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Lifting me up out of the water with his hands around my shoulders, he grabs a towel, wrapping it around me before he gets out of the bath and helps me out. He wraps a towel around his own hips and then guides me back through the bedroom to the sitting room.
My body wracks with shivers as he walks me towards the dwindling fire. Throwing the bundle of his clothes he’s got in one arm into it, he moves to the side table and picks up the papers from where I left them.
“Look.” Flipping through the document, he holds it up to my face. My hands curl around the towel, pulling it tightly around me like a protective cloak. “Read it.”
I do, repeatedly.
Forever will never be enough. C.S.
I flick my attention up to him. Searching his face for something that might tell me what exactly this means, I hold back the damn traitorous tears that keep prickling my eyes. Never in my life have I cried this much. I’m beyond the hormonal mess I was when our baby was inside me.
“Read it out loud.”
Swallowing down my pounding heartbeats that are lodged in my throat, it takes me longer than ever to find my voice. Killing time, I rearrange the towel around my chest before taking the document from him.
“Read it, Arabella.” Threading his pinkie through the rings, they barely make it past the first knuckle as he looks at me in expectation.
Okay. Taking a deep breath, I read the words to myself one more time before I read them aloud.
“Forever will never be enough.”
Heart, meet fist.
“Read it again.” He steps closer so that the top of the document scrunches against his torso. “Louder. Slower. Read it again.”
My toes curl into the carpet, my hands holding on to the pages so tightly that the edges tear slightly.
“Forever.” I pause as a sob clogs my throat. “Fore-Foreve—”
He knows what he’s doing. He knew it from the beginning. He’s played me, and he’s won.
“Why are you doing this?”
Taking the papers out of my hands, he throws them into the fire where his clothes have dulled the low flames to embers. When he grasps my wrists, he brings me closer, pressing my hands to his chest right where my rings sit.
His heart is thrumming rapidly beneath my touch, and it’s like a shock to my system as it runs through me in heated, reviving waves.
“Tough love, Belles,” he says, coming impossibly closer so that we’re pressed flush to one another. “Messy, fierce, and relentless.”
“Christopher…”
“You said you wanted more than a lifetime. History. Suns and moons…light years and infinity. I vowed to give you all that and more. I’ll be damned if anything gets in my way of doing it. You or me. And definitely not some role with illusions of false power.”
Curling his body around mine, he engulfs me with his big arms and strong body. And love is a tangible thing right now. He’s the personification of his promise, and I can’t do anything other than hold on to it as hard as I can. Harder even as I bury my face into his hard chest, my lips puckering over the rings sandwiched between us.
Chapter 20
Christopher
Arabella has never been the most talkative person. She says what she needs to, but for the most part she’s observant. Quiet. She’s got this majestic aura to her that can be intimidating, but at the core, she’s soft and kind. She has a strength that is awing.
Which is why I’m still trying to understand how she would let our fathers manipulate her. Arabella’s savvy and smart…
Grabbing a shirt from the wardrobe, I catch glimpses of her in my peripheral vision. She’s shivering, her face puffy and tear streaked. Her hair is messy with her dishevelled state. Still, she’s fucking gorgeous.
Holding on to the towel, she shuffles on the bed, and when her hands slip down to her belly, my heart stutters in my chest.
You killed my baby.
