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Jack stood with his hands balled on either side of his thighs. The suit he’d changed into, to enjoy a fancy Christmas dinner, shimmered in the fading solar lights. His nostrils flared and it took all I could not to cower away from his fists.
His knuckles were bloody and swollen from striking me, and instincts warned me to run before he could pummel me again.
But then I glanced at Anna, and my heart stopped.
The older version of Neri—with her shorter brown hair, darker blue eyes, and pretty pink dress—looked at me as if I wasn’t her mortal enemy but her golden son.
I-I don’t understand.
My heart flopped around in my chest as I looked between the two Taylors, then back at Neri who hadn’t left my side. “What exactly do they know?” I whispered under my breath so they couldn’t hear. “Tell me. Quickly.”
Turning her back on her parents, she grabbed my hand even though I tried to pull out of her grasp. I shot a look at Jack. To watch his reaction at his daughter so blatantly touching me, laying claim to me, but he didn’t say a word. He just stood silent and condemning on the steppingstones.
“I haven’t told them in detail what Ethan did to me, but they know it happened at Zara’s and you’ve been trying to help me through it. They know you came to get me and we slept together for the first time that night.”
“What?” I whisper-hissed. “You told them that?”
“I needed them to see what I do. That you will do whatever it takes to save me. That you are the exact opposite of Ethan. They know everything about us, apart from what you did to him—”
“Aslan.” Jack cleared his throat. “I think...if you’re done whispering with my daughter, we should talk. Don’t you?”
I froze.
A fork opened up before me.
A crossroads in my life that was so blatant, so black and white, that I shivered at the awful sensation that this was the moment my entire happiness hinged on. A life of fervent happiness, always hidden, always illegal, but a happiness I was willing to do anything for because the alternative was death. Not because my father would eventually get his hands on me but because I’d never get my hands on Neri again.
And that...just can’t happen.
Untangling my fingers from Neri’s, I gave her a soft smile and pushed her away slightly. My mind raced with ways to fix this. To repair the rift between Jack and me because no matter his willingness to talk, his body language said he’d rather throw me in the pool and drown me.
He could say he forgave me for walking in on me seconds away from mounting his daughter. He could have Neri tell him how I did my best to save her mind from cracking the night she was raped.
But what he truly needed to know was how far I would go for her.
How far I did go.
How far I would always go.
To deserve her, protect her, love her.
The insane decision settled like a glacier in my stomach, and I turned back to the ring box that’d fallen onto the sala steps when Neri leaped into my arms. Fisting it, I swallowed a groan of discomfort as I straightened abused bones, then walked toward Jack.
You sure?
You positive you want to do this?
I shut down that worried little voice.
I held Jack’s stare.
I marched directly toward him.
And then, I dropped to my knees, unable to stop the grunt of pain as I landed on the injuries he’d given me.
Anna sucked in a sharp breath beside him.
Neri drifted toward me.
