She clutches me tighter, face buried in my neck. I can feel her tears on my shoulder. “That’s okay, he’s your dad. That’s okay. You’ve been through enough.”
I don’t know what I did to deserve her. This sweet girl who can overlook my father’s sins for a future with me.
“None of it feels like a win.” Dead or alive, imprisoned or on the run, sorry or not sorry. None of it makes anything feel better.
She runs her fingers through my hair, her other hand stroking my back as I drag in a shuddering breath. Exhaustion saps the life from my bones. “It isn’t a win at all, Alex. Whoever gave you the impression that this was a situation to be won or lost, they were lying.” She pulls away, gaze sincere like shereallywants me to hear her. “There is more strength in mercy than there is in cruelty. You stood in front of the man who tried to make you a monster and you showed him that every effort he made was in vain.”
“I know, but he …”
A tender hand swipes my hair from my eye, and I swear I feel a crack in my heart stitch itself together. “Forgive yourself.”
I trail my gaze from her swollen bottom lip to the chest that rises in steady, sure breaths. “Is your knee okay?”
She can’t squash her smile. “It’s fine. Nothing’s broken. And never mind my knee, you should see what I can do with a crowbar.”
I could just ask her to marry me right here.
Not romantic, Alex.
Christ, I love her. I love them all. I love them all so much it aches. I’m desperate to have all eight of them in my arms.
I’m going to get them away from all of this. I’m not going to let any of them know fear like this ever again.
Chapter 26
OPHELIA
The ache in my knee wakes me up, like it has each morning for the past seven days.
And just like every other day this week, a snoring Josie is wedged between Alex and me in bed.
I fly home late tonight.
I’m trying not to think about it.
I flyhome. I keep saying that, but I don’t even know where home is, anymore. When I say the word in my head, no picture or place accompanies it. Really, I’m just flying back to Scotland before I get expelled.
I miss Colette, Magda, and Divya, too. I’m craving a movie night with them, so we can unpack the events of the last few weeks with popcorn and beers. They spam my phone all day, constantly checking on me in the group chat.
Alex is asleep beside me—someone so in love with me that he bought the car we spent our first night together in.
It feels like I have six little sisters now. Elise is like a third parent in my life, dishing out the best advice. Cain Green is in hospital, likely his last stop before heading to a maximum-security prison to live out the rest of his days. He’ll never shred another family apart again.
It’s surreal. It’sridiculous.
Peace is all Alex and I have ever longed for, and I’m beginning to feel it. It’s here in this room. It’s in the way the line between his brows is relaxed as he sleeps. It’s in the way that Cain is finally out of their lives. It’s in first couple of cardboard boxes Alex has packed up, preparing to move anywhere that isn’t here.
He shifts slightly, opening an eye. The bruise on his eyebrow is fading, and though it’s only been a week, the events that transpired in his office are fading, too.
Cain Green has been shackled to me for years. I’ve been dragging him around like a heavy weight, turning even the most level of days into an uphill climb. But when Fleur shot him, I finally let go.
Cain may die soon, or in thirty years. But seeing him on the floor, begging for whatever scraps of his life remained, I realized that watching his family move on, losing his children, losing his wife—it’s punishment enough for me.
“What’s on that mind of yours?”
“Guess.”
He smiles. “Knowing you, it’s either the pointlessness of life and the decay of modern society, or croissants.”
