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It was the day after I revealed my plan to join The Alliance and destroyed her heart.
It was one more horrible fucking experience for her to go through alone.
And I was the one who did it to her.
I remember the way she paled when I told her we were going to a funeral. And the urge to apologize, for the first time in twenty years, grips at my throat.
But then Val continues. “It was everything I’ve always dreamed a family could be. Could mean.” She presses her forehead against my sternum, and I slide my hand up to grip the back of her neck. “I was terrified to go.”
“Val—”
She cuts me off. “I want to thank you for letting me be a part of that. It doesn’t change the other funerals I’ve been to, but it proved to me that it doesn’t always have to be like it was.”
This fucking woman.
“It will never be like it was. Not for you,” I promise her. “We grieve together.”
“I know.” Her lips press against my skin. “I like your family.”
Her muscles loosen under my hold. “They’re your family now, too,” I say quietly because I think she’s falling asleep as we talk.
“Only if you keep me.”
I barely hear her.
“I’ll keep you forever.”
Her tired fingers grip my sides. “But now you know.”
“Know what?” We’re both whispering now.
“That I’m not valuable.”
I’m not valuable.
Her words hit me with such force I can’t breathe.
I hate the people who made her feel this way.
I curl around her, trying to protect her from her own past, her own awful emotions.
She’s so fucking valuable.
She thinks because King is a shitty-ass brother to her that I’ll just… what? Return her? That I suddenly wouldn’t want her anymore?
I press my nose into her hair and inhale her scent.
Of course that’s what she thinks. Every member of her family has either betrayed her, ignored her, or left her.
I inhale again.
Not me.
Never again.
“You’re worth more than everything I have,” I tell her a moment too late, as her body relaxes fully into sleep.
I stay that way, holding my wife, for the next hour as I stare into the distance.
