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“It happened. I don’t want to think about it right now,” I said. The sobs had emptied me out and I felt like a shell that could collapse or blow away. I needed something—him—to anchor me down, to keep me from fading away altogether. “I need you, Ronan.” I kissed his chin, his lips, pulling him to me. “Please…I need to go away with you for a little while.”
“Shiloh, wait…”
“Please.” I kissed his neck, my hands going into his hair. “Bibi’s asked me a thousand times what I need. This is what I need. You. Please…”
I found his mouth with mine and kissed him, the tears burning up in heated desperation.
He relented for a moment, kissing me deep, and then stiffened and took me by the shoulders. “Shiloh…I can’t. You’re upset.”
“Yes, I’m upset,” I said fiercely. “But I know what I’m doing. What I want. I want you, Ronan. I want…us.”
The truth of it reached him. More than anything, I needed to know we were okay. If Ronan could still love me, then I might have a chance of surviving this. I could get out of bed in the morning and get back to work.
He held my face in his hands, his silver eyes boring into mine. “I love you.”
Now that I’d cried, it seemed the tears didn’t want to stop. “I love you. I love you so much.”
We fell into each other then, kissing with increasingly heated need. Last night receding with every touch of his skin on mine, with every kiss. I sank deep into his intense gaze—my reflection a shred of evidence that I wasn’t merely an ugly remnant of a terrible night. I was beautiful in Ronan’s eyes and his eyes never lied.
My self-worth didn’t live or die with Ronan, but that night as he held me, kissed and touched me; as he entered me with the heavy solidity of him, I took the first step to reclaiming myself. With his love, he gave me something I could believe in.
Quietly, Ronan brought me to release, a swell of pleasure against a tsunami of pain. I held him tight to me as he grunted against my neck, spilling his own release deep inside me, warming me from the inside out. Filling the emptiness in me with him and the essence of him.
After, he held me for a long time, lying on his back with his arm around me and my head on his shoulder. But his expression grew more and more grim, clouding his eyes.
“What are you thinking?” I asked, running my fingertip in the worry lines between his brows.
“I’m thinking about what you said earlier. Half of me is him.”
I nodded.
“I said something like that to you. About my dad. And you told me that I was nothing like him.”
I smiled sadly. “And you didn’t believe me.”
“No,” he said. “And I know you won’t believe me if I say the same about you.”
“It’s hard. Impossible, even.”
He nodded against my hair. “Yeah. But maybe…” He paused, and I felt him struggling to sort his thoughts, to say exactly what he meant. “We’re supposed to trust each other, right?”
“Yes.”
“So…maybe we need to do that now. Trust me when I tell you, Shiloh, that the last fucking thing you are is ugly. Or empty. Or…whatever you’re feeling about what your mom said. You’re still you. You’re fucking perfect.”
My eyes filled. “I’m not. I’m so far from perfect, Ronan…”
“You don’t get to decide that.” He glanced down at me gravely. “You have to trust me. And I’ll try to trust you too. That’s all we can do right? Trust and keep going.”
I nodded against his chest, and my eyes grew heavy. They burned from the tears that I’d finally let go, but it was purifying. The hollow feeling inside me was refilling, slowly, with determination to do what Ronan had said—trust and keep going.
I slept and when I woke it was to the rustle of Ronan putting on his clothes. I glanced at the clock that said it was a little after eleven.
“Where are you going?”
“Out.” He drew on his boots.
“Now? It’s late.”
