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For all I know, Mav might not want anything to do with me now.
Something—my past—always held him back from going all in with me. But how is he going to react to my present being just as twisted?
I blow out a slow, calming breath.
“He loves you, Dove,” JD forces out, able to read my mind.
“It was never enough though, was it?” I spit coldly before I step over the threshold to the basement and begin descending the stairs.
The air instantly chills, making goose bumps erupt on my bare arms. Wrapping them around myself, I keep my eyes focused ahead as I continue down.
The scent of pain and death makes my stomach knot. I didn’t realize it smelled of anything while I was down here. I guess I just got used to it.
When I get to the bottom and turn the corner, I find Reid waiting for us at my old cell door. But as much as I want to step through it, I can’t stop my eyes from drifting to the room that’s over his shoulder. The one with the chair in the middle and the rings embedded in the floor and ceiling.
I squeeze my eyes closed for a beat as JD’s words from all those days ago come back to me.
“Can you imagine what it might be like being tied up and totally at our mercy?”
Reid clears his throat, forcing me to focus on him.
I’ve no idea if JD painted the same picture for him, but even if he didn’t, something tells me that he’s conjured up a similar image all by himself.
“Ready?” JD asks, his hands clamping down on my hips as if he’s concerned I’m about to bolt.
If you’d asked me an hour ago how I’d feel in this moment, I wouldn’t have said so terrified that I was about to be rejected for the second time in ten minutes. Rejected by the one man I love more than anything else in the world.
I suck in another deep breath and nod.
It’s now or never.
But the second the locks disengage, I make the stupid mistake of looking down.
I’m covered in blood. Reid’s blood.
The memory of having his giant hand wrapped around my throat not so long ago, his fingers twisted in my hair, his lips on mine slam into me and I panic.
“No, wait,” I cry, but it’s too late.
“Alana?” a deep, very familiar voice asks and my heart jumps into my throat, all my previous concerns vanish as Reid pushes the door wider and I get my first look at my husband in two weeks.
My legs take on a life of their own as I run into my old cell, my feet leave the concrete floor as I launch myself at his body, hoping like hell that he catches me.
Warm, strong, protective arms wrap around my body as my legs lock around his waist.
The familiar scent of his skin floods my nose a second before a sob erupts.
A deep groan rumbles in his chest. I feel the vibration all the way down to my toes before he says one sentence that makes me completely lose it.
“Everything’s okay, Doll. I’ve got you.”
We stand there in the middle of the cell, him holding me up as I soak his neck and shirt with tears and snot.
Tucking his own face into my hair, he inhales deeply, as if he’s forgotten what I smell like.
“Fuck, I’ve missed you,” he whispers so that only I can hear it.
As much as I might like to think we’ve been left to have this moment in private, I know we haven’t.
