“It wasn’t your fault,” Sterling says quietly. “You were a child that she manipulated. You’re supposed to be able to trust your mother.”
“Does that bring Clover’s parents back?” I snap.
He doesn’t answer. We both know it doesn’t.
“I love her,” I say. The words taste like poison because that’s what I am, what my entire family has been to her. “I feel as though I’ve loved her my whole life. And I’m the reason she grew up in that hellhole without her parents. My mother is the reason she spent twenty years afraid of her own shadow, afraid to speak up, to stand out, to fucking live.”
All those times I held her, when she would melt into my arms as though she’d found her home. All the times she trusted me with her heart.
And all this time, I’ve been the monster who condemned her to hell.
“Don’t make this decision for her,” Sterling says. “Don’t push her away because you’ve decided you’re not worthy.”
I dig my fingernails into my palms. I’m not at all worthy, but saying that to him will do no good. “She stared at me as if she didn’t know me anymore, Sterling. It doesn’t take a PhD to understand I don’t have a decision to make here.”
“V, she just found out that the love of her life was unknowingly involved her parents’ death. Give her time.”
I wish I could believe him. I want to believe that there’s a path forward for us after this.
But how? How do you ask someone to love the one person responsible for all their pain?
When we reach the inn, I go straight to my room and lock the door.
I sit on the bed where I held her only last night. Where I promised I’d never let anyone hurt her again.
What a fucking lie. What a beautiful, hopeful, devastatingly misguided lie.
Outside my door, I hear voices. Madi. Savvy. Others rallying around Clover, and the knot twisting in my gut gives me a moment of reprieve.
Madi’s voice is fierce and protective. “You’re not alone. We’re your family.”
Then Savvy, softer, but no less determined. “We don’t abandon our people. Not ever.”
And Elle. “Whatever you need. Whatever you both need.”
The last part catches in my chest. They’re not just rallying around Clover. They’re sitting with her, outside a door I can’t open, including me in their love, even knowing what I’ve done.
She needs them. She needs the people who have helped her build a life, not those of us who destroyed it.
People who can hold her without the weight of murder between them.
I stare at my hands. These hands that built a company to save hundreds of lives, but all I can see is oil and darkness and the face of an eight-year-old boy who just wanted his mother’s approval.
He got it—at the cost of his future.
Outside my window, the moon rises over Happiness as one thought runs through my mind on a loop—Clover let down her walls for me, and I burned her fortress to the ground.
Now we’re both standing in the ashes, and I don’t know if either of us will survive.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CLOVER
One breath.
Two heartbeats.
Three locks.
