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But Sarah was a carriage on a train. It had a destination, and it wasn’t to be derailed nor detoured. “Lexi was a beautiful baby, but she was unsettled at night. I’d woken early one morning and she was crying. Cameron was asleep so I decided to take Lexi for a walk in the buggy.” She closed her eyes, hating the imagery that flashed before her, wanting it to go away; wanting it to have never happened.
She pressed her hand against the glass of the window. It was cold.
“He killed her while I was out. And then he shot himself. If Lexi had been there …”
“If you’d been there,” Syed interrupted with an anger that shook his whole body.
She nodded. “Yes.” Neither of them needed to put that thought into words.
The world had stopped spinning for Syed. He looked into the past and he saw what could have been. He saw his future devoid of Sarah, and a grim darkness wrapped around him, suffocating him slowly.
“She’s my daughter, but I didn’t make her.” Sarah’s smile was wistful. His eyes landed on it in the reflection and his heart thumped heavily in his chest. “I love her so much, though. I can’t imagine loving any child of my own more than I do Lexi.”
He nodded, but words felt superfluous. Actions mattered.
He needed to marry Sarah. To right this wrong, and many others. He needed to know she would never again suffer, never again feel pain or worry. He needed to take any darkness from her life and damned well turn it into light.
He closed the distance between them, wrapping his hands around her waist. “I will never let anyone hurt you or Lexi,” he said the words quietly, delivering them directly into her ear. “Tonight, we become a family.”
And the words were so perfectly reassuring that she felt a swelling of emotion; an overwhelming ache of tears. “I’ve been on my own so long,” she groaned. “I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have someone else to lean on.”
He pulled her towards him roughly, needing to pass his strength to her body. “You needed me and I left you. I will not easily forgive myself for this. But I promise you now, Sarah, that I will spend the rest of my life on earth making this up to you.”
She swallowed. There was something so perfect in his words that she found herself being pulled into them – to believing them. “It’s not your fault,” she said with a small shake of her head.
“Isn’t it?”
“No matter what happened with us, you couldn’t have fixed what he was like. He was … a monster.”
Her story was still unfolding in his mind, and something occurred to him. “You found their bodies?”
She nodded, her face drained of all colour.
And he kissed her.
Not because he needed her, though he did. He kissed her because he wanted to breathe life back into her and he only knew one way to do that. He kissed her because he felt more than he could put into words; he felt things that his body needed to show her.
And he kissed her because he wanted to put her all back together again, just like she’d done for him, a long time ago.
CHAPTER NINE
“You booked out the whole place?” She stared around the exclusive restaurant with its fairy lights strung over the ceiling, art deco booths lined with pale turquoise fabric and marbled floor, and the grand piano in one corner that was creating a delightful jazz melody under the skill of a musician in a tuxedo.
“For our wedding, it seemed appropriate not to share you.”
Her cheeks flushed and her eyes dropped, for the hundredth time in the hour since they’d said their vows, to the simple wedding band she wore.
“Having regrets?” He asked quietly.
About the wedding? Or the ring? She’d shunned the diamonds he’d offered, choosing instead a plain ring. “I know it’s not what you would have picked,” she said, choosing to believe he’d meant the latter. “But I think it’s perfect.”
He lifted her hand, looking at the band with its rose gold and slightly crenulated edges. “I do too,” he agreed, the words tinged with a deep rumble that made her stomach squeeze.
He was her husband.
As if magically, to emphasise the point, a waiter appeared like from nowhere. “Your Highness.” She looked to Syed, but then realised the waiter was addressing her.
She was now someone who could be addressed by such a title.
