Page 121

Fresh tears scored down her cheeks. “Thanks, Cammie.”

“You know where I am if you need me,” I repeated.

She stood on a shaky exhale and had turned to leave when she suddenly stopped and looked back. “I saved you for him too, you know. Forde. I was such a wee bitch to you because I knew that no one stood a chance with him with you around. I knew it would kill him if anything happened to you.”

My lips trembled because I’d felt Forde’s lingering fear these past two days, and I hated that for him. “You deserve to find someone who feels that way about you.”

Caoimhe shrugged wearily. “I think I’ll just focus on me for a while.”

“Good. Take care of yourself.”

“I … admire you, Cammie.” She bit her lip as if embarrassed. “I … I don’t know if I would have followed you and Kenan that night if you hadn’t gone to the police about Greig in the first place. I know I said some crappy shit to you, but deep down, I was jealous of your bravery because I didn’t think I had that in me.”

An ache, the good kind, scored across my chest. “Now you know you do.”

Her mouth tugged up at the corner, and she gave a slight nod. Then with a small wave, Caoimhe turned on her heel and quietly left the room.

I smiled to myself, glad to be proven wrong about her.

Grateful to her.

Forde must have been waiting outside because he slipped into the room seconds after her departure. “All good?” he asked as he took the seat beside me, leaning on the bed so he could lift my hand and kiss the back of it.

I smoothed my fingers through his beard, caressing his cheek. “Do you want to hear something weird?”

His eyes gleamed with tenderness. “Go for it.”

“I got stabbed in the gut by a serial killer and yet my faith in humanity was just restored. Make that make sense.”

Forde chuckled, bringing my palm to his lips this time. He scattered multiple ticklish kisses over it before he looked deep in my eyes. “It makes sense because that’s who you are, Cameron McQuarrie. Miss Silver Linings. Miss Rainbow After the Rain. You can look at the world and see it and people for who they really are, but it never stops you from believing they can be better. That we can be the best version of ourselves. And I love you for that. More than I can ever say. You’re the wow to my woe.”

I chuckled at his Biffy Clyro reference, even as I tugged my hand free to curl my fingers in his shirt and yank him closer. “You haven’t kissed me properly in days, Forde Dallas.”

He grinned even as he leaned in. “That’s because you suffered a serious life-threatening injury.”

That he had saved me from. They told me my heart stopped and Forde restarted it with CPR. “But you brought me back to life,” I whispered, meaning it in more ways than one.

His eyes darkened with understanding.

“So kiss me … because it’s not a life worth living if I don’t get to kiss you.”

Forde’s features sharpened with the harshness of his overwhelming emotions before he pressed his mouth to mine to give me exactly what I needed.

Epilogue

CAMERON

When Forde heard about this (and he would), he was going to be so pissed off at me.

Honestly, I was pissed off at me as sweat gathered under my arms from the exertion.

I was supposed to rest for a few weeks, do very little activity, and generally go out of my mind with boredom. Unfortunately, I was a stubborn pain in the arse who believed she was superwoman and now deeply regretted that part of my personality.

I leaned against the wall outside Pages & Perks, coffee cup trembling in my hand as pain throbbed in my healing abdomen and my limbs felt like jelly. I was exhausted from a ten-minute walk. The doctors had told me it would be like this because my body was using up all my energy to heal. Did I listen?

Did I heck.

Staying at home meant being stuck alone with my thoughts, and my thoughts kept flashing back to the terrifying night Kenan Reese tried to murder me.