AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She gasped. “What?”
“I got it back. Was gonna shoot him in the head.”
She sat straight up, staring down at me. “What?”
I pulled her back down. “Tobes and Mateo talked me down.” I shrugged and turned back to the sky. “Lucky asshole.”
“Jesus,” she breathed. “So, he’s in jail now?” she asked, sounding more tentative than I’d heard all night.
I tugged her into my arms. “Yes, baby.”
She nodded against my chest as I rubbed her back in slow circles and she grew quiet. Too quiet. That’s when I realized she had my t-shirt gripped in her fist like a lifeline.
“Faith? Love?” I tried to crane my neck to look in her face, but she was tight and burrowed into my chest.
“He tried to kill me,” she said, her whispered voice stopping me cold as I sensed her walls finally crumbling around her. The delayed adrenaline coming down.
I relaxed and held her close like she seemed to need. “I know, baby. I know. But he didn’t, and that’s what matters.” I pressed a kiss to her head. “You’re a badass. You survived.” Another kiss as my own tears threatened again at the thought of her dying that night. Of what she lost. Of what—we lost. Because I wasn’t going anywhere. “You’re here. Alive. With me.”
She lifted her face to look at me, her gaze so wounded yet triumphant, it stole my breath. “But I can’t give you children. You got that, right?”
“I did.” I held her face in my hands. “Listen to me, Faith McMasters. After everything we’ve gone through, there is nothing that could ever make me love you any less. Nothing.”
Her gaze dropped. “If we end up—”
“There’s no if, baby,” I said. “We’re together. Forever. So, if you want kids, we’ll find a way to make it happen, okay? But either way, you’re stuck with me.”
Relief flooded her eyes. “Are you sure?”
“Am I sure?” I smirked. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been sure since the first time you batted those big baby blues my way.”
“Even with no babies of our own?”
I cupped her cheek. “What he took from you was horrible, but he can’t take what we have.”
Her expression changed at the mention of CJ. “I don’t understand, Adam. Why would he do that?”
“I don’t—”
“CJ!” she exclaimed then. “Of all people! My brother-in-law’s best friend. He hung out with my sister. With you.” She took a breath as the thoughts tumbled out. “All those nights, he was working downstairs while I slept. God!”
“Baby...” I gripped her cheeks again in my hands, meeting her gaze with a burning one of my own. I knew she was in shock and the pieces had scattered for her. “He was Cyrus Pittman’s hired muscle. He didn’t see you as a person. Only as something in the way of what he was after.”
Her eyes closed as clarity came back to roost. “The money my father stole from Pittman.”
“Yes.”
“That you were pretending to give back to protect me.”
“Yes.”
“That my father really put in a trust for my brother.”
“Uh, okay?”
She kept going. “That my brother is going to use to remodel the church into a community center, that I’m going to help him run and teach self-defense classes...”
“Yes... wait. What?”
