AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“When did you want me?”
“Always.” His answer is easy and confident, without hesitation. “When did I fall in love with you, though? When did I … feel this possessiveness over you?”
“Was it when I got pregnant?” I ask him the question I’ve wondered for the last nearly year. Everything changed when I told Connor I was pregnant.
“Before that.” He admits, “I couldn’t stand the idea of him touching you.” I remember the argument we had. Connor didn’t want me to go back. But we were so close to having our plans realized, and I wanted vengeance more than I cared to protect myself.
“He could have found out the baby wasn’t his.”
“We were careful …” I start and all the thoughts and worries race through my mind. “If Nolan wasn’t yours?—”
“He’s mine.” His answer is final. “That is all that matters. No one will ever hurt him.”
My throat closes, wanting nothing else than for my son to be safe. With the feud between families ended by bloodshed, he should be safe.
“I will do anything to keep him safe.”
“What if they find out?” It is my only worry. The only thing that keeps me from sleeping peacefully now.
“Fletcher and I would kill them all before we let anything happen to you or our son.”
The anxiousness doesn’t leave me. “I just want it all to be over,” I whisper, my gaze falling to his chest.
His hand wraps around mine and he brings my knuckles to his lips, planting a kiss there before telling me, “I asked too much of you.” The remorse and regret are evident in his tone.
“What’s done is done.”
That’s what we’ve said for years as we fell deeper into each other’s arms and more and more consumed with plotting an execution to right the sins of the past.
I’m only grateful I’ll no longer be sleeping with the enemy.
“You did everything I told you to. You are my good girl.” He kisses my forehead and the pride and comfort that come with his praise nearly lull me to sleep.
“I love you. Not only for what you do for me, but because I know you. I know all of you.”
His hand slips down my curves when he tells me he loves me too.
“You didn’t answer my question, though … When did you fall for me?” I don’t know why I need to know so badly. But I do.
“Around the time I told you we were pregnant?” I guess.
“I loved you before that … you know that.”
“I know,I just—” I have to steady my breathing before I can get out this pain that radiates inside of me. “But when you … when you wanted to stop it all … when you wanted me to run away from him and be with you because I was pregnant … I was afraid to tell you because I knew you didn’t feel for me what I felt for you but something seemed different that day.”
He smiles weakly and stares at the spinning fan as he says, “I’ll never forget that day.”
Before I can press him again, wanting to know when, he tells me, “I fell for you when you came to me with a proposition. It was slow, not all at once. When you told me you knew how I felt.” His words are choked and I remember that moment. When I met him at his wife and child’s gravestones. My dead husband took from us a love that will always be missed. But Connor and I found each other and he won’t take that away now.
He pulls me in close. “I fell in love with you when my soul realized I needed you to exist. I don’t know how else to describe it. Without you, I didn’t want to live.”
Silence surrounds us as I realize the depth of our connection.
“It’s our secret, though,” he reminds me.
“I know.”
His voice is reassuring when he tells me, “You’ll do well playing the part, you have before.”
“I’ll pretend as long as you want, whatever you want. So long as you love me.”
His grip on me tightens and he pulls me in as close as I could possibly be. He’s my savior, though everyone else thinks he’s my enemy. I can only hope I’m the same to him.
“Tell me you love me again,” I whisper against his lips.
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
