Page 108 of Broken Vows

Gentle fingers brush away the tears streaming down my cheeks, and I lean into the warmth of his touch. Something like hope starts to nestle in my heart as years of uncertainty, months of love and pain, feelings of being inadequate, vanish with each passing moment. “What did you want to say to me?” my voice cracks.

He shifts and kneels in front of me until our faces are close. So many unfamiliar emotions move through his creased eyes. Hope tangled with uncertainty. Fear threaded through love. Apologies wrapped up in quiet promises. My chin trembles. Somewhere deep in my soul, I feel everything he’s trying to say.

“I fucking love you, Lexie. I love you.” He cups my face and leans closer. “My world has always revolved around you. I thought I could let you go. Back then, now, for years, I thought I could leave, but I never could. You are both my biggest weakness and my greatest strength.” My tears come freely now, traveling down my face and onto his hands. “You have no idea how much I regret everything—getting you expelled, the way I acted, letting you go. I was a fucking idiot, and I wasted seven years of our lives apart.” His gaze sharpens, pleading but steady. “If you’ll let me, I swear to God I’ll spend the rest of my life fighting for you, proving to you that you belong with me, that we… belong together. I’ll show you every day how sorry I am.”

A beat passes as I hold my breath.

“If… you’ll have me.”

And I cave. A choking sob breaks loose as I wrap my arms around him, pressing my face into his shoulder. My heart feels like it’s been revived. It was nearly destroyed, but it didn’t stop. It’s still beating, still fighting, still clinging on with everything it has to the belief that I am enough.

I’m broken. But Theo will heal me.

I will heal me.

His shirt absorbs my tears. His strong arms hold me as tight as a corset, his heart pounds against my chest, his shaky breaths intertwine with mine. So much time passes where I just let him hold me, until my brain, my body, my heart, accept that he is here with me and refuses to let go. He’s stroking my hair, he’s whispering in my ear, he’s supporting me when I feel like I’m going to collapse. Finally, after the sobs quiet, and my breaths even, I pull back and dash my gaze against his eyes. “What would you have done if I wasn’t here?”

His thumbs swipe off the rest of my tears, and he presses his forehead into mine. “I would’ve burned down the world to find you.”

My heart soars like it’s gotten its wings. I cup my fingers against his cheeks, the stubble tickling my fingertips, and sigh. “I love you, too.”

He pulls me in for a kiss. It’s nothing like the possessive, urgent kisses from before. This one is unhurried—intentional, deliberate. His lips move against mine like I’m the air he needs, the lifeline he’s been waiting for. He kisses me as though he’s releasing himself of the past and welcoming me into his future. I kiss him back with forgiveness, with the promise of tomorrow, with the quiet certainty that I am here, now, with him in this moment, where we’re meant to be.

Somewhere along the blurred lines of history, revenge, and ownership, of hope, sorrow, and love, our worlds collided. What I thought was a game turned into reality. What I thought was a trap became the truth.

Our love. It’s messy and impracticable and deeply imperfect.

But it’s ours.

And it’s worth fighting for.

EPILOGUE Lexie

12 MONTHS LATER

The entry door closes with a soft click, and my heartbeat immediately rises. I tiptoe across the room as quietly as possible—which is not easy to do in these monstrous heels—and lean against the master suite bathroom door to wait. Keys and a phone tossed onto a counter, shoes being removed, and a jacket getting hung up are the only faint sounds that travel into the room.

“Lexie? I’m home,” my husband calls out, and I bite back a smile.

My husband. I will never, ever get sick of saying that. We might be approaching our one-year anniversary, but I use the word “husband” as much as humanly possible.

Our engagement was the quickest in history. Or at least in Shades of White history. Once Theo professed everything that day at the bed and breakfast, he proposed the next day. Literally, the next day. I actually thought it was a joke. I woke up the next morning to find hundreds and hundreds of flowers (I still don’t know how I slept through that) and Theo kneeling beside the bed. Instead of proposing with a ring, he used one of my hair ties—no one can ever accuse him of not being romantic—and we spent the rest of the week shopping for rings.

After the shock wore off, I pointed out that literally less than forty-eight hours earlier, he was supposed to marry someone else. Wasn’t this a little fast, I’d asked. But he said he’d waited almost eight years to marry me and didn’t want to wait another second.

A month later, our wedding at Lake Welch was everything I could have wanted. Justin was my best man, and Annabelle Theo’s maid of honor (yeah, I know, it’s backwards). My mom and Dylan acted as witnesses, and Sydney was the officiant. Everything was simple and tailored to us. I decided to forgo shoes because of the sand; Theo wore a casual linen shirt and slacks. We had a fabulous dinner on a bar patio with more wine than should be legal. The only extravagant thing about the day was my dress. Theo and I went back to the store where I’d tried on dresses for Annabelle and he bought the one he loved on me the most.

Oh, the look the saleswoman gave me when Theo referred to me as his fiancée when we’d asked for the dress…

I wasn’t sure if things would change once the exposé on Theo’s father finally got published in the Times. Six months ago, Theo was tense, agitated, and fearful for the women leading up to the article. And I thought he’d remain that way. But once the story dropped, it was like a decade-long weight had been lifted. His father’s fall-out was swift. The school opened an investigation. More women stepped forward. His literary agent and publisher dropped him, speeches that he was supposed to give at various corporations and colleges were canceled. Theo’s mother remains steadfastly by his side, however, not to Theo’s surprise. But when Dr. Astor was finally removed from his tenured position at the university last month—which apparently is near impossible to do—Theo and I took a quiet, weekend-long trip to Nantucket Island to let it all sink in.

Marriage to Theo has been much easier than I thought. I used to secretly carry this fear that what we built was born out of infatuation and revenge, twisted into something obsessive—that it might fade once real life settled in. But it hasn’t. If anything, I can’t get enough of my husband, and he very clearly can’t get enough of me.

Do we fight? Of course we do. Mostly about my packed schedule and Theo’s constant worry that I’m overexerting myself. That, and he really, really doesn’t like other men touching me. His jealousy simmers just beneath the surface, and I know exactly how much to push before he’ll exact punishment by spanking me red and angry fucking me just the way I like.

But, just as easily, he reads me like a manual. He knows when I need to be held instead of challenged and when I need quiet reassurance, whispered reminders of how much he loves me.

“Where are you?” Theo calls from the lower level. I hear the impatience in his voice at not having met him right away.