Page 70 of The Beast

Exhaustion catches up with me, and I settle onto the sofa as he moves around the kitchen. The space is warm despite being underground, with the only natural light coming from four high windows.

“How long have you been living down here?” I ask.

“Since I came back. A little shy of four years.” He sets a mug of coffee on the table beside me, then sits on the opposite end of the sofa with his own cup.

“Before that, I was with Travis and Anissa in Aspen. They’re the reason I’m alive.”

“The reason? What do you mean?”

He’d been looking straight at me. Now he seems focused more on my chin. “Travis found me,” he says softly. “ In the woods, barely alive. He took me back to his place—I managed to stay conscious long enough to beg him not to call the cops. He’d been a medic in the military, then a Texas Ranger after that, and he’d taught Anissa what he knew. Between the two of them, they kept me alive. Well, them and my dreams of vengeance.”

“Against those men,” I whisper. “And me.”

“Just you,” he says. “The men were nothing to me. Not then. Not while I was trying to hang on.” He flashes an ironic grin. “So, yeah, I’m alive because I loved you enough to truly hate you.”

I blink back fresh tears. “I’m so sorry.”

He takes my hand. “Don’t be. We’ve danced this one already. It wasn’t you. But, hey, the fact that I thought it was really did give me something to live for, dark though that might be.”

I bite my lower lip, hesitate, then plow forward. “About Anissa. Was there ever—” I cut myself off with a shake of my head, feeling like a seventh-grader. Gabe, however, looks delighted.

“I love her,” he says, his voice completely serious.

“Oh.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. “Like a sister.”

I scowl and suppress the urge to whack him with a pillow. Then I say fuck it and smack him anyway. Because this is what I missed. Talking with him. Being close to him. Sharing all sorts of gooey emotional stuff with him.

As if he can read my mind, he reaches over and twines his fingers with mine. Hell, maybe he can read my mind.

“What about your brothers? I mean, you texted Leo, but why didn’t you reach out before? To him or any of them? They could have been searching for the men all this time.

He shakes his head. “No. Those men. You. Your father. They were my prey, not my brothers’.”

“But still. Just for them to know you were alive.”

“Couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk anyone being dragged into my war with your father. And I couldn’t face them.” He stops, then looks down at the floor. “I couldn’t tell them what had happened, what I believed you’d done. Leo loved you like a sister. If I’d told him...” He trails off with a shudder and a very harsh sound.

“No,” I say. “Leo would have defended me.”

“And I would have thought he was compromised. Fooled, the way I’d been fooled.” He drags his fingers through his hair, then reaches for my hand again.

“I wasn’t thinking clearly,” he says, his fingers twining with mine. “Wasn’t capable of it. After what they did to me, I can’t—I couldn’t—trust anyone.

“And now?” The question comes out softer than I’d intended, and for a moment, I feel like I’m made of glass.

“I guess that part of me’s healed up,” he says, just as softly. “I trust you, Bella. Looking back, I’m ashamed I ever didn’t.”

“It hurt,” I tell him. “I won’t lie. But I get it. And I’m so sorry you had to go through all of that. That my own father put you through all of that. Sorry,” I repeat, “but not surprised. I have no illusions about that man.”

“He managed one good thing.”

I frown. “Seriously? What?”

“You.”

My heart literally flutters, and I lean over to kiss him on the cheek, his beard tickling my lips. A kiss that turns much hotter and wilder when he shifts, capturing my mouth with his in a kiss that’s wild and desperate and needy. The kind of kiss that heats skin and melts bone and sends need running through your veins instead of blood.