“I understand why you did,” she insists. “Brooks, I was a shitty girlfriend that last year. I was absent. You were way more patient than you should have been.”
I’m shaking my head, but she finally straddles my lap and frames my face in her sweet hands.
“Listen to me. We canshoulda woulda couldathe whole situation for days, but it doesn’t change anything. The past is the past. It happened, and thank God it’s over.Thank Godit’s over.”
She wraps her arms around my neck and hugs me close, and I hug her back.
I want to burn down those fifteen years.
I want to resurrect that asshole and kill him all over again.
More than anything, I wish I could go back and do everything differently.
But I can’t. All I can do is build something new with her now.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers into my neck. “I’m sorry I moved home. I know you don’t want me here, and I should have gone anywhere else, but I really missed it here.”
“It’s your home.” She shifts in my arms, and I brush her blond curls back from her face, then run my fingertips down her soft cheek.
Christ, now that I’ve touched her again, I can’t seem to stop.
“This is your home, Wildfire. You have as much of a right to be here as I do.”
“I really don’t,” she whispers. “But I haven’t fit in anywhere in so long, and I really missed the mountains, and?—”
“Hey. You don’t have to justify anything to me. You don’t owe me anything.”
“I think I’m a really bad person,” she says with a voice so small, it shatters my already broken heart. “And that’s why all of these horrible things keep happening to me.”
“No, you’re not. You’re a beautiful person. That’s why he was able to control and manipulate you. I’m the shitty one because I’d like to skin him alive, then set the rest of him on fire. I would relish his screams of terror.That’sa bad person, Jules.”
“You’re not bad.” She wiggles closer to me, and I soak in the feel of her cuddled up against my chest. “You’re protective. Even when you hate me.”
We sit in silence for a moment as I drag my fingers up and down her arm.
“I don’t hate you,” I murmur. “It’s not possible for me to hate you. And I think that’s what pissed me off the most. Because I wanted to hate you, Juliet.”
“I know.”
Chapter Eleven
JULIET
The smell of bacon pulls me out of a deep, dreamless sleep. Sitting up, I rub my hands over my face and look around. Daylight spills in through the curtains on the window, and Brooks is gone.
He’s making breakfast.
I have no idea where the bathroom is in this house. I hardly remember him carrying me in here last night. I was so freaking exhausted. Not only physically but also emotionally.
I still am, if I’m being honest.
I pad out of the open door and find a bathroom just across the hall. There’s a new toothbrush sitting by the sink, and I use it after doing my business, washing my hands, and splashing some water on my face.
Then I let my nose lead me out to the kitchen, where Brooks stands with his back to me, pulling bacon out of a pan.
“Good morning,” he says without turning around. “A couple of things. First, I havesomeceliac-safe things in the kitchen because of Birdie. Her dishes are pink.”
He opens the cupboard to show me, and it melts my heart.
