Chapter 26 #2
“I’m going to pay him myself,” she declares, and I can’t help but sag a little at that, and I hate that that’s where my head went, but again, Abbot-Fritz and that’s just how it goes.
“I told Cat I’d pay him, so he doesn’t kill her, but that I’m done with them.
All of them. I know I likely shouldn’t bail her out after what she did, but I can’t sign her death warrant either.
Anyway, I had her tell my parents I was done with them too.
Threatened not to pay or to go to the press and sing a sob story if they ever spoke about what they did publicly. But you’re a Fritz, Landon.”
I swallow, my mouth bone-dry. “I’m not following.” Except I am, and I don’t like where this is going.
She spins in my arms, licking her lips and staring up at me as water rains down on us.
“I worry if my family somehow found out we’re involved…
that they’d…” She can’t even finish her statement, and I understand why—and am grateful for it.
She’s worried about me. About Stella. About what they could do to us.
The fact that she’s talking to me about it, not after my money, but concerned for it and me, tells me all my instincts about her are correct.
I cup her face in my hand. “I know how to take care of myself.”
She shakes her head against me. “They’re ruthless. Look at what they did to David.”
“If this is your attempt to get rid of me—”
“No. But I need you to know what I come with. What I potentially come with. I’m hoping they’ll slink away into the shadows. I threatened a lot, but my parents get nothing out of this, Landon, and that’s what scares me.”
“I don’t scare off that easily.”
But I’ll do my own research into her family. Something I should have done from the start but didn’t. I looked into her. Into her ex-husband. Now it seems I have more than just Stella and my family to protect. She thinks her family is ruthless. She has no clue.
She’s never crossed a Fritz.
Money can buy a lot of whatever you need, and I happen to have plenty of it.
“David was horrible to me,” she whispers after a very long, quiet moment.
“I was constantly on eggshells, nervous and jittery whenever he was home. Everything I did, I found myself questioning how he’d react.
And nothing I ever did was good enough. Everything I am was an affront to him.
I was too ugly. Too stupid. Too careless.
Not grateful enough. Not perfect enough.
He let me know it too. Any chance he got.
” She licks her lips, her eyes tilting up to mine.
“It’s why I was so upset when you slammed the window shut on me.
It was like everything he always told me I was hit home in that very moment. I wasn’t enough.”
Fuck. Just fuck. How could I have been so stupid and reckless?
“It was me who wasn’t enough. Not you. I never felt deserving of you.
Not from the second I saw you, even until now.
I’m trying. I am. I want to deserve you.
I want to deserve this.” I press my lips to hers.
Press them on her chest over where her heart thrums. “I’ve hated myself for so long, Elle.
I was furious with Reese that night. I thought she had the easiest gig in the world, being home with Stella while I was spending interminable hours in med school and studying.
I was wrong. She was home and happy with our girl, but she also had dreams I didn’t take into consideration.
Aspirations beyond what her life was, and in truth, Stella had been going through a rough toddler patch.
She was difficult, and Reese did need a break.
But instead of recognizing that, I yelled.
I yelled and told her to go, and she did, and she died. ”
“Regret is such a strange thing, isn’t it?
The power it wields. The way it scars. David loved me, and you loved Reese.
And I think, truly, if time were malleable, we’d correct our errors instead of learning from them.
But that’s history, right? History teaches us to talk about it so we never forget or repeat what should never be repeated. ”
Her hand is on my cheek the way mine is on hers. I stare into her eyes, holding them for so long. Searching their depths. Reveling in their secrets and mysteries that are only mine to discover.
“Maybe this is our second chance at getting it right.”
“I want that,” she tells me. “All of what you said. I want to wake up beside you. As much fun as sneaking around this week has been, I don’t want to do that forever.
But I still think we should keep this a secret.
From everyone. I don’t know what would happen to my teaching position, and there’s Stella to consider and my family and—”
I shut her up with a kiss because I have too much on my mind right now to fight with her.
She wants to keep us a secret, and she’s probably right.
For a little while longer at least, but if this thing is going where I want it to go, then I’ll have to tell Stella, and I won’t be able to keep Elle a secret because I don’t want to keep her a secret.
I kiss her, reassuring her until my kisses and reassurances turn into lust and passion, then I take her once more in the shower before I wash her hair and her body, then I’m forced to kiss her sleeping lips good night to sneak back out into the cold, dark night and into my house.
I shut the door behind me, the warmth and comfort of my home a relief as I lock everything up and set the alarm.
But as I walk through the first floor toward the stairs, I halt in my steps, stunned at what I find waiting for me.