Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 128488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 128488 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 642(@200wpm)___ 514(@250wpm)___ 428(@300wpm)
She gasped out a sound of horror, bringing her hand up to cover her mouth. The couch. He’d recognized the couch. Oh God. She felt like she might throw up. She grimaced, shaking her head. She tried to work out the timeline, but her mind wouldn’t cooperate. There had to be some detail that would make all this speculation impossible. But she couldn’t think clearly enough to figure out what that was.
She shook her head again. “No, no, none of this is true. God, I can’t even think this about my father! He’s dead and gone and can’t defend himself. I won’t even entertain ideas like this about him.”
“But you’ll entertain them about my father? You don’t have trouble believing he could do something evil and demented.” He didn’t sound angry or surprised. Which made her all the more livid. Because he was right. She had no trouble believing his father was capable of evil. The man had been enemy number one in her house as long as she could remember. She felt that way because it was how her father had felt, and she’d carried on that legacy because it was all she had to give him. It was up to her to keep his hatred alive. And, oh God, she was confused and angry, and she wanted to drop to her knees and cry.
But more than that, she wanted to fall into his arms. He saw it in her eyes, she knew he did, and he stepped closer, making himself available. She turned away. She wouldn’t allow this need to take hold. She’d already made that clear.
“Stop turning away from me, Noelle, for Christ’s sake. I can see that you need me. And I need you too. Okay, guess what? We thought we were enemies once and discovered we weren’t. And maybe those initial feelings were born from sickness and trauma. Who the fuck cares? Does it really matter? Does it make them less real? I’m sick to death of deconstructing it. It’s been seven fucking years, Noelle. How long do we need to test the theory that we only want each other because of the suffering we experienced together?”
She was shaking, and tears burned the backs of her eyes. She wouldn’t look at him. She couldn’t.
“Or maybe the real problem,” he went on, his voice scratchy now with emotion, “the thing you really can’t get past, even after all this time, is that my father killed your mother, and I’m a Sinclair. No matter what, that will never change. We agreed not to talk about it back then, we agreed that we had less of a chance to escape as enemies. And so we put it aside, out of necessity. But that necessity ceased to exist once we were free, didn’t it? We never discussed it, Noelle, and maybe we need to now, because you’ve never let it go. Look at me.” She did. She lifted her eyes to his face. She owed him that much. “Does it fester inside? If you had acknowledged me as Callie’s father, she’d be a Sinclair too. By blood, she is. Which is it, Noelle? Are you afraid that we’ll take from you again like we did before? Or is it that when you look at me, when you look at our daughter, you wonder what your mother would think? How your father would feel? Does loving me seem like the deepest betrayal you could possibly commit?”
She let out a sob, but she didn’t break eye contact. “Sometimes both.” The whispered words eked from her lips like poison. She was afraid, and she was ashamed. It was awful, and it was true. He was right—her fear and her guilt had festered—and because she’d allowed it, part of her had rotted too. The admission had actual weight, because when it dropped from her lips, her shoulders curled forward, and she felt like she might fall to the floor.
He stepped forward, taking her in his arms, and she leaned against him. “I love you, Noelle. I would do anything to protect you. And our daughter. Haven’t I proved that? Haven’t I?” A moan made its way up her throat. He was solid and warm, and yes, he’d always protected her with everything he had to give. He’d always stepped toward her when perhaps he should have stepped away. She’d just confided her deepest, most shameful secret. She hadn’t even ever verbalized it for herself. But he had, because he knew her and loved her anyway. His father had used the legal system once to take from them—not just her mother’s life but her father’s dignity, his trust, their happiness, their future. But Evan would never do that. She didn’t deserve him. She didn’t want to be that person, so irrational and so unfair. No one was responsible for the sins of their father, least of all Evan, who had only ever been good to her.