory of her conversation with Beth flooded back.

"I know, they've found us, and now they're figuring out how to get to us. Some rather large trees fell across the dirt that followed us through the hole." As if sensing that he was talking about them, his phone rang, and he answered it.

"Katherine's awake, and you're on speaker," he told whomever it was on the other end.

"Oh, thank God! Are you all right, Katherine?" Grace's voice asked.

"She's holding her own but can't talk well because she has broken ribs." Alistair gave her a reassuring smile. "Does it look like we'll be out of here anytime soon?"

"I'm not sure. They are going slow because it's all like a giant house of cards. They're worried that if they move the wrong thing, it will make matters worse." Grace paused as she said the words. She must be scared to death for her son.

"Thank goodness Poppy's husband has search and rescue experience. It's as if he was sent to us from above to help." Grace cleared her throat.

"Maybe he was," Alistair agreed. "You'll have to give me the details when we're out of this hole. You don't happen to know what this hole is, do you?" It was dark, and neither Katherine nor Alistair could make out anything more than a foot in front of them.

"Beth and Poppy started digging through the old maps at the house and found one that listed a manor house in the spot about five hundred years ago. It probably had a partial basement kitchen. The entire site sits on a small hill, which is probably the house ruins covered in dirt and vegetation. I'm surprised I didn't find it when I was digging on the property years ago." Someone shouted in the background. "I have to go, Alistair. I don't want to run the battery on your phone down."

"Good idea, Mom. I turned Katherine's off for now, and we'll turn it back on if mine dies. I love you."

"I love you too, and you, Katherine, we all love and are worried about you too. Both of you, please be careful and don't take any chances." Then she ended the call, probably so they wouldn't hear her cry.

"Tell me about your mom and dad?" Katherine asked, closing her eyes against her throbbing head.

"I don't know all of it, but I do know that they met at a fundraising party for the university where my mom was teaching. She crashed the party to ask some old earl if she could do an archeological dig on his land. She was shocked to discover that the old earl wasn't so old and was very handsome."

Katherine sighed at the romantic image of the story placed in her head.

"They were carefully neutral with each other at first, and then they suddenly fell in love, but my dad fought it. He said it was because he didn't want or have time for a full-time relationship, but I am guessing that he was worried my mom wouldn't want all the headaches that came with being the head of the family and an earl."

"Do you worry about that with me?" It sounded so familiar, and, in a way, it was what Katherine worried about also. She feared she wouldn't be able to handle all the responsibilities she would have because of his position.

"No, it's a job and a job that is similar to the one you already do. I know you can handle it, so I didn't hesitate to ask you to marry me. To be clear, it wasn't that my dad thought mom couldn't perform the job. He worried she would eventually resent the time it took to perform it."

"How did she learn to cope?" Katherine desperately needed to hear the answer.

"She had her own life. She did her thing, and Dad did his. They did some things together, but for the most part, they supported each other equally in all things." Alistair squeezed her hand. "It's how it could be with us. I don't want you to give anything up. I only want our lives to be lived together."

Katherine felt more tears fall. She wanted that too.

"I don't want us ever to hate each other. My biggest fear is that all these perfect moments that you talk about have given you a false sense of who I am and that when you get to know the real, insecure, and neurotic me, you won't want me anymore, and that would kill me." Katherine's voice was barely a whisper as she said aloud what she feared most.

"But it wouldn't kill you to give up before we even try?" he asked in a patient voice.

"If I walked away before you hated me, there would always be a little hope; if I knew you hated me, there would be no hope." She squeezed her eyes closed, attempting to stop the tears.

"Is this that neurotic part you don't want me to see?"

Katherine smiled.

"You realize none of that makes sense, right?"

"It makes sense to me because it's what happened to my parents." Katherine swallowed hard at the memories. "He was so cruel to her and looking back. I can now see it for what it was, hate."

"Oh sweet, he didn't hate her because of who she was; he hated her because she had all the power and money in the relationship, and she wasn't easily controlled like he thought she would be. That would never happen to us." He shook his head.

"How do you know? How can you be sure?" Katherine opened her eyes and searched for him in the darkness, but she couldn't see him.

He was about to say something when the earth around them started to shake, and stones began to fall.

Alistair did his best to cover her body to shield her from the worst without causing her broken body any more injury, but he lost his balance and fell across her legs, which shot pain through her body and caused her to black out once more.