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“Yeah.”
“Are you okay?”
“No.” Putting her plate down on the coffee table, she then grabs mine. “Read the note.” She pulls it out of the pouch at the front of the sweater and hands it to me before sitting back and hugging me to her.
I stare at my name some more before I unfold the paper. I take a deep breath, but it does nothing to stop the tears from flooding my eyes. I blink and blink them away, but there’s too many. I thought I was all cried out; it appears I wasn’t. Damon’s scent and the familiarity of his handwriting are all it takes to unravel me again.
My beautiful Ava.
My heart stutters at those words, before it tightens somewhere in the pit of my stomach.
“You want me to read it to you?”
I shake my head, wiping my eyes dry before I start again, this time breathing through the onslaught of emotions and feelings.
My beautiful Ava,
I don’t know where to start. Maybe I should start by saying how sorry I am that I’ve hurt you. But I’m not a good guy. I’m not a hero. And I warned you—I would do anything for you. Once you’re mine there’s nothing I won’t do to keep you. To make you happy. There’s nothing I won’t do to look after you and what’s yours.
It just didn’t start off that way.
I gave your father the chance to save Monroe from the very beginning. But he was too proud, and when he finally had to ask for help, he still wouldn’t concede that his ship was sinking. So, I put as many holes in it as I could to make it sink faster.
And when the other houses started sniffing around, I had to make sure that I took his best asset. You.
You were the ultimate bargaining chip. Your father was always so careful at keeping you away from things—I thought he was protecting you. I thought he would do anything for you.
He didn’t, and it’s why I made sure you took from him everything he was willing to take from you. I wanted him to see everything he’d underestimated. For him to fear you, like he feared me. If he could just see everything I do—all the passion and love you have inside you as well as the care you have for others, and the fight you aren’t afraid to put up—maybe he would realize that you are everything he wasn’t for Monroe.
All these things I’ve come to love and admire, I hoped that he would esteem them too.
Unlucky for him, he never saw it. He reduced everything you love to petty crumbs to dust his pockets. But even when he handed me Monroe on a platter, I couldn’t take it from you.
A million legacies could never match your worth, not to me. Letting you go is unfathomable to me. I couldn’t betray you. That was the first time I ever feared losing something—you.
So I had to work out a different way of saving Monroe. So that in the end, no matter what, it’s yours. Like it should always have been.
You are the only loss I fear, Ava. The only loss I could never survive.
You are my one and greatest fall.
You.
Always, always yours,
DHC
Incapable of staunching my tears, I hold the note to my chest, trying to process all that’s happened. Trying to find my feet and a clear head because even hurt, I can’t bring myself to hate him. Even when it’s all I want to do, my love for him burns hotter than the pain cutting through my veins.
Chapter 27
Damon
Grayson follows me into Dexter’s office, and he looks as exhausted as I feel.
“Don’t lose your shit,” he warns, watching me walk around the desk, pulling out the drawers and emptying them into a cardboard box. “You have to be smart about this. You don’t have grounds to fire him.”
“The fuck I don’t.” My fist lands on the desktop with a splintering crunch.
