AllFreeNovel
Share Us
As she stared, the fury rose inside her. It bit inside her mind, dug vicious claws into her soul, until she screamed with the rage and the pain that exploded through her.
In one long hard swipe of her arm they crashed to the floor. Glass shattered, flew around her. She pressed her fists to her stomach and let the first sob free. It ripped out of her. It tore through her. It was a howl of agony that echoed through the house and caused the man standing in the doorway to flinch.
Noah felt the ragged pain inside him as though it were his own. Sharper, brighter than any pain Diego Fuentes had ever dealt him.
He watched as she knelt in the middle of that broken glass, lifted the broken frame of their wedding picture, and held it to her breasts as she curled over it.
The sobs were wrenching, torn, desperate, and he couldn’t handle it. He hadn’t been able to handle the pain since the moment he walked from those caves.
He had lost it. Lost control. Lost that icy edge. He had slashed through the militia in a rage so brilliant, so white hot, it had terrified him.
He moved across the room now, still bloodstained. He hadn’t changed clothes. Dirt and blood were caked on him. He smelled of death. Reeked of it. But he hadn’t been able to stay away from her. He hadn’t forgotten the knowledge in her eyes as he walked away from her. Heard her last desperate cry in his ears.
She had known. All along, his Bella had known who he was. And still, she had loved him. She had waited. She had cried and she had fought for him in every way that she knew how.
He bent his knees and crouched down in front of her, staring at the past, destroyed in front of his eyes.
Her head lifted, tears streaked her pale face, fury burned inside her.
“Six years,” she sobbed accusingly. “Six fucking years. Where were you?”
He stared at her, at the pictures, and he knew the truth for himself. “Nathan truly died, Sabella. The only part left living was his love for you.”
Not he was dead. Or her husband was dead.
Sabella heard the quiet acceptance in his voice, the resignation. And in part, he was right. The man he had been had changed. Changed drastically, but he was still the man she loved.
“But that part of him is here,” she whispered. “Has always been here.”
She couldn’t stop the sobs, the tears, the agony. “And that part was alive inside me. No matter the name, Noah, no matter who or what you want to call yourself, that part of you has always been with me.”
His hands hung between his bent knees, his hair was tangled, dusty, and fell over the savage angles of his face like a fall of worn silk.
His eyes were wilder, darker than they had been before he disappeared. His face sharper. His brows were the same. Hi
s lower lip a little thinner. But he was still her Irish. He was still her husband.
He looked at the pictures and finally lifted another of them together. He held it out to her. “This man,” he said gently. “Nathan Malone didn’t know the darkness, Sabella. He didn’t know the hell other men could inflict. He didn’t know the monster that lived under his own skin.”
She shook her head.
“Listen to me, baby. The man you married didn’t kill first. He didn’t go after blood on a mission. He pulled his punches, he tried to be fair. Until he was forced to spend nineteen months pumped up on hell’s own mix of drugs. All he had to do was break his marriage vows to find death. To escape it. All he had to do was fuck whatever they brought him, and he would have known peace.”
Shock and disbelief brought her mind to a stop.
Noah sighed heavily. “I was a SEAL, but I was also one of the few used for extreme high clearance missions. I knew things. They thought if they could force me to break my vows, then the rest of my honor would fall by the wayside.” He shook his head at the thought. “They brought women that looked like you. That could mimic your pretty Southern accent. But I always knew. I knew; I would look at them and in my head, I’d come here.” He looked around the room, his expression heavy, filled with pain. “I saw through your eyes. I felt your pain. Your love. And went mad from the agony. But you were seeing through me too, weren’t you, Bella?”
Bella. He called her Bella. Not Sabella, rife with hunger and pain. But Bella, as he had called her before.
“I knew,” she whispered tearfully. “I called Jordan, and he lied to me.” Her lips trembled. “And you lied to me, Noah.”
He shook his head. “I never lied to you.”
“You told me you were dead,” she cried out furiously. “Stared me in the eye, and lied to me.”
“Bella. Nathan Malone is dead.” He caught her shoulders, shook her.
“No!” she screamed back. And she couldn’t hit him. She wanted to, and she couldn’t.
