Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 77016 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77016 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
“Oh God…” She gulps.
“That’s right. She got me to safety, and then she went back in to get the comic books. But they were already ablaze, and that’s what…” I shake my head.
“That’s what burned her,” she says monotonously. “The fire from your comic books.”
I don’t respond.
Not at first.
Every second she was gone felt like a lifetime. My heart was hammering in my chest, so hard it hurt. I remember screaming for her, begging her to come back. I didn’t want the comics anymore—I just wanted her. The smoke filled the air, thick and suffocating, and I stood there, helpless, as the fire swallowed the house whole.
Finally, I continue. “Maybe. I don’t know if it was the comic books or not. But she went back in, and she got dragged out by a fireman with third-degree burns on the left side of her body.”
“Tell me,” she finally says. “Tell me what you need right now.”
I take a sip of my bourbon. “No one knows that story,” I say. “Not even Ben or my dad. She told him she went back in to get our baby books.”
“Have you considered that maybe that’s the truth?”
“No. She was in my bedroom when the fireman dragged her out.”
“So your father knows, then.”
“He knows she was in my bedroom. He assumed that’s where my baby book was. It wasn’t. The baby books were in a cedar chest in the living room underneath some quilts.”
“And Ben doesn’t know?”
“He was only three. He had no idea where the baby books were.”
“And you did.”
“Yeah. Sometimes Mom and I would look at them together. I liked looking at my first lock of hair.” I shake my head. “I haven’t let myself think about this in so long.”
Skye reaches out and touches my cheek. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not. It’s never been okay, and it never will be.”
Because the guilt is again swallowing me whole.
And it hits me like a freight train.
The engagement ring in my safe back home.
How she let me take her beautiful ass—and how I wanted to be the only one to ever go there.
How I was the first man to give her an orgasm—and how I never wanted another man to have that pleasure.
How much I want a life with Skye. Everything I’ve planned.
How I was never complete until I met her.
All of it. Everything and nothing. Skye Manning is my world.
My whole fucking world.
My heart plummets.
Because now…
Now it can never, never be.
Chapter Fifty-One
“You now know more about me than anyone else,” I say to her. “Anyone.”
“You can trust me, Braden. All of your secrets are safe with me.”
I rake my fingers through my hair. “I do trust you. More than you know.”
“More than I know?” She lifts her eyebrows. “How can—”
I shoot my bourbon down my throat and groan. Then I regard her. Sternly.
Time for the moment of truth.
All my plans. All I thought I could have…
I brace myself. Cold plunge. It has to be said. It has to be said without emotion.
“This can’t continue.”
“What?” she asks softly, her voice cracking.
“Reardon found my weakness. I went to him, threatened him, and instead of going after me, he went after you, Skye. My Achilles’ heel.”
She rises to come toward me, but I stop her with a gesture.
She drops her ass back into her chair. “Everyone has an Achilles’ heel, Braden.”
“I don’t.” I pour myself another finger of bourbon. “I can’t.”
God, this is killing me.
There were times, after Addie, when I wondered if I even possessed a heart.
I do.
I know I do because it’s breaking in this moment. “Don’t you see?” I slam my glass down on the table. “I can’t keep you safe.”
“But you did keep me safe.”
“Because of circumstance. What if the doorman hadn’t texted me?”
“But he did.”
“Damn it, Skye!” I stand and hurl the glass against the wall. Shards scatter and rain onto the carpet. Amber liquid drips down the crown molding.
She cowers against the crash.
How I want to go to her, crush her to me, promise her that everything will be okay. That I love her, and that I’ll never leave her.
But I must be the strong one.
Until she steadies herself, stands straight, defiance exuding through her.
“You told me in the cornfield that there was only one master of control between us,” she says, her lips trembling. “You. You, Braden. You’re in control, and you protected me.”
“What if I can’t the next time?”
“Who says there’ll be a next time?”
“I was wrong,” I say. “I didn’t think anything could touch you. Touch us. I didn’t realize…”
“Didn’t realize what?” she urges.
“Even now, it surprises me how much I love you. How much I need you in my life. To be without you will be torture.”
She stands again. She tentatively reaches forward. “You don’t have to be without me.”
“Don’t you get it?” I rub furiously at my temple, easing a throbbing ache. “I have to let you go. I can’t take the chance—”