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“Sarah,” he said very softly when she’d calmed down. He pulled back and cupped her cheeks to swipe the tears away. She never cried. Ever. Only when she was truly hurt. “I can say with absolute certainty that Jules loves you. He’s not secretly on his mum’s side about this. There’s no way in hell he’d have been with you for this long and felt that way. He doesn’t want you to change.”
“But…”
“This isn’t a long con, love,” Shiloh said with a small grin, making her laugh. “And while I understand perfectly well that parents are supposed to love you more than anything, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they look at a tiny, newborn baby with wonky eyes and pack their bags because the only thing that matters is their own idea of perfection.”
She let out a breath. “Yeah.”
“And sometimes they look at their young child and pack their shit because the only thing that matters is their own selfish interests.”
She sniffed and swiped her hand under her nose.
“They’re human. Just like Jules is human. And I can’t lie and say his mum isn’t right about some things. You’ve lived a hard life, and you can be hard on the people you care about. But all of us—Dom, me, Jules—we’ve all decided it’s worth it.”
“I want to be better. I want to be nicer,” she told him.
He’d never heard this from her before, so he wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. “And we can work on that. But maybe a Monday afternoon the day before your party isn’t the time for self-reflection. Because you know what’s coming.”
She closed her eyes on a soft groan. “Yeah. God, how do I look him in the eye and say yes before I tell him that I know I’ve been an absolute shit?
“Easy. You do just that. You look him in the eye and tell him yes. Then later—after he’s shagged your brains out—you tell him all the rest,” Shiloh said.
She laughed, then shook her head. “Jesus, I can see why Dom’s so shit-crazy in love with you.”
Shiloh took a step back. “Very funny. Honestly, I’m feeling a bit tender where he’s concerned right now, so if you could not mess with me…”
Sarah grabbed his wrist. “I’m not taking the piss, babes. Dom has been madly in love with you since you were, like, eleven and hitting puberty. He thinks the bloody sun rises and sets on your dick, and I’m pretty sure he wants to put his mouth on it too.”
“That’s the weirdest thing you have ever said to me,” Shiloh told her, his voice sort of dry and hollow. He started to laugh, the sound just shy of hysterical, and he only realized he was gasping for breath when Sarah gently took him into her arms.
“I’m sorry. Jesus, Shy. I thought you knew.”
He looked up at her, his eyes wide and wild. “You thought I knew? You don’t think I would have done something about it if…” He stopped himself, hating the ugly feeling rising in his gullet because on some level, he had known. Fear had kept him from believing it because losing Dom would kill him, but had he really been torturing them both for all these years?
“I understand,” she said. Her gaze met his, and he saw her eyes flicker back and forth like she was matching his nystagmus. “Trust me, I understand, babes. You know better than anyone how many times I almost lost Jules because loving and losing him would have been so much worse than never having him at all.”
Shiloh felt like he was choking on his own tongue. “But after all these years, does he really—”
“Love you? Worship you? Adore you?” Sarah’s expression was full of pity, and no matter that he hated it with every fiber of his being, he knew he deserved it. “All that and more.”
He took a step back from her. “So why have you been trying to set him up?”
“Because he deserves to be loved by someone brave enough to do it,” she said bluntly.
Those words felt like a knife to his heart. “I do love him.”
“I know. But if we weren’t standing here right now, would you have ever given him what he needs and put him out of his bloody misery? Or would you have allowed him to waste away at your side, telling himself—telling yourself—that it was enough?”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “I fucked up.”
She laughed, gripping his shoulders and giving him a small shake. “I know. But you can still fix it. There’s time, love. There’s so much fucking time.”
Half of Shiloh wanted to run to Dom and drop to his knees, begging for forgiveness. The other half wanted to run and hide because now that he said it aloud—now that it all made sense—there was no turning back.
He chose something in the middle instead.
“Sarah.” He cleared his throat, but his final confession was dancing at the tip of his tongue. “I need a favor.”
“Anything for you,” she told him.
