Page 145 of Ballrooms & Blackmail

It’s old and yellowed, the edges worn.

I freeze, and maybe I shouldn’t open it, shouldn’t be nosy…but a voice in my head is screaming at me that this is important.

Really freaking important.

So, I carefully peel back the flap.

Then suck in a breath at the photo.

It’s Thorn and…Claudette—I know that in an instant. Her eyes are full of shadows but she’s smiling, her head resting on Thorn’s shoulder, her arm around his middle.

Trusting him.

God, they both look so young.

And they were both burdened with far too much.

And yet, they found a slice of home in each other.

“Pascal recovered that for me,” he says quietly and I jerk, not having heard him come back. “I’d deleted it from my phone, knew it was dumb to even risk taking it. But, God, that night, for just a few hours we were just two dumb teenagers in love, wanting to document the moment.”

He carefully takes the picture from me, traces a finger over her face.

“She was beautiful,” I murmur.

“She was, but most of her beauty came from who she was inside.”

“Will you tell me more about her?”

His eyes drift to mine, but he doesn’t speak for a long moment.

I know it’s because of the pain inside him, because of the loss of this woman—the woman whose choices shaped so much of what came after.

The woman who battled monsters.

The woman who never got the future she deserved.

Thorn touches my cheek, and I don’t realize I’m crying until he wipes away the tears. Then his lips twitch. “She’d be proud of you for the stunt with the Lyons.”

“Yeah?”

“She was a fighter, fierce in every sense of the word, but she was more than that too. God, she could make me laugh.” A sigh. “But she could also make me mad. She refused to give in, even when it would make things easier, and she refused to give up on me, even when I told her I couldn’t help.”

“Because she saw the real you deep inside.”

A muscle in his jaw flexes and he’s quiet for a few seconds before he nods. “Yeah, little hen. I think you’re right.”

“I know I’m right.”

A chuckle. “Who’s fierce now?”

I grin and lean closer, cuddling against him, grounding him and me in the present, even with the past all around us. “Tell me more about her.”

He does.

He tells me how she protected the kids who were taken with her.

He tells me about that wicked sense of humor.