Page 98 of My Beautiful Sin

“Tolerate him,” Devlin says, but I can see amusement in his eyes and know he’s only teasing.

He strokes my hair. “I do like Brandy, but that wasn’t the only reason I went after that guy tonight.” His hand fists in my hair, forcing me to tilt my head back and look straight at him. “I kept imagining that it could have been you.”

There’s an unfamiliar intensity in his eyes, and I try to shrug off his words. “I’m not Brandy. I can take care of myself.”

“You can,” he agrees. “Until the time you can’t.” He releases me, then turns away.

I watch him pace. I’m certain that he’s thinking about the years when he wasn’t around and couldn’t watch over me. And even now, when someone is sending me harassing texts or aiming SUVs straight at me. “I’m fine,” I say gently. “The Range Rover incident was scary, sure, but you can’t be beside me every moment. And I promise to be vigilant.”

“Sometimes vigilance isn’t enough.”

“Devlin, I—”

“I know you were almost gutted in New York. He had a knife. He could have sliced your throat. Or worse.”

My blood turns to ice. “It was you. Oh, God, Devlin. It was you.”

My legs are shaky as I walk into the living room. I feel heavy and sluggish, as if I’m pushing through the mire of those long, lost years. I settle onto his couch, then kick off my shoes and pull my knees up and hug them to my chest. “I looked right at you—at that larger than life man who’d rescued me—and I didn’t even recognize you.”

He sits on the table opposite me, then leans forward and presses his hand against my bare foot. “I didn’t want you to.”

“How often did you watch me?” We’ve talked about this a little, already. About how he kept an eye on me over the years. At first I’d been angry, because I’d been so alone, with no idea where he’d gone. But that anger faded to sadness and even a bit of sympathy. Because I’d been blissfully ignorant, whereas Devlin knew where I was and what I was doing. He knew if I was safe or in danger.

And yet he couldn’t speak to me. Not if he wanted to keep me safe.

Not if he wanted to keep his secret.

“You shouldn’t have done anything,” I say now. “I might have recognized you. Someone else might have recognized me, then put it all together and figured out you used to be Alex.”

He shrugs. “You’re right. But do you really think I could stand by and watch you getting hurt and not do anything?”

I’d been looking down at my hands, but now I lift my head and meet his eyes. “You left, didn’t you?”

“Ellie…”

I draw in a breath. “I know. I get it. I do.” I mean the words, too. But that doesn’t change the fact that I wish things could have been different. At the very least, I wish we could get back the ten years we lost.

We’ve talked about this before, too. What I do—or what I did before Devlin came into my life. The way I chased danger. But I was always in control. Like the guy with the BMW my first night in Laguna Cortez. That was me calling the shots.

At least, it was until Devlin showed up.

Until I came to Laguna Cortez, I took what I wanted. It was my game. My way of telling fate or death or whatever to go fuck herself.

“You wanted the thrill,” Devlin says, understanding me well enough to know where my thoughts have gone. “You wanted the danger.”

“Always,” I say, and I hear the defiance in my voice.

“But you didn’t really want to die.”

I pull my hands free and hug myself. “Didn’t I?” It’s a real question, because I’m not sure I know anymore. I don’t want to die now; of that much, I’m certain. But back then? When I was all alone? When everyone I’d ever loved was either dead in the ground or dead to me?

“Not everyone,” Devlin says after I tell him as much. “You had Brandy. Lamar. You were alone in New York, maybe, but you weren’t alone.”

“It was still too much,” I say. “It was all too much. I remember going to the museums in Manhattan or the zoo and thinking that my mom would never see it. I remembered how much my tough cop father had loved opera. But he never went to The Met. And Peter—he’d been before, and he used to tell me that we’d go. That he’d show me all the cool places tourists don’t see. But that wasn’t going to happen, either.”

“No,” Devlin agrees. “It wasn’t.”

“So how the fuck can you know what I wanted back then? I was alone and lonely. I spent my days in a haze, and the only respite was school and the magazine and the nights I went out.”