Page 90 of Bought

“I killed Sir George,” I said. “I suffocated him and then I lied to you for years about it.”

Caleb only stared levelly back at me. “You really think I didn’t know? That I didn’t suspect you had a hand in it? I don’t care. He was a monster and he needed to be put down.”

“How can you say—”

“Don’t change the subject. Do you love that girl?”

My chest ached, the sensing of loss yawning wide inside me. “Zara,” I said, my voice not as cold as it had been. “Her name is Zara.”

Caleb’s black stare was uncompromising “Well? Do you?”

I should have denied it. It should have been easy. The words were right there on my tongue. But I couldn’t say them.

Because they’re a lie and you know it.

I turned away, staring out over the city, trying to ignore the pain inside me. Trying not to see the tears in Zara’s silver eyes or hear the fury in her voice as she called me a coward.

She’s right. You are.

I was doing this for her sake, that’s what I’d told myself. It was all for her. A bit of pain now rather than agony later when I’d inevitably hurt her since that’s what I did to everyone I cared about. Yet even now I could hear how hollow that sounded. A justification. An excuse.

“You think you’re broken, but that’s just a fucking excuse. An excuse not to want anything, not to try again. An excuse not to live. I know you’ve been hurt and hurt badly, and fuck, same. But you know what you do? You get up. You try again. You let yourself want more because it’s better to fight than fucking giving up and dying!”

The words she’d flung at me that day came back to me, so full of fury, of certainty. She was so strong, my little sub. Stronger than I was. She’d had so much pain in her life, yet she hadn’t given up. She’d lost everything, but she’d gotten up and tried again, fighting for what she wanted, while I…

I had given up.

“Do you think you died with her? Is that what this is? Because telling me you can’t love is the biggest bunch of bullshit I’ve ever heard. Everything you do is for love, Tennyson Fox. Everything…”

I closed my eyes as the feeling inside me deepened, widened, the loss becoming a chasm I’d tried to ignore, because I didn’t want it again. I didn’t want that feeling again. But it was there all the same.

The heart I’d told myself Juliana had taken when she died was still there and it was still beating. It still felt things, wanted things, and it was afraid. It wanted to protect itself from the agony that love could bring, but…

Love got through all the same.

Somehow Zara had bypassed every single one of my defenses, walking unafraid through the no-mans-land of my soul as if nothing could touch her. And she’d found my heart even though I could have sworn I didn’t have one, and she’d taken it. She’d stolen it. And now she’d ruined me.

I let out a breath as the realization stole through me, the knowledge I’d been trying to avoid ever since she’d walked out a couple of days earlier.

It didn’t feel the same as with Juliana. Then it had been fire and flash and overwhelming need. But it was difficult to separate that from sexual desire. I’d been eighteen and I had no idea if Juliana and I would have lasted but…. I was older now, wiser, and I knew what I felt for Zara. I couldn’t lie to myself any longer. This feeling was deep and hot, tempered with grief and loss and pain, laced with possessiveness and anger, yet also with tenderness and protectiveness. And it was strong. Strong as she was.

My beautiful little sub.

I opened my eyes and stared at the city beneath my feet. “Yes,” I said. “I love her.”

“Fuck’s sake, Ten. What are you waiting for?” Caleb said. “Stop being such a noble asshole and go get her.”

The words fell into a hollow space inside of me, resonating.

‘Everything you do is for love,’ Zara had told me, and all I could see in that moment were all the terrible things, the bad things. The people I’d hurt and the relationships I’d ruined. Love destroyed, that had been my experience.

But it wasn’t my only experience. Love had also given me the most precious gift: my daughter. It had given me Juliana. It had helped me build a relationship with two men whom I respected and valued, and it had saved at least one of those men.

Love was grief and pain, but love was also happiness, and that was something I never thought I’d have again. I’d never thought I’d even want it.

But Zara had given it to me. She’d given me a taste of what it was to have someone in my life. Someone who knew me, who trusted me, who would be there for me. Someone who made me happy.

I probably didn’t deserve that happiness, regardless of what Caleb said, not after everything I’d done, but Zara deserved it. And I couldn’t deny her that. I didn’t want to. What I wanted was to find my little sub and hold her until the day I died.