“Always.”
She sucks in a deep breath and unleashes the honesty I’ve been waiting for. “I do, but it’s like I’m split in two, and I don’t know how to meld those pieces. Part tangled in the past and part eager to move on. Half needing you as a friend and the other half desperate for more. One second, I’m content with only one more night ofthis. The next, I know it will never be enough. You’re my safe place, but the things I feared most might be true.”
The idea ofusis severed by the fault line of the worst night of her life. That flays me open. The one fucking time I tried to do things in a manner she would considerright, and it cost her everything, cost me everything. Except it can’t. I won’t let that bastard rob us again, even from the grave.
“So, there’s a chasm between what was and whatwillbe. We’ll close it because nothing about this is a maybe. If I have to wait for your feelings to catch up, I will. But don’t expect me to accept anything other than eternity with you. I was fucking dead inside the three years you were gone. If I didn’t have the hope offinding you and Remy and making you mine to keep me going, I wouldn’t have survived it.”
She squeezes me, as if she’s touched by my confession, but pained by the words she’s about to speak. “I’m sorry. I’m just not sure I can … It hurts. My head is so messed up. And I have at least one question that might keep that chasm open forever.”
“Before you ask it, tell me about the phone call.”
Maybe we both want to delay whatever else she has for me because she doesn’t argue.
“The memory of it comes and goes, but I have some notes—things I jotted down when it hit me. At some point, Dalton must’ve thought I was dead. He called someone, asked them for help, said something about it happening again. I assume that was in reference to Hailey, so it was probably Monroe. That’s why I was nervous about him.”
“I’ll look into it.” I don’t tell her that I’m positive it wasn’t Monroe Montgomery because when I questioned him, there was a clear difference between what he hid about Hailey and what he truly didn’t know about Mercy.
So, that phone call means someone is out there, possibly afraid Mercy can connect them to the crimes Dalton committed. La Lune Noire is still the safest place for her, but New Orleans might be the most dangerous.
Coaxing her into another kiss, I sweep my tongue into her mouth and nip at her lip, needing one more tethering before she hits me with whatever she has in store. “So, what’s your last question?”
“Was my father a member here?”
Fuck.“Yes.”
Her breath whooshes out as if she’d been struck. “Did he falsely testify to let some murderer go free?”
There’s a shit ton more to it than that, but she’s after the black-and-white version, so I give it to her because it’s not worth letting this sully what’s between us. “Yes.”
Her voice quavers through her follow-up query. “Is that why my mother was … was she pushed?”
Where the hell did she hear that?
My chest aches. “I believe so.”
“Shit.” She trembles in my arms, tears soaking into my skin as she cries against me. “He was right. You knew.”
I pull back and study her face in the dim amber light, trying to figure out what the hell she’s talking about. “Who the fuck was right?”
“Dalton. He told me you knew.”
This is making me dizzy. “How in the fuck did Dalton know? I just found out, less than a year ago.”
She scoffs, wiggling free to plant her heels on the floor. “I’d love to believe you. But in one dinner out with myfakefiancé, you confirmed everything he’d said that night.”
That freezes me, my gut churning. “The night he hurt you, he …” I can barely get the words out, a murderous wrath surging through my veins as nausea overtakes me. “You were fighting about me?”
She doesn’t answer, but her sob explains it all.
We’re still on that goddamn floor.
White oak and screams.
MERCY
Diamonds. Beads. Lace. Debauchery. One dress after the next is stunning, but my foul mood leaves them all lacking.
On one hand, I’m a brat, standing in a La Lune Noire suite that has been transformed into a fashion haven to cater to my every belle-of-the-ball fantasy.
