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She nodded, looking crushed, and I followed her to her car.
Once I was in the passenger seat and she was behind the wheel, we pulled onto the road before she asked, “She’s really your client?”
I inclined my head. “For a little over a year now.”
Bella blew out a harsh breath. “So she couldn’t have hired you just to get at me,” she realized as if disappointed to hear that. “You were her life coach before we ever got together.”
“Yep,” I answered. “And she told me her story before then too, so you’re not going to be able to say she made it up to try to sway Gray’s affections. I heard it before she and he hooked up too. I just—Jesus. I never realized it was you she was talking about. We always named people in code. I thought doing that would be respecting the privacy of complete strangers, but if I’d just known from the beginning…”
I turned to look at my beautiful, amazing Bella. She was so tough and fierce, but this had affected her without her even realizing it. We could’ve gotten help for her a fucking year ago if I’d just—
“What is she going to tell me, Fox?”
Both her hands were wrapped snugly around the steering wheel and her jaw was tense as hell. The cracks in her composure were growing wider.
I heaved out a breath. “You know what she’s going to tell you,” I said. “Somewhere in there, you have to have always known. You’re just tucking it away and hiding from it like you do when you’re scared of something, pretending it doesn’t exist because you don’t want to believe it’s true.”
Her chin began to tremble faster, and her gaze stayed steady on the road as she said, “It’s the blank nights, isn’t it? The nights I don’t remember. When I just thought I drank too much.”
There was the tough girl I knew she could be, facing it head-on.
Watching her face it without falling apart made me want to fall apart, though. For her.
I started to cry again because I couldn’t help it. I hated this helplessness. There was nothing to do for her, all these months after the fact. There would be no justice good enough to make it right, no words pure enough to immediately heal her wounds. I wanted to rage and inflict pain and somehow make it all go away for her. But that wasn’t going to be possible.
“I’m sorry,” I choked out, trying to control myself. “I’m so sorry you have to go through this.”
She didn’t say anything as she pulled into her drive and killed the engine. Then she turned to me. “Do I still have to listen to her?”
I smiled softly. “Yes. If not for you, then for El. And for Gray, too. I think they really like each other. So you can’t keep hating her after this.”
Growling out her annoyance, she rolled her eyes. “But being nasty and rude to her has helped hold all the pain and insecurity inside me at bay. Hating her has been the only thing that’s kept me level.”
“Well then, I guess I’ll have to be what keeps you level from here on out,” I offered with raised brows.
That seemed to melt her resistance. Leaning toward me, she clasped her hand around the back of my neck as we pressed our brows together. “Are you disappointed by how terrible I was to her at the gym?”
The vulnerable tremble in her voice nearly slayed me. Cupping her cheeks in my hands, I made sure she looked into my eyes before I said, “I think you were gripped by an extreme emotion you couldn’t control, and it exploded out of you in the fastest, easiest way it knew possible. Everyone experiences them. It happens to all of us. But it’s how you’re going to respond to it now that’s going to make all the difference. And I have every confidence you’ll make me proud to be the one at your side.”
“God,” she rasped, her eyes swirling with tears as she smiled big. “I don’t deserve you. You are by far the best man I’ve ever been with. I love you so much.”
Wait, what?
I jerked back to gape into her eyes. “Am I hearing things, or did you just say—?”
“Yes,” she confirmed with a watery roll of her eyes and a nervous laugh. “I love you. I actually told Gracen I loved you first—sorry about that—so I don’t see the need to hide from the truth any longer. I love you, and it’s strangely the easiest thing ever to admit. I want the world to know, and I have no idea why I hid from this for as long as I did, but—”
“Doesn’t matter,” I assured her. “You’re saying it now. That’s all I care about.” Literally trembling from joy, I rasped, “I love you too.”
Our lips came together over the center console, and I cupped her face in my hands as she knocked my hat off to bury her fingers in my hair. “Forever and forever,” I swore between each heated peck.
But the moment was broken all too soon when an annoying set of knuckles rapped against the passenger side window. I turned to scowl out the glass at Gracen.
He merely arched an eyebrow, letting me know he wasn’t too happy with me, either, probably for keeping my relationship with his sister from him. But all he called through the glass was, “Wrap it up. We got shit to sort out.”
Bella made tea. After telling the rest of us to sit at the table, she made herself busy, bustling around the kitchen to keep from thinking about what was to come.
“Can I help?” El asked, hopefully, appearing to need something to do to occupy her time as well.
