Total pages in book: 155
Estimated words: 154379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154379 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 618(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
He tipped my face back toward him. “I believed her when she told me I wasn’t capable of loving. Believed my mother when she accused me of the same. But they were wrong, Piper. I just didn’t know it until I met you.”
Tears kept rushing.
Old fears being obliterated and new hopes surging to life.
“I was so afraid of trying again.” His voice was raw. “So afraid of not stacking up. Of not feeling what I’m supposed to. Terrified I’d drag someone into the darkness that I possess. Ruin someone else because I’m nothing but selfish.”
His hand tightened on the side of my face. “Turns out, I am fuckin’ selfish because I won’t let you go. Because I love you, Piper. Love you in a way that I thought I wasn’t capable of. Wholly and completely. With this heart and this body and this life. So in love with you that my heart feels like it’s going to bust out of my chest whenever I look at you.”
He shifted and took my face in both his hands, tilting it toward him. “You are every horizon. Every destination. You are the air I breathe and the ground beneath my feet. And because of you, this dead heart beats.”
EPILOGUES
Theo
“Wook it, my Feo. I got dis one and dis one!” Finn giggled from where he squatted in front of the Christmas tree, pointing out his presents. Kid’s eyes alight as he was swept up in the magic of Christmas Eve.
“Oh, whoa. You sure have a bunch of presents, don’t you?”
“I open?” He bobbed that head.
I started to tell him yes because I’d give this kid anything he wanted, but Nelly hollered from the kitchen, “Only one tonight, then the rest in the morning.”
“Oh-kay, my Newwy Bewwy.”
A light chuckle rolled out of me, and I ran my hand down the back of Finn’s white hair.
I lay on my side on the rug next to him. Soaking up his joy. The child possessing his own healing magic that glided through my being.
It was all of them, though. This little family that I never believed I could be given.
They were the ones who soothed the pain.
The physical kind that had nearly taken my life. Two days of barely clinging to it, then two more before I was released, though it would have been my honor to give my life if it meant they were finally free.
That bastard put in the ground where he’d always belonged.
But it was the deeper kind of pain that had been assuaged in the middle of it.
The scars of my past that I thought had already written the ending to my story.
Yeah, I’d forever bear guilt and grief. It was carved in me. But I finally got that I couldn’t change the way I’d felt for Scarlett. It didn’t mean I wasn’t capable of it. I realized now that I did love her. Just not in the way that she’d needed me to.
Piper came around the kitchen counter, carefully balancing a charcuterie board that she placed on the coffee table. “There we go.”
“What can I do to help?” I asked as I peeked up at her.
She gave me the cutest little scowl. “You’re not supposed to be doing anything but sitting on the couch resting.”
“Then how am I supposed to check out all the awesome presents with my Finn if I’m all the way up there?”
Tenderness swept through her features. This woman who hadn’t left my side since I woke up in the hospital.
This woman who had been meant for me.
Drawn to me.
Our destinies colliding at the exact moment in time they were supposed to.
The only one to hold the power to spark to life what I thought was dead.
“I don’t want you to reinjure yourself,” she fretted.
I sent her a salacious, seductive grin. “I’m good as new, Pipes.”
I shifted around and climbed to standing.
Going for her.
Hands sliding to her hips so I could grip on. I leaned in close to her mouth and grated low, “And more than ready to get back to my favorite activity.”
Couldn’t wait to get back in her tight, delicious body.
Redness flushed her cheeks, heat rippling off her flesh. Her fingertips tapped across my collarbone. “I think Dr. Reynolds would have something to say about that.”
“Dr. Reynolds learned years ago we can’t be kept down. Someone tries to take us out, we come back ten times stronger.”
“Because you all are magnets for trouble.” It was a soft, adoring tease, and those fingertips fluttered up to my lips.
I kissed across them. “Told you I was the exact kind of trouble you needed.”
“And you were.” She glanced at the tree then back at me. Those arctic eyes flashed their warmth. “The best kind of gift I could ever be given.”
A sudden clatter echoed from outside, a faint, “Ho, ho, ho,” coming from the other side of the door as a fist banged against it.