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Adam’s expression tightens, right along with his voice. “The audio includes Gabriel’s claim that Candace loves him with all her heart and soul.”
I can almost feel Rick flinch. He grabs the chair in front of him, both hands clutching the top, fingers digging into the leather. Or fake leather. I’m not really sure. The world around me seems ten shades of real and fake right now, including my feelings for Rick and Gabriel. Rick, I love. Gabriel, I have to pretend to love. I remind Rick of this fact now. “I never loved him. You know that.”
He doesn’t look at me. “What else?” he asks. He’s focused on Adam, talking to Adam.
“A warning,” Smith chimes in.
“Smith,” Adam bites out, issuing a warning of his own.
“It’s easier to hear it from us than to listen to it on the audio,” Smith argues. “You just said that yourself.”
“I said he should read the damn transcript,” Adam reminds him. “Let him read it.”
“Time isn’t on our side,” Smith says, dismissing Adam and focusing on us. “Pocher warned Gabriel about his campaign manager. He told him to get her out of his system and stick with you, Candace.”
And there it is.
A verbal poke of the angry bear standing next to me.
And still, that bear doesn’t look at me, his mood whipping and cutting through the air, a blade of fury, ready to kill someone. I get it. He’s probably embarrassed. I’m the woman he’s declared his love with and on the surface, it seems as if I didn’t love him the way he loved me. “I don’t love him,” I say, because while I’ve said this to Rick, I think everyone fighting or me, and him, needs to know. “Eight years later, I just needed to replace my heartache with something stable, but I never loved him. I loved Rick. I love Rick, but all that said, it’s rather painful to know that my desperation to move on with life, lead me to such stupidity and that monster. And on that note, I’m ready to go shoot something. I’m going to get my purse.”
Embarrassed and ashamed, I walk away, exiting the kitchen, and I both want Rick to let me go and crave the moment he stops me, the moment he tells me that the past doesn’t have the power to carve us up and destroy us. But he doesn’t stop me. He lets me go like he did eight years ago. Because that’s how easily Rick Savage can be convinced to stay away from me.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Candace
In a rush of adrenaline, and what threatens to become a volcanic messy eruption of emotions that I don’t want to feel, I rush toward the bedroom. I will myself in check, but considering that Rick’s now back, a stunning development, my father’s gone and in danger, and my mother might well have been murdered, the collision of past extremes with present extremes is well, extreme. But so what, right? Life happens and this is one of those times when my father might say “suck it up, buttercup, eat chocolate cake, and come out punching.” The problem is that at the root of my volcanic eruption is my fear that he will never bring me another chocolate cake. I think if I could just hear that he’s okay, I’d be about a million times less emotional.
I round the corner to the bedroom when Rick’s suddenly there, catching me to him and pulling me around in his arms. And as always with this man, heat rushes over me with his touch, but there is more, too. All the emotions, the fear, and the pain fade as second to him. It’s then that I realize that I’ve been living with a hole in my soul that this man fills.
“Rick,” I whisper, and when I would say more when I would dare to just be vulnerable and tell him how much I can’t stand the idea of losing him, he’s claiming the moment.
“You have to know that conversations about that dickhead fucking you and marrying you is killing me, woman. If it didn’t, why would you even want me?”
He’s right. I need him to care. I want him to care, but I don’t want him to hurt. We’ve had enough pain between us and so I repeat what I’ve said, what I know he needs to hear again. “You know I thought you weren’t coming back. Ever, Rick. And you know I didn’t, and don’t, love him.”
“But you told him you loved him. That’s the part that keeps fucking with my head.”
“I did and maybe at one point, I even believed it because I’ve told you this. I convinced myself that it wasn’t that intense, breathless wonderful thing that I remembered with you.”
“And now?”
“And now, I know better. I love you, Rick Savage. I know you know I love you. I know you feel it.”
