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“Come here.” He doesn’t wait for me to protest again, he simply wraps his hands over my body and drags me back into his lap, and I shiver right away. Warmth, steadiness, peace, it all washes over me from his simple touch.
I shouldn’t take comfort in him. He won’t be here much longer, but I also can’t move. The past, the painful memories, they have crippled me.
“I want to hear the rest,” Vas says sternly.
“The rest? Like how I was given the option to cremate or bury my daughter? Or how I was told that I most likely—ninety-eight percent—won’t be able to have kids in the future? Or thepointless, emotionless sorry’s from the doctor, the nurses, and my foster parents? The empty sounds of condolences and fucked up words of encouragement that life goes on? Newsflash, it doesn’t.”
“Everything. Anything you want to tell me, I want to hear it,” I huff out a breath.
“When I woke up, Jules was there. He is the only one who didn’t give me bullshit empathy. My brother was just there. Holding my hand and silently planning a murder.”
“Did he?”
“Did he what? Kill Kevin?” I snort. “No. By the time I woke up, Kevin was across the globe, spontaneously getting an early acceptance letter to Oxford.”
“It’s never too late to find him,” Vassar grids out with pure, undiluted venom.
“No need. I already did. I wasn’t going to. When I woke up, I just wanted to forget, but then my labs came back, and they found Warfarin in my blood. It’s a blood thinner and something that I have never used or heard of before that day. That’s what did it, you know? That’s what put the final nail in my baby’s coffin. I was hemorrhaging from the fall—add blood thinners, and there’s no stopping the bleeding in time.”
“Please tell me you made him suffer? Put him in jail?”
I smile at his hatred. It’s the one I fell for seven long years until I was able to do something about it.
“I stabbed him where it would hurt the most. His daddy’s company that he inherited. His pride and joy. I bankrupted him. Robbed him of it all, and today, the company belongs to me. Well, a shell company owns it, but it’s mine.” My smile turns sinister. “The pretty wife who only married him for his money—by the way, I found that poetic—left him right away. He never had kids, and I believe he now works as a bank teller.”
“He deserves worse. You are too kind, Miss Heartless, but fuck.” Vas cradles my head to his chest, gently lacing his fingers through my damp hair. “You didn’t deserve all that. I know it won’t mean much, but I’m so sorry.”
“Stop!” I ripped away from him. “I told you not to feel sorry for me. This was all my fault! I did this to my babies. I did this to myself. It’s all on me!”
“How is it on you that you drew a fucked-up stick in the parents’ department and another one with your insane ex? That was never on you.”
“Yes, it was! I should have run away from home, called the police, and asked for help. Tell anyone at school what was happening at home, but I didn’t. I stayed until an innocent life that never even got a chance to grow died. And later on, I was an idiot so desperate to know what love was…” I purse my lips. “I thought he loved me. I thought I finally knew what it meant to love and be loved, and my unborn daughter suffered the consequences of my stupidity. My carelessness. I should have drowned in that ocean along with her. I should have crossed over that cliff and followed her down to the dark, murky waters. Yet, I am here, destroying another life, another family.”
Out of nowhere, Vassar is pouncing on me, pinning me to the bed, and takes my shoulders in his hands as his eyes drill into mine. “Now it’s time for you to stop talking. Because if you mean what I think you mean, I don’t want to hear those lies and misconceptions you’ve planted in your head.”
“I have no heart. I have no soul. I don’t feel. I don’t love. I only destroy and build my empire on the bones of the dead.”
“Stop it, please.” His forehead drops to mine, his eyes are closed, and I know the end is near. Soon, no threats of mine will be strong enough to hold him here with me. And he should run. He should get his daughter away from me before I ruin her.
“In another life, I could give you everything. I could be different…”
And I wish so badly that I could change myself. That I could be what he needs because Vassar is so much more than my Sous-chef or fake boyfriend. He is my everything when I never intended for him to take that spot.
“But I’ve fallen in love with today’s version,” he whispers into my hair, and I gasp, my eyes growing wide with fear. “Not the two-point-oh you are trying to sell me. I fell in love with you.”
“Impossible.” I shake my head violently. “There is nothing to love. There’s no heart, no soul, no life. No. No, you didn’t. Didn’t you just hear all I told you?”
“Kira.” He tucks another one of my locks behind my ear. “I love you. I love you like I’ve never loved anyone else. I’ve loved you for a long time. And all I heard now was a story of the strongest woman I know. A story of a survivor.”
“Stop it,” I plead with him, the tears coming back to me when no one asked them to.
“How did you not notice that I gave you half of me a long time ago.” He places his hand on my chest. “That heartbeat right here? It belongs to me. That breath you took, is mine. Those beautiful tears streaming down your face? Those are little shards of my soul, showing themselves because you are trying to rip it out once again.”
They definitely feel like shards of the sharpest glass running down my face. Everything he says can’t be true. It can’t be. But why does it feel like a fact? Like a God-given fact. Because the thing beating out of my chest right now doesn’t feel like mine. Mine was lost years ago, and this one? This one yearns for the man in front of me. For his touch and warmth and smiles and laughs and snarky remarks and fire.
“Vassar.” His name is like a prayer on my lips, but what am I praying for? For him to stay? Or walk away?
“I’m not leaving.” He makes the decision for me. “You are mine, and I’ll be yours if you want that.”
