“Sorry about your show,” she had said, surprisingly.
I shrugged. “Things happen.”
“Don’t we know it,” she muttered.
I snorted, startled, before sliding her a sidelong glance. Her face was soft, softer than I had seen it in years. Our friends and family kept looking at us, waiting for a breakdown, but I knew that she and I felt the same. It hadn’t been traumatic as much as it was cathartic to hurt and overcome our very own boogey man.
“Thank you.”
She tipped her head back against the wall and brought her knees to her chest. “No one deserves to be raped.”
Not even you.
I nodded.
She sighed into the quiet after a few minutes. “It felt good.”
“Yeah.”
“Glad you’re okay,” she whispered, so quietly that I thought I imagined it.
Before I could question it, she had sprung to her feet and stalked off, tagging Sebastian to take her home as she went. My brother shot me a concerned look over her shoulder but I nodded at him, she needed him more than I did.
As if to prove my point, Sinclair had returned to me and swung me up into his arms.
Now, we were in the car on our way home and Sinclair was vibrating with fury.
“I’m happy, Sin. It’s over. He ruined my childhood, forced me to leave Paris and took a bunch of things from me that I never offered. It sucks.” He growled at my understatement so I amended, “Okay, it’s horrible. But it is over. Now, I can forget the fear and the past and focus entirely on the love of my life.”
He looked down at me so I could watch the ice in his eyes thaw and turn into liquid love. “He ruined a night that you’ve been working towards for months.”
“True, but he isn’t going to ruin anything else ever again, so I’ll accept that.”
The police had assured us that he would be deported and Elena was filing a restraining order for me in the morning.
“I didn’t protect you from him,” Sin muttered, staring into my face like he might never see it again.
I pressed my hand to his cheek. “You did. You gave me the tools to face him unafraid. You taught me how to love myself, how to be strong and survive. He wanted to abduct me, he had a gun, and still, we beat him. When I was a teenager, he wouldn’t have needed the gun. I would have been on my knees because he loved me and perverted me and I would have thought obeying him was right. Instead, I outsmarted him and I won.”
His eyes flashed.
“I need you to let this go and focus on everything good in our lives. I need you to do this because I’m living my dream and I don’t want to live it alone or it’s no dream at all.”
“Elle,” he breathed on a heavy exhale. “You are so exquisite. I don’t deserve you.”
“I don’t deserve you which is good, because I’ll never take you for granted.”
“I’m falling in love with you,” he said, strangely.
I moved back a little to search his face but he was very serious. “Um, I was kind of under the impression that you loved me already.”
I watched laughter eat away at the anger in his eyes. “It’s still happening. I fall further and further into you every day.”
Okay, wow.
“You are so romantic.”
His lips twitched. “I’m just being nice.”
I laughed. “You don’t have time to be nice, remember?”
He smiled gently and cupped my cheek. “For you, I can find the time.”
Swoon.
I snuggled deeper into him.
“I know you have just been through an ordeal but I had this planned before everything went to hell. If you want to just go home and rest, I completely understand.”
“What are you talking about?”
His eyes danced. “How would you feel about a little celebratory vacation?”
“Sin! Are you going to make it a habit to whisk me away on a moment’s notice?” I teased, but I definitely wasn’t complaining.
“Yes, absolutely.”
I laughed again. “Where are we going this time?”
“Cabo.”
He watched me clap my hands and jump up and down in my seat, filled with childish delight and unashamed to show it. I smacked a loud kiss on his cheek.
“You spoil me.”
“It’s much more selfish than that, I like nothing more than to see you happy.”
“Sin,” I said, overwhelmed by him, by my life and my luck.
“You’re up for it? Because we’re on the way to the airport right now and Candy packed a suitcase for you, it’s in the trunk.”
“Where it all began,” I murmured, pressing my mouth close to his. “Of course, I want to go.”
“Good, because no wasn’t really an option.”
I rolled my eyes.
Chapter Twenty Four.
The soft, fragrant breeze wove through the open French doors to the balcony and wafted across the sweat cooling on my skin. Sinclair and I had finally ended up in the bedroom, the blankets pooled on the floor and the sheet twisted around my torso, his legs, like some kind of toga. The air smelled of sex and lavender and that indefinable tropical scent that was a combination of ocean brine, hibiscus and almost metallic heat. My head rested on the mattress facing Sinclair so that my hair pooled in bloody tendrils over the white sheets where he could draw his finger lazily through the curls and I could watch the way the pulse jumped in his brown throat.