‘I’m so sorry I was angry,’ she rushes out. ‘I’m sorry I let you leave thinking the worst. The truth is… I’m glad he’s gone, Ax. I’m glad he can’t hurt us any more. But I hate what it cost you. I hate that you carried it alone. That you didn’t think you could tell me. After everything we’ve shared these past two months…’
‘Baby…’ I cup her cheek, brushing away the wet heat beneath her eye and wishing I could take away her suffering as easy. ‘This was set in motion long before?—’
I almost sayus. But it’s too loaded, too risky – too close to the line I’ve been treading since the beginning.
‘The day he went down, the wheels were already turning,’ I say instead. ‘Back then, it was what I did. I handled things you and Theo never needed to see. There wasn’t anything to tell you until it happened. And when it did, you knew the same time I did. I didn’t keep this from you.’
‘And if…’ Her voice is small now, tinged with hope. ‘If we’d been like this back then, would you have told me?’
Part of me wants to say yes. The part drowning in her eyes, desperate to give her what she wants.
But my gut knows better.
Because the deeper truth – the one I can’t say – burns a hole clean through me.
That I love her.
That I always have.
Nothing’s changed. Not for me.
And loving her means protecting her. From it. From me. From the wreckage I’ll always carry with me.
Her lashes flicker at whatever she reads into my silence, then fall.
‘I guess we’ll never really know,’ she says into my chest.
I expect her to pull away. To leave. So when she curls into my chest like she belongs there, I don’t question it. I just hold her. Breathe her in.
Taylor. In my bed. In my home.
I stare up at the ceiling, the moonlight gliding over the old steel beams – exposed, scarred, still standing – and realise:
I’ve never felt more at home in my entire damn life.
And it has nothing to do with these four walls.
And everything to do with her.
18
TAYLOR
I surface slowly, drifting between sleep and something sweeter. Ax’s scent teases at my nose – warm, woody, sinful – and I smile into the pillow. God, he smells delicious. Comforting in a way I don’t want to unpack.
I love dreams like this: the kind that feel so real, you could live in them. Let the nightmares take a running leap; give me fantasies involving this man any day of the week.
My fingers flex… and something twitches in my grasp.
Something real.
Something hard.
Somethingentirelymale.
My eyes fly open.
‘Morning, Baby Girl.’
