Chapter 28 Everett #2
Yet she doesn’t cower, instead lifts her chin, her gaze fierce.
Her pain, her suffering, she owns them. She manipulates them in her favor. Uses them as fuel to stoke the fire within her.
She carries herself so beautifully. Another trait that’s been pulling me to her.
She’s regal. This woman who’s been holding herself together alone for too long.
That’s why running toward me, the big bad wolf, wasn’t a compromise.
I’m deplorable, cruel, and strong. I’ve also, unbeknownst to me, protected her. Sheltered her.
I’m the one who quiets the voices in her head. Who could never hate her.
She got that part right.
“Tell me.”
A soft sigh, and here she is. Instead of cursing me, she leans into my touch. Searching for the comfort of my palm.
She clears her throat. “He never punched me, if that’s what you’re asking.”
A knife through the chest, that’s what I feel like. I don’t want to hear the rest, but I have no other choice. I have to learn just how wrong I’ve been about her. I’m her husband.
Her burdens are mine.
“How has he been, then?”
Aurora disturbs her bottom lip. I run my thumb over the swollen flesh, soothing her.
I’m doing my best to be attentive. Patient.
But hiding my building fury won’t last.
“The worst, up until now, has been the basement.” A pause. “They’d lock me down there. For hours or days sometimes.”
The basement? Lock her up there?
For days?
My mind races, taking me to a place that isn’t this room.
In my head, I’m throwing myself into my car. Any of my vehicles. I’m speeding through the quiet streets of our neighborhood, crashing through the Clarkes’ gates.
My hands on their throats. Their corpses beneath me. I’d bring their bodies back here. Lay them at Aurora’s feet.
No. A quick death would be merciful.
Justice would be knowing they’re in pain for the rest of their lives.
Locking them up in prison would guarantee a lifetime of suffering, knowing that Aurora and I are thriving on the outside.
They’d agonize over it.
Like I have every time I laid eyes on Winston’s smug face.
“Most of the time…” Her voice lowers. She’s embarrassed. For being abused. What the fuck? “I was caged in my room.”
Aurora’s glistening eyes drive a stake through my heart.
“Caged?” My hand won’t leave her cheek, my fingers won’t stop apologizing with every stroke, every caress. “What about the Royalty meetings you went to? All those shopping trips?”
We both see my questions for what they are. I’m not calling her a liar.
They tricked me. I have to get to the bottom of this so they won’t be able to do it ever again.
“The meetings were necessary for appearance’s sake.” The grin that stretches her lips is watery.
I lean in, pressing a kiss to her mouth. To her pain. Another promise to take the pain away from her.
“They brought me there to fool everyone,” she continues. “Only once a year, so that we can look like a functional family. Anything more, and I could’ve gotten too comfortable around you and asked for help.”
My eyebrows shoot down. My soul crushes beneath the weight of the truth.
I spent years resenting everyone for falling for Winston’s act. For not seeing him for what he truly is—a violent rapist.
Turns out, the joke’s been on me all along.
“I—”
“No,” she scoffs. “Let me finish. You asked about the, um, shopping trips. I forced them to let me out, even though we all knew I was going to try to steal stuff. And I can already see it—you’re about to bring up your lawyers, aren’t you?”
“I swear to God, if they withheld this from me…”
She huffs a sad laugh. “They had no idea. I never told them I loved staying in jail overnight. The few months in prison were a vacation. Besides, my parents are influential and wealthy. No one would’ve believed me. Either that, or they would’ve ignored me. I did the best with what I had.”
Tomorrow morning, every lawyer who’s ever handled Aurora’s cases, who’s been to jail or their house to sit down with them—they’re all getting thrown out of there. They’re fucking lucky they won’t get disbarred for not looking deeper into her case.
“How’d you do it?” It hurts to keep digging into this. I have no other choice. “How did they let you out?”
She tells me her gut-wrenching story, pain lacing her voice, tears glistening in her eyes.
She’s stomping on my heart, killing me one painful word at a time.
Aurora isn’t just innocent.
She’s a victim.
A survivor.
With my lips on Aurora’s forehead, I whisper, “I’m sorry.”
“God, I was stupid, wasn’t I?” Her pain slices into my soul. “To think that’d hurt them. You managed to do that, not me. A hurricane, that’s what you are. I’m a mosquito at best.”
It’s my turn to laugh. “A mosquito?” I pull away without letting go of her face. I won’t ever let go. “Aurora, you’re a wildfire. A hellion. You’ve crawled under my skin, reaching parts of me that I closed off to the world long ago. You’ve gotten under theirs, that’s for goddamn sure.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I can’t?”
Kissing her is unavoidable. I sink my teeth into her bottom lip, sucking her essence into me.
Breathless, I draw back, looking at her with fresh eyes.
“While you were in prison, they hardly ever talked in the Royalty meetings. When they had to engage with anyone, it was pitiful. Short sentences. Clipped words. They did everything in their power to avoid uncomfortable conversations about you. A mosquito? You weren’t born to be something as small as a mosquito. You could never be one.”
The tears slip free at last, tracing wet streaks down her cheeks and soaking into my palm. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. And you know what? You don’t have to fight them alone anymore.”
I flip her so that her back is turned to me. A basic impulse inside me demands that I have her closer. So I mold her to the front of my body, my arm tight around her waist.
My face in her silky hair, breathing her in. “I’ll make sure they pay for it. For everything.”
“For her too?” She isn’t prying, isn’t demanding. Though she could do either, Aurora asks.
And since the question doesn’t cut deep anymore, I can offer her an answer.
This one is simple. “For them.”