Текст книги "Falling for Danger"
Автор книги: Chanel Cleeton
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 14 страниц)
I’d forgotten how big he was, forgotten that sex between us had always been so much more, that it wasn’t just his cock inside of me as much as the feeling that we’d bared everything before each other, shared the crevices of ourselves that we hid away from the rest of the world. It felt right. Like the time apart had never existed, like no matter what came our way, or who we grew to be, we’d always find our way back to each other.
For a moment we just stayed like that, his body seated to the hilt in mine, our sweat mingling, his heart beating against my back, the steady thumps music to my ears. I squeezed his fingers, holding on tight, an unspoken conversation passing between our bodies, and then he began moving, his powerful hips rocking as he thrust in and out, angling his body until he found the right spot, giving it to me harder, deeper, my toes curling into the worn carpet.
His hand slipped down from my waist to finger me once more, and between his strokes and the way he hit my g-spot, I felt the orgasm building within me once again. I fought it back, wanting to come with him, wanting to impale myself on his cock when I came.
Matt fucked me slow and hard, and then his pace quickened, his breaths growing harsher, his fingers squeezing mine, adding a thin thread of pain to all that pleasure, so I danced on a knife’s edge. And then he was coming, his body shuddering and quaking against mine, his cock throbbing inside me, and I let myself go for the second time, my body clenching down over his as I gave him everything I had—my heart, my body, my present, my past, my future.
Chapter Eleven
Rumors continue to swirl regarding a potential presidential bid for Senator Edward Reynolds …
–Capital Confessions blog
Matt
I lay on my back in Kate’s bed, staring up at the ceiling, her arm draped around my waist, pressed into my side, her hand lazily stroking my skin. All of the tension from the past few weeks had drained out of me, an unfamiliar sense of peace taking its place instead.
Kate stroked down my abs, her movements lazy, each one waking my tired body up.
“I need five minutes of recovery time,” I murmured, the remnants of my last orgasm hollowing me out.
Kate shifted, tilting her head up to face me, her brown eyes searching. Some of the edge to her seemed to have mellowed, a sleepy, hazy sort of contentment filtering into her gaze.
“So you’re planning on this happening again?”
And there was that flash of challenge, the part of her that was lovably tenacious.
I grinned. “I think you’re planning on this happening again, and I think we both know that I want you too much to resist. Especially after tonight.”
“It was pretty amazing, wasn’t it?”
A lump formed in my throat. It was always like that with us, so much more than good sex.
“Yeah, it was.”
She was quiet for a beat. “Are you going to stay here? I mean, at my place?”
I hadn’t really thought about it. I’d dumped my stuff when I’d rented a shitty room in an even shittier hotel in a dodgy part of the city—appealing to the kind of management who rented rooms by the hour and didn’t bat an eye at someone paying cash without ID.
“Do you want me to stay with you?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Then I will.”
I tightened my grasp around her, feeling like I was exactly where I belonged for the first time in nearly four years.
Kate
I woke to Matt thrashing in bed, his arms and legs jerking as he rolled over onto his side.
“No!” he shouted, his hands forming fists as he twisted and bucked, pummeling the bed.
Oh my god.
This one was so much worse than the nightmare I’d seen him having on the couch. He looked like he was fighting for his life, his entire body tense, braced for hell.
I slipped out of the bed, his arm connecting with my hip. I uttered an oath as a sharp pain hit me.
Fuck.
“Matt.” I reached out, my hand grazing his chest as he shouted and moaned. I tried to shake him, not sure if waking him like this was better or worse. “Matt, it’s just a dream. It’s Kate. You’re here in my apartment. You’re safe. You need to wake up.”
He moaned again, a faint sheen of sweat covering his skin, his body rocking.
My heart hammering, I got back on the bed, kneeling over him, trying to stay outside of the line of fire but close enough to put my hands on him, struggling to jar him awake.
“It’s Kate,” I repeated. “You’re safe. I need you to wake up. Everything’s okay.” I didn’t know if I was even getting through to him, but I had to try. “It’s just a bad dream.” I shook him gently, my hands on his pec, his heart pounding in a mad beat against my fingers.
He jolted upright, his eyes wide, his chest heaving. Our gazes connected. My fingers curled over his heart as though I could hold it close and protect him from the memories that haunted him.
“Fuck.” He ran a hand through his hair, pulling back a bit, his fingers trembling. “How long was that one?”
“I don’t know. I just woke up a minute or two ago. You were jerking around and I thought I should try to wake you up. I didn’t want you to hurt yourself.”
His jaw clenched, his mouth tight, his gaze running over me. “Did I hurt you?”
I shook my head.
“I know how bad these dreams are. Did I hurt you? Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m fine. You caught my hip, but it wasn’t bad. I got out of the way before anything could happen. I’m fine.”
“Fuck.”
Matt lurched out of bed, his feet hitting the floor, his body crumpled over at the waist as he leaned against his knees, his hands pressed against his forehead.
I knew he wanted to push me away, that this had somehow confirmed his fears that he was bad for me, that he was fucked up, et cetera, et cetera.
I wasn’t having any of it.
If he had nightmares, then I would be here with him in the middle of the night to make them go away. He needed help, needed someone to talk to, needed counseling, and if he thought I didn’t have it in me to stand by him while he went through this, then he didn’t know me at all.
I wasn’t scared of him. I wasn’t going to fall apart or shy away from the fact that the man who had come back to me had some broken pieces inside of him. Who didn’t? I was going to be everything he needed me to be, and if he couldn’t be strong right now, then I would be his strength.
“Do you want a glass of water?”
Matt jerked his head in a nod, his breath hitching as he dragged in air.
I walked to the kitchen and grabbed a glass, taking the moment to get my head together, to figure out how I was going to convince him that he needed to get help for his PTSD, especially when he couldn’t exactly go through official channels for veterans’ counseling.
When we’d been together, Matt had always been easygoing and confident; he’d never been the kind of guy who was afraid to admit when he struggled or to ask for help. He’d been self-deprecating and affable, easy to handle.
I didn’t know about this guy.
He seemed reluctant to admit when he needed help, embarrassed by his fear, like the only way he could hold everything together was to act as if he was impervious to the world around him, as though exposing one chink in his armor would bring everything else crashing down. I understood why he felt that way, but I couldn’t help him if he wouldn’t let me in.
I walked back into the bedroom and handed him the glass of water. His face had regained some color, his breathing normalizing a bit.
“Thanks.” He put the glass to his lips, draining the water in a series of gulps, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“Was it the same dream?” I asked, trying to keep my tone gentle, figuring this was one of those situations that required more finesse than I usually possessed. “From Afghanistan?”
He didn’t meet my gaze. “No. It wasn’t.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He set the glass on the nightstand, ducking his head, rubbing his jaw. “Not really.”
I took a deep breath. “Okay, I get that, and given what your dreams are about, I wouldn’t want to talk about them, either. But I really think you need to talk to someone. I’m no expert, but it seems like you have a lot of the symptoms of PTSD.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I know it’s hard with your situation,” I continued, keeping my tone measured and calm. “I know you can’t just go get the kind of support you need through the VA or something, but you shouldn’t go through this alone. You need someone to talk to. You can’t keep carrying all of this around inside you, not wanting to let someone in. It’s eating at you; let me help you.”
“I don’t want this to drag you down.”
I shook my head. “Don’t be like that. You know me. We’ve been best friends our entire lives, at least let me be your friend. I can handle whatever you throw my way. I want to be there for you, and if you don’t let me in, it’s just going to make this worse. You don’t have to be alone anymore.”
He sighed, running another hand through his hair, his voice ragged. “I dreamed that I was in Afghanistan. In the pit again. But this time, it wasn’t my friends’ bodies dropping around me, the sky raining death. It was yours. Over and over again.” Matt reached out and squeezed my hand. “I saw your face. Your hair. Your eyes. Dead.”
I pushed back the fear. Given everything that had happened recently, it wasn’t exactly a stretch to imagine me ending up in a grave somewhere.
“I’m not going to die.”
The second I said the words, they ignited some kind of fury within me. We’d already had enough of our lives taken away from us, already paid a price we didn’t owe. I was done. Done being afraid. Done feeling helpless or powerless. I didn’t care what it took; I was going to take them down, each and every person involved in this.
Matt gripped my hand even tighter.
“I’m going to research some support groups, see if there are some informal channels that you can go through to get the help you need and still stay off the grid. Blair’s boyfriend goes to N.A. and A.A. meetings, maybe there are support groups or something like that—ones that are anonymous and not run through the VA system.”
For a moment I didn’t think he would answer me, and then I heard his voice, gravelly and low—
“Okay.”
It was just one word, but it felt like a building block that could form the foundation for our future.
“Thank you.”
He nodded. “What about you?” he asked, changing the focus. “What’s your next move here?”
“I’m going to dinner at my parents’,” I answered. “I need to get into my father’s office, and you’re just going to have to trust me. I can do this. I know you’re worried and scared, and I know the stakes are a lot higher than anything we’ve ever dealt with, but don’t try to shield me from this because I’m a girl and you think I’m weak. You never did that before and I sure as hell don’t want to be treated like that now. Maybe I don’t have tree-trunk biceps and thighs, but you know I’m smart and tough. I have this.”
Matt shook his head. “You don’t get it. I don’t think you’re weak. And it’s not because you’re a girl, either. But these guys are no joke. They’re professionals. They’re better at this than you are; hell, they’re better at this than I am. We need to be smart about it. You’re right, you are smart. So if we’re going to win this, we have to be smarter than they are. They might have the advantage of force, but we’re going to have to outmaneuver them.”
He was right. And just as he’d been trying to protect me, I realized that shielding my sisters wasn’t the answer, either. Jackie and Blair would be affected by all of this, and hell, Jackie had pretty much inspired this vendetta against my father. I needed to tell them all of it. Jackie had been gathering information on our father for years; maybe she had something that could help us.
We couldn’t do this alone. We were going up against the kind of power that didn’t play fair and always won. We needed every tool at our disposal.
“I need to tell my sisters.”
“Are you sure?”
“We need the help. I don’t like lying to them, figure they should know to be on the lookout if things get uglier than they already are. They’re his daughters, too. They deserve to know.”
“What about keeping them safe?” he countered.
“I think I can tell them without them getting involved.” I hesitated. “Are you okay with me telling Blair that you’re alive? I trust her. She won’t say anything, won’t give anything away. She loved you, too. She deserves to know that you’re alive.”
He didn’t answer me for a while, his gaze trained down at his hands. I worried that I’d pushed too hard and asked for more than he was willing or able to give. And then he took away my fears.
“Okay.”
Relief filled me.
“I think we should wait until we have a little more evidence before we tell them about my father, though. Right now we have suspicions and pieces of the puzzle, but we don’t have all of it. I don’t want to mention this to them until we know what we’re dealing with. Besides, I’m supposed to go wedding dress shopping with Jackie and Blair tomorrow. Jackie’s not close to her mom, so it’s really important to her that we’re there. I don’t want anything to take away from her big day.”
“That sounds like a plan,” Matt answered, his voice tight as though I’d coerced him into something he didn’t exactly agree with, but couldn’t see a way out of. “When is your dinner with your parents?”
“On Wednesday.”
Not a lot of time for me to figure out my strategy for getting into my father’s office, but hopefully I could come up with something.
Matt’s expression hardened. “I’m going to be close by for backup.”
“Agreed.”
“And if he seems suspicious at all, or if anything comes up, you have to promise you’ll get the hell out of there.”
“Agreed.”
“And if you’re going into that house, you’re going in armed.”
I laughed. “How am I supposed to manage that? I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think a gun is going to fit into the bodice of my cocktail dress.” In all fairness, though, considering how not-well-endowed I was, there’d probably be plenty of room.
“We’ll figure something out. And I want to take you to a shooting range first.”
“Am I going to war or going to dinner?”
“Is there a difference with your parents?”
Valid point.
“So do you have any secret Special Forces tricks that will get me ready to break in by Wednesday?”
He grinned. “I can show you a thing or two.”
I figured our talk and the glass of water had helped, because the next thing I knew, my back hit the mattress and Matt loomed over me, his mouth on mine, his body hard.
We didn’t go back to sleep for hours.
Chapter Twelve
Jackie Gardner was spotted shopping for wedding dresses for her upcoming nuptials to Virginia State Senator William Clayton. Her sisters and reported bridesmaids, Kate and Blair Reynolds, were in attendance.
–Capital Confessions blog
Kate
I sat next to Blair on the stuffed sofa in the bridal shop, waiting for Jackie to come out of the dressing room. Considering Will’s position as a state senator and the fact that his family included a former vice president of the United States and parents who were constantly mentioned in the society column, her wedding was beginning to resemble a mini royal wedding.
Jackie wasn’t the type of girl who spent a lot of time worrying about things like seating charts and floral arrangements—she wasn’t Blair—so I figured she was pretty overwhelmed by it all. I knew she was excited to marry Will, but I doubted that she’d anticipated all of the bridal craziness that would accompany marrying a Clayton. She’d called Blair and me last week in a panic and asked us to help her pick out a dress.
We sipped glasses of champagne, Blair looking perfectly at home in the elegant salon filled with tiny, breakable furniture, the soft strands of classical music, and a ridiculous amount of flowers. Me? Not so much.
“Okay, I need you guys to give me your honest opinion,” Jackie called out from behind the dressing room door. “It’s not necessarily what I would have picked if this were a normal wedding, but given Will’s career and the fact that these pictures will probably show up somewhere, I wanted to look like a politician’s wife. Just, you know, not boring.”
My lips twitched. Demure, she definitely wasn’t. Not that Will seemed to mind, though. He absolutely adored my sister.
The door opened and Jackie stepped out.
Whoa.
Blair and I had only discovered that we had a sister a year ago when Jackie’s paternity was exposed by Capital Confessions. Since then we’d spent as much time as our crazy schedules allowed trying to build a relationship, trying to make up for twenty-one years of lost time. Even though I didn’t have a lifetime of memories with her like I did with Blair, and even though our relationship would probably never be the same, I loved Jackie. She was my sister in every way that counted. So seeing her standing there in her wedding gown was something special.
I didn’t really get into clothes, so I couldn’t tell who the designer was, or what kind of shape it was, or anything about the material. I just knew that she looked beautiful. And happy. So happy.
“You look amazing,” Blair whispered, tears filling her eyes. Between the two of us, she was definitely the crier.
I grinned. “You really do. Will’s going to freak when he sees you.”
He always looked at her like he would never get tired of it, as though there were something new to dazzle him each time, but I figured there was something special about seeing the woman you were going to marry in a wedding dress. Especially, when you looked like Jackie did.
“You don’t think it’s too conservative?” she asked, staring at her reflection in the mirror with a critical eye.
I shrugged. “I mean, I can see cleavage, so I’m thinking no.”
Blair laughed. “It’s perfect. You’re right; you want something that will look good for Will’s staff to use in official photos. It’s feminine and sexy, while still perfectly appropriate for the wife of a rising political star.”
Jackie grinned, her eyes gleaming, and I knew she was already scheming up ways to use their wedding to help Will’s career.
“I think this is it, then. I saw it in the bridal magazine and thought it might be, but I really wanted to come try it on and see for myself.” She gave us both quick hugs. “I can’t believe I just found my wedding dress. Thank you guys so much for coming with me.”
Blair stood, handing Jackie and me champagne flutes. She lifted hers in the air.
“To our amazing sister. We wish you and Will a lifetime of happiness.” Her eyes teared up. “I’m so glad that we have you in our lives. We love you so much.”
Jackie grinned. “Thanks. I love you guys, too. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Despite all of the shit with my father and all of the issues I had with my family, my sisters were the best part of being a Reynolds, no contest. I knew my parents hated that Blair and I had a relationship with Jackie; besides the press conference they’d conducted when news of Jackie’s paternity had come out in the media, they’d made it clear that they didn’t want us to be linked with her publicly. When it came down to a relationship with the sister we loved or the approval of the parents we could barely stand, there hadn’t been much of a question for Blair or me. This was our father’s legacy, whether he liked it or not.
We finished our champagne and then Jackie went back into the dressing room to get changed, leaving Blair and me together.
“So do you think you and Gray will get married someday?” I asked, curiosity getting the best of me. Blair was pretty private about her relationship—and given everything that had happened before, I couldn’t blame her—but they’d been living together for several months now and they seemed really happy. And I’d thrown mock weddings with Blair more times than I could count when we were kids. That said, I knew Gray was divorced, and considering Blair’s last attempt at marriage had resulted in her fleeing the altar when she’d learned her fiancé was gay and cheating on her, I wouldn’t exactly be surprised if neither one of them had a favorable outlook on matrimony.
Blair’s cheeks turned a little pink. “Yeah, I do.”
I waited to see if she’d share more.
“We’ve talked about it and we both want the same thing, want to have a future together. I think he’s a little nervous about the rest of it—having children, feeling like he’s ready to be a husband and father. With his track record and the way he was raised, he definitely still has some baggage, but it seems like he gets more comfortable with the idea the longer we’re together, the more he sees that our relationship is solid.” She shrugged. “Maybe in a year? Neither one of us is in a huge rush. We love each other and we’re happy. Plus, we’re both really busy getting our careers off the ground.”
Blair had started working at a nonprofit in Boston a few months ago and seemed to really enjoy it. Gray had opened his own private legal practice and while I knew he’d tried to cut back on his hours, he still worked a lot.
“I always thought that I needed to get married, like it was some box I had to check,” Blair continued. “But honestly, I never really figured out who I was before. It’s different with Jackie. She probably came out of the womb telling the world to suck it, kicking ass and taking names.”
I laughed. That did totally sound like Jackie.
“I still feel like I’m figuring out who I am and what I want independent of everyone’s expectations of me. Don’t get me wrong; Gray is awesome and so supportive, but I just want to spend a little time working on me before I start working on a marriage. And I think he feels the same way. He’s only been sober a couple years now, and we both just want to be in a good place before we shake things up.”
I reached out and squeezed her hand.
“That sounds like a really smart plan. I’m glad you found someone who makes you as happy as he does. And I’m so happy that you’ve found someone who lets you be you and doesn’t try to put you in a box or make you think you have to be someone you’re not.”
I’d been lucky—I’d always had Matt there to accept me for who I was, even when I’d clearly disappointed our parents. But Blair had spent most of her life playing by their rules. It was good to see her making her own choices now.
“How are you doing?” Blair asked. “Jackie told me the blind date didn’t go so well. Sorry about that. I shouldn’t have pushed.” She gave me a wry smile. “I know how annoying it is. I just got excited thinking that you might be ready to move on, at the idea that maybe you could find some happiness with someone else, that I pushed when I shouldn’t have. I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t be. You were being a good sister.” I took a deep breath. “Listen, do you think you could come by the apartment after we go to lunch? Just you? There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Sure.” Worry filled her eyes. “Is everything okay?”
I smiled. “Yeah. It is.”
I didn’t know why I was nervous about this, but I was.
I figured Blair would understand why I’d kept the truth from her, knew I could trust her to realize how important it was to keep the news about Matt a secret. And at the same time, he felt like something I needed to hold close to me and protect, a secret I would die to keep. But Blair had grown up with him almost like a big brother, and she’d loved him, too. She’d held me while I cried after I received the phone call telling me that he’d died, had stood next to me at the funeral, her arm around me, holding me up. I hadn’t been able to lean on my parents, and in those first few days, before I’d shut down completely, I’d leaned on her.
We sat down on the sofa in my living room, and I took a deep breath, steadying myself.
Here goes nothing.
“Matt’s alive. He didn’t die in Afghanistan.”
Blair stared at me, the color draining from her face, the look of shock on her face mirroring the emotion I’d felt that first night he showed up in my apartment.
“What?”
“He’s alive. I’ve seen him. His unit was ambushed in Afghanistan and they were all killed. Matt was shot, but he survived. They dumped the bodies in a pit, and when it was safe, he clawed himself out.”
It was still hard to talk about, incredibly painful to imagine him in that position. I didn’t know how he’d walked away from all he’d been through, couldn’t imagine how he managed the memories and lived with the dreams.
“Oh my god.” Blair sat frozen, her mouth open, shock etched all over her face. “Oh my god.” Tears welled up in her eyes. “How? How is that even possible? What happened? He’s really alive?”
I nodded, my throat clogged with tears rising to the surface. More than anyone, she knew what this meant for me. She’d been through my grief, had struggled to get through to me, to support me, even as I’d pushed her away.
“Kate. Oh my god, Kate.”
She wrapped her arms around me, engulfing me in a hug, and for the first time in years, I took down the wall I’d put around myself, and let her in.
Tears spilled down my cheeks, my body racked by sobs as she held me, as we cried together, some mixture of happy and sad tears mingling together until I didn’t know which was which. Everything felt so overwhelming, in an unimaginable, hopeful sort of way, that it peppered our tears.
I’d needed to be strong for Matt, had sensed that despite his bravado and the edge to him now, there were parts of him that were crumpling under the weight of everything he’d endured over the past few years. I didn’t want him carrying me, too. But now, for a moment, I relaxed into the embrace of my big sister, of the only other person who’d always had my back and who I knew had been waiting a long time for me to let her in.
Blair pulled away first, wiping at her face, her eyes wide with amazement. “You have to tell me everything. How did this happen? How long have you known? Can I see him?”
I nodded, figuring it was best to start at the beginning. I knew how worried she’d be, but I hoped that the fact that I had Matt on my side, protecting me, would give her peace.
“The night of my birthday, I woke up to the sound of someone breaking into my apartment …”
I went through everything that had happened leading up to last night, skimming over the sex, and the fact that things were sort of up in the air between me and Matt, and not going into too many details about our father. I still wasn’t ready to share everything, not until I had enough proof to know what I was sharing. I walked a fine line between needing to come clean with my sisters and wanting to keep them protected, far away from this mess.
When I’d finished, Blair had a dazed expression on her face.
“How are you doing?”
“Okay, I guess? I know that might sound weird, but the hard part was when I thought Matt was gone. Now that I know he’s safe, everything else seems manageable.”
“If by ‘manageable’ you mean completely and totally insane.”
“Basically.”
“How is Matt handling all of this?”
“That’s the tough part. It’s obvious that what happened to him in Afghanistan left a mark on him. I want to get him the help he needs, but it’s hard when he’s also trying to lie low so that no one realizes he’s still alive.”
I hesitated. We’d never really talked a lot about our relationships. Blair was pretty private, and Matt and I’d had the kind of relationship that didn’t really need a lot of analyzing. But now I needed my sister, needed someone to help put all of this in perspective. “Things are kind of weird between us, too,” I admitted.
“What do you mean?”
“I think he’s hesitant to get involved with me. Afraid that it’s dangerous for him to be around me. We’ve had sex, but things aren’t like they used to be between us. I feel like he’s closed off and I can’t break through if he doesn’t want to let me in. There are moments when it feels like I’m close, but at the same time, I know I’m not. Not really.”
Sympathy filled Blair’s gaze. “I know how hard that can be. And how frustrating. In the beginning, Gray tried to push me away. He was convinced that with his past and his position as my professor, our relationship would ruin my chances at a legal career.” She made a face. “Which it sort of did.”
I winced, hating myself for having contributed to their struggles. “I’m so sorry about that. If I could take it back, I would. I know that’s not a consolation, I know there’s nothing I can do now to make what I did then okay—”
She reached out and squeezed my hand. “No, I don’t mean it like that. In a weird way, it was a major blessing in disguise. We were both following paths that didn’t make us happy. It took our worlds getting shaken up a bit to make us reevaluate our priorities and what we wanted out of life.
“I love our life in Boston and wouldn’t trade it for anything. I needed to start over. Needed to get out of D.C. I needed to find something that I was passionate about doing, and for the first time in my life, I feel like there’s more to me than just being a Reynolds. That I’m actually doing good in the world and helping people. Considering where we come from, I like to think that hopefully, in some small way, I’m counteracting our family legacy.”
I figured that would have been a challenge for Mother Teresa given our father’s megalomaniacal worldview, but I got her point.
“Do you still love Matt?” Blair asked.
“Really?”
She grinned. “Right. I forgot how ride or die you are.”
I laughed. “Is Gray teaching you phrases like ‘ride or die’? Somehow I’m having a hard time connecting with your wild side.”
She smirked. “Very funny. I’ll have you know that I have a pretty impressive wild side.”
“I’ll bet,” I teased.
Gray wasn’t my type, but there was no denying that he was fine. Really fine. And by the look of things, he definitely had a wild side. If he was bringing that out in my sister, good for him and even better for her.
“Does he still love you?” Blair asked, her voice gentle, worry in her gaze.
I swallowed. “He has my initial tattooed on his chest. Over his heart. He says that he can’t do love, that he’s killed people, that—”
“Those are excuses, all the reasons why he thinks you shouldn’t love him. That’s not exactly an answer.” Blair paused for a moment. “He loves you.”
She said it like it was a given, and the second she did, I realized it was.
“Yeah. He does.”
“So what would it take for the two of you to come out of all of this together?”
