CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Savannah
I could have left.I could have chosen ignorance. I could have decided to turn a blind eye.
But I couldn’t.
I love Thayer, and that means loving every facet of him – even the unapologetically violent part of him that lives by a moral code so foreign to me it’s almost written in a foreign language.
I had to witness him see this through.
I had to watch him take the life of the man who would have tortured and killed me.
Loving him doesn’t mean turning my back on who he is, but acceptingallof him.
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to erase the image of what I heard and saw tonight. His cold, calculated voice and vicious, merciless actions.
I don’t know if I want to.
I’ve made the decision to stay. I’ve made the decision to love him.
And that means, I’ve made the decision to accept the code he lives by. I don’t want to shield my eyes from the fierce, sometimes cruel, reality of who he is.
If I love him, then I love all of him.
When we’re done – when my wounds are doctored and he calls in his cleanup crew to dispose of the last vestiges of violent and certain justice –
We go home.
Back to the Gerard family home.
When we arrive, bloodied and bruised, our clothing torn and ragged, his mother doesn’t even blink. “I’ll put you in the guest suite on the second floor,” she says pragmatically. “Do you need a doctor?”
Her inkling that we’re a couple might have something to do with the fact that he’s carrying me, and my arms are strewn around his neck.
Thayer shakes his head. “We’ve seen a doctor already. Everything else we need is in the suite.”
Not surprisingly, Thayer growled and cursed at the knife wound, insisting I get it cleaned up and bandaged.
I wonder what he has in that suite…
She nods. “Are you officially here?” Avril Gerard asks Thayer tentatively.
He gives her a wry smile. “I didn’t escape jail. I was released. I won’t be going back. So yes, I’m officially here and you don’t have to cover for me.”
She breathes out a sigh of relief and looks at me. “You two are together?”
I entwine my fingers with his and swallow hard.
A fierce realization hits me. I shouldn’t have left. I see now that I let my fear dictate my choices. Nothing, no person or danger or power on this earth, will keep me away from him.
I saw the way he looked at me. I saw the look in his eyes when he came for me. And I know why.
I know that Thayer loves me, and I know I’ll never, ever settle for anything less than this fierce, consuming, intense love of his. Of ours.
“We are.”
Avril smiles, her whole pretty face lighting up. “Good,” she says simply. “I’m happy to hear that.”
