“I love you.” I whispered. Because there was nothing else that could be said in response to that kind of commitment from someone else.
Nothing else measured up.
“I love you too.” He said, kissing my hair and leaning his seat back so we could relax together, holding tight.
Peace wasn’t the right word to describe how it felt to know that in the end, the people I loved were going to be by my side, forever.
Peace felt too final.
Maybe hopeful was the right word.
Here was to hoping it all worked out.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
One.
Two.
Three.
“Rhea Dalton.” The guard called, interrupting my obsessive counting, drawing my gaze up to her. “Let’s go, you’re out.”
I rose to my feet, keeping my hands at my sides, buried in the pockets of my dirty uniform I wore when I got arrested. It still beat a jail jumpsuit. I kept my movements slow and unthreatening as I followed her down the long hall to the exterior door.
Heaven forbid I do anything intimidating to them, to make them think of me as a criminal.
My soul crumbled inside my chest for the millionth time since Chief Weller had clicked the metal handcuffs to my wrists yesterday. The injustice of it all felt thick enough to choke the air from my lungs for good.
It felt like the weight of it would swallow me up and take every good thing I had in my life with it.
The good things. God, I had some great things in my life until yesterday. Would they ever be mine again, the way they were before.
My career.
My purpose.
Goldie.
Tanner.
“Rhea!” The golden sweet voice of my loving partner wrapped around me in the breeze like a physical embrace and I closed my eyes, soaking it up into every pore of my skin like it would help undo the wrong that burned in my gut. “Oh, my God!”
I caught her mid-air as I crossed through the barbed-wire fence; her pained voice echoing through my ears as I squeezed her with my entire body. “Marigold.”
“I’m sorry,” she stammered, kissing my face and running her hands through my hair as she pulled back and dropped to the ground. I hated the second she wasn’t wrapped around me butlet her go. “I’m sorry, I told myself to be patient and wait and give you space and time and whatever else you might need, but then I lost my mind and I rushed you.” She rambled a mile a minute, her blue eyes wide and her pink lips blurring as fast as they moved.
I slowed them down against mine, kissing her deeply, tilting my head and taking more from her than her lips.
Her breath shuddered, and then she was giving into it, kissing me back, her tongue tangling with mine in her sweet little way until her need matched mine. It was selfish to demand something from her, anything at all, after what I had put her through, but I felt like I was going to die without it.
So, I let my selfishness burn into her for a moment more before pulling back. “I’m sorry.” I whispered, forehead pressed against hers. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
