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She squeezes my hands and looks up at me.
“And Henry? You really think he won’t screw us over?”
“It won’t get that far. I plan on doing a test run before I send you out with it. Mel will have a second bead as well. I’m hoping Black will offer to accompany you two. Gabe said he’ll be ordered to drive you to a location and Mel will follow to close the deal. The exchange is done onsite.”
“How much money are we talking about? It seems like a weird question, but I was wondering…” her voice trails off.
“You're wondering how much you're worth? Avery, that’s not an indication of anything except hatred.”
“Five figures? The same amount you paid?” She looks up at me and pleads with those sexy eyes.
“Fuck, Avery.” I run my hands through my hair and push off the couch. Walking away from her, I say, “I’d give everything I have to keep you out of this.”
“I know you would." She gets up and walks over to me. She splays her fingers across my chest and takes my face in her hand. She turns my chin until I’m looking her in the eye. Her scent fills my head and I want to pull her against me and never let go. "And I know you don’t like talking about how we got together.”
“I returned you.”
“Yeah, that.” She smiles. “I’m just glad things turned out this way. I keep wondering if I’d do it again, and I want to think I wouldn’t--but if that means losing you--I couldn’t walk away. I love you, Sean.”
“I love you, too.” I pull her into my chest and feel her breasts press against me as her arms lace behind my back. “We have a few hours before everything is ready tomorrow morning. I’d like to spend that time with you, doing things that make you squee and go cray-cray.”
She giggles against me and I can’t keep the smile off my face. “When you put it like that, how can I say no?”
CHAPTER 10
SEAN
Henry gives us a guest room and leaves quickly. It's midday and the sunlight cuts through the windows forming shafts of light on the rugs. Fresh clothing lays on the canopy bed. The room is dressed in reds and golds. I notice a plaque with a unicorn and a lion on the wall above the fireplace. It's as if the room is in a time warp.
“He has a bit of a fetish with old crap, doesn’t he?” Avery glances around, lips parted.
“Circa 1500 or so, yes, and he’s proud of his period pieces. It wouldn’t surprise me if the window panes downstairs are original to that duke’s home that he looted.” I walk through the room and look into the bath. It’s European style, too, with a basic shower minus the curtain, and massive claw-foot tub.
“I would have never thought he’d like this stuff," Avery says, laughing to herself. "He seems so cutting edge. I thought he’d have a robot staff and moving sidewalks in his super-modern house. Not a relic from the old country.”
Sean shrugs. “To each his own. What do you want our house to look like? Modern? Country?” She sticks out her tongue at me. “What, you don’t like shabby chic?”
Avery walks over to me and pushes me on my shoulders. The bed is a step behind me. I step back and then she shoves me again.
“Sit, Mr. Jones.” She shoves me hard and I fall back on the massive bed. Avery grins and pushes me back onto the bed as she straddles my lap. My response to her begins to strain against my jeans. She smiles when she feels me reacting to her. I reach for her waist and rest my hands on the curve of her hips.
“I know, French modern.”
“Maybe." She smiles at me and nods slowly. "Or Tuscan with an Avery flare.”
“An Avery flare? Is that code for glitter?”
“You know me so well.” She laughs. The sound is rich, so filled with joy it makes me want to hear it again. Her laughter is like food for my soul. I can never have enough.
I’m pulled from my thoughts when her smile fades and her gaze locks on my mouth. She sits there, above me, looking down at me like an angel. Her dark hair falls over her shoulders as she leans forward. Slowly, she inches toward me and her lips part slightly.
She stops just above my mouth and brushes her breasts against me ever so slightly. The sensation is all consuming. The lightness of the touch makes me want it even more. I slip my hands up her back to pull her down, trying to feel those perfect curves press against my chest, but she remains where she is, just above me.
“Do you trust me, Sean?” The way she says it makes my stomach flutter. It's as if she wants to torment me with light kisses and thinks asking my permission will make me say yes.
She must read my mind, because she quickly adds, “I’ve been thinking about things, things that terrify both of us, and I want to see if there’s middle ground.”
“There’s not.” I push up on my elbows, but she swats my shoulder and pushes me back into the bed. I try not to smile at her even though I want to.
There’s something about Avery that ignites everything I’ve attempted to repress deep within me--no, it was beyond that. I didn’t repress my emotions, my feelings that lead to joy, happiness, or hope. I destroyed them.
All this time, my face has been devoid of emotion. No one can read me, ever. I don’t allow it. My heart isn’t on my sleeve--it’s been decimated by my own hand. There’s been no trace of emotion left within me, and yet--this damaged, beautifully broken woman found a speck of hope, a remnant of the man I once was. She could have used it against me. I wouldn’t have seen it coming. For all I knew, I was barren and utterly broken. She took that scrap of a soul, as she calls it, and nurtured it.
Now it wants to grow and will flourish if I let it. The thing is, it’s been so long since I trusted anyone that I struggle not to maintain my old ways. So when she says something that makes me want to smile, I don’t. When she does something that makes me want to laugh, I swallow that joy and banish it from my face.
My emotions have rooted within me once again and are dying to burst free. I feel the need to laugh tickle me from within, and it’s getting harder to hide the joy she brings. These things have the power to destroy me. I’ve perfected the art of living alone and needing no one. I’m self-sufficient in every sense of the word. That ability made it possible to erect walls thicker than any vault. They were impenetrable, indestructible, but Avery floated through, like a ghost, aimed directly for my heart. I was too shocked to run, too elated to remain alone.
I can push her away, I can protect myself, but at some point she might not come back. Life without Avery would be unbearable. I can’t fathom it.
There’s one thing that frightens me as much as it exhilarates me. She senses it. I know she does. It’s beyond skin on skin or pretty words that fade after fucking someone who doesn’t matter.
Avery matters.
Avery knows she matters.
That’s the bridge we have to cross. There’s no way Avery will allow us to stay on the safe side of our emotions, half alive and hiding behind walls of our own making. I press my lips together and try to relax, but I can feel the nerve in my jaw twitching. It wants to take action, contort my face to a scowl, and silence my words. The fastest way to pierce a heart is with indifference. Stubborn urges rise up within me, making me want to lash out and run.
No one has ever terrified me more.
No one has seen what she sees in me. Avery perceives a good man, a man I once strove to be but abandoned. Truth be told, I wonder if that version of me would have been more successful in love and in life. I thought his heart was a weakness, something that would lead to his demise. I murdered him long before I lost Amanda. I destroyed him before anyone else could.
I’m so distant from my thoughts I don’t even call that young man me. I say him because it feels less personal. It makes his mistakes sting less. It divides my life in a way that creates a dichotomy of weakness and strength. Things Sean could do and things he could not. There is nothing else.
Until I met Avery.
The good man I was once cried out from the wasteland that was once my soul, begging me to hold on to her. I
know she’s my last chance at…life, love, everything.
The human being I’ve become is not who I strove to be. When I was a boy I wanted power, but I also wanted grace. I wanted to be compassionate and trustworthy. I didn’t want to resemble my father in any shape or form. When I surpassed his callousness, his cruelty, I remember understanding him for the first time. It made me think this path was walked for a reason. I saw why Ferro men cling to this path, this attitude, this life.
It’s difficult to admit the enormousness of my mistake, but I no longer wish to remain on this path. The only way to fix this is through her--through Avery. I know she’s my only chance. She’s compassionate where I am calloused, hopeful where I am cynical. She has more to be afraid of from life than I can fathom, and yet--here she is, with me.
Is it a change in the truest sense of the word, to revert to a previous version of you? How hard will it be to find myself amongst the ashes and carnage that I’ve left in my wake all these years?
Will she run when she realizes this part of me will always be with me, trying to pull me back into darkness? That I'll never feel good enough, strong enough, or tough enough to help her endure the storms life throws our way?
