I squeezed her hand and was delighted by the slight squeeze back, as if even in sleep she reached out to me. I brought her fingers to my knuckles and gently kissed all of them. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there earlier, Eva. But I’m here now. I always will be.”
“Is that so?” a voice rasped from across the room.
I startled. Normally, it was impossible to surprise me, but with the love of my life attached to a ton of fucking wires on a hospital bed, I wasn’t exactly at my best.
There was a dark figure in the corner, lurking in the shadows of the room. Julian Vallen stepped into the dim, fluorescent lighting.
“Fuck,” I hissed under my breath. “How long have you been there?”
“A long time.” Julian’s voice was laden with torture. He sounded likehewas the one who went through hell, not Eva and me. But I couldn’t blame him too much. He was the first one to greet me at the door when I walked out with her in my arms, the first one to usher us both into the waiting ambulances where they tried—and failed—to separate me from Eva. Everyone else had made it out much quicker than we did, so we were swarmed with medical attention. I’d lost Julian in all of the chaos.
The Vallen King’s brown hair was sticking up in a million different directions, and his matching eyes were bloodshot. Dried streaks of silver tears sat atop his sunken skin, his under-eyes dark and purple. Julian looked like he might cry at any moment as he looked at his sister sleeping next to me. The vulnerability surprised me.
“You saved her,” Julian murmured.
I scoffed. “Of course I saved her.”
“She would have died if you weren’t there.” His voice was hollow as if he was still trying to process it himself.
“But I was there. I always will be.” I softened as I looked down at Eva sleeping peacefully before looking back at Julian, at the unreadable expression on his cold face. “I won’t fucking leave her. And if you try to make me, I will make sure my bullet hits where I aim it.”
It was a low blow—it would take an idiot not to notice the guilt he wore like a badge of disgrace—but Julian frowned, his eyes darting between the two of us. “You really love her?”
“Yes,” I replied without hesitation.
“This isn’t some game or form of sick revenge using my sister? This is actually love?”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Vallen. I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on love and other fucking emotions because I’ve never been in it before. All I know is that from the moment I met her, she’s been my entire world. And when I see her, everything looks a little bit brighter, and I feel a little less alone. If that’s not love, it’s damn near close.”
I looked down at Eva before smiling to myself. “Plus, anyone who spends three minutes with that girl would find themselves as enamored as I am. No matter who her family is.”
Julian sat down at the edge of the bed and looked at his sister, grabbing her other hand. “She has a way with her. She’s spent her whole life being completely ignored, so she doesn’t know the power she has to draw people in. I know my parents’ methods were unconventional, but they were only trying to protect her. I tried my best to be there for her, to protect her in my own way, but I know I wasn’t enough.” He looked at me, his eyes darkening. “She seems to thinkyouare enough, though. At least that was the impression I got when she essentially told me to fuck off earlier tonight.”
I couldn’t help the grin that flooded my face. God, I wished I could have been there to see that. She was probably brilliant.
My eyes fell onto her face, on the ash the nurses hadn’t yet cleaned off, on the small bruises forming on her cheekbones. And I was torn looking at her in that hospital bed.
One part of me knew that Eva was probably better off without me. I’d known her for almost three months, and she’d been hospitalized twice. My world was a dangerous one, and while my greatest enemy was sitting across from me, there were others. What if something worse happened to her? What if I didn’t make it in time? What if shedied?
I couldn’t live in a world without her. I would crawl to the pits of hell myself if she left me alone in this realm. So maybe I should have left her, if only to keep her safe.
But the other part of me was a selfish beast. I couldn’t imagine a life without her walking the halls of my mansion or my townhome. I couldn’t imagine traveling the world without her by my side. I couldn’t imagine a future where I didn’t wake up every morning with her sweet face next to mine, and I didn’t fall asleep every night with my cock coated in her cum. I wanted to cook for her, I wanted to spoil her, I wanted to fuckingmarry her.
Maybe we had only been together for three months. But those three months were the best of my life.
“I don’t like you,” Julian said.
“And I don’t care.”
“You don’t deserve her.”
“No one ever could. But I’m the bastard who will try to deserve her every day.”
Julian sighed. “But I believe you love her. You went into a burning building for her, for fuck’s sake. I have a feeling that if this were another one of your plans, you wouldn’t have done that. You keep her happy, and you clearly keep her safe.”
“What are you saying, Vallen?”
“I’m saying that I don’t like this atall… but I’m not going to stop it, either.”
