Chapter 28 Devon
DEVON
With no hesitation, Lofton dashed across the room and slammed into my chest.
The impact knocked the air from my lungs, but I didn’t care about anything other than having her in my arms again.
Her panic was thick. Like somehow my mistakes had become her own.
I hated seeing her like that, but my relief was unrivaled as she wrapped her arms around my waist, her body pressing against me as if she could become part of me if she just got close enough.
And Christ, I wanted to let her try.
With one hand cupping the back of her head, the other flat against her spine, I drew her deeper into my curve.
A tremor ran through her body.
Or maybe it was mine.
I couldn’t tell anymore.
“I’m sorry,” she cried into my chest.
“Babe.” I pulled her tighter. “Stop apologizing. This is on me.”
“I compared you to Sebastian,” she confessed as if maybe I hadn’t been present in the driveway.
I smoothed down the back of her hair. “I know.”
“That’s not you. You’re nothing like him.”
“I know that too.” I pressed a kiss to the top of her head, letting it linger longer than necessary.
Because I needed it.
The contact, the connection, but mostly just her.
“You don’t have to apologize. Shit got heated. I cut you deep and then handled it wrong. But I’m here, babe. Holding on with both hands. Never letting go.”
“No,” she croaked. “Don’t be sweet about this. I said some really shitty stuff. What happened to Devon Grant the asshole?”
I chuckled. “Not a fan of sleeping on the couch, babe. Figure I should retire that side of me when I’m with you.”
She exhaled hard against my chest, her arms tightening around me. “Devon, I—”
“Shhh. I’m right here. We’ll work through this. I’m not going anywhere.”
And for a moment we just stood there in the middle of that bedroom, breathing together until her heart slowed and her lungs finally synced with mine.
I lifted my head to find three women on the bed, watching us with varying degrees of discretion.
Rhion, biting her lip against a smile.
Sarah pretended with moderate success to be looking elsewhere.
And Brianna, who made absolutely no attempt at pretense, head tilted, wine glass raised in something that could only be described as a toast.
“Take your time,” she said. “I love to watch.”
Rhion bit out a quiet curse that I didn’t understand or care to question.
I jerked my chin toward the door.
“Right.” Rhion was on her feet instantly.
Sarah followed, pausing to give me a look that held approximately a dozen warnings, all of them falling into the be-good-to-her-or-I-will-cut-off-your-balls category.
Brianna was last. She glided past us with the serenity of a woman who had all the time in the world and the intention of using every second of it. She paused at the door to look back. “For what it’s worth, I was always on your side, Roger.”
I shook my head as she pulled the door shut behind her.
“You made it all the way to Roger, huh?”
She peeked up at me, her gaze so filled with apology I wanted to reject it. “I made it all the way to realizing I put you on a pedestal.”
I blinked at her, not having the first clue what the hell that meant, but that one, I did actually care to question.
But first…
Dipping low, I hooked an arm under her knees and lifted her off her feet. Her arms went around my neck automatically, and she lolled her head against my shoulder as if it was just another part of her body that required a grounding connection to me.
I carried her to the bed and set her down with her back against the headboard, and then sat beside her, one leg folded on the bed, pressed against her thigh, the other foot securely on the floor.
She immediately took my hand and intertwined our fingers, inspecting them. Then we just sat there together, collecting our thoughts, slowing our breathing, turning down the emotion, and holding on to each other in the process.
After a few minutes, I asked, “You feeling any better?”
“Not even remotely. You?”
“Also, no.” I reached over and tucked her hair behind her ear. “But we can’t both be a wreck. One of us has to hold it together.”
She let out a laugh that was mostly tears. “I nominate you.”
“Naturally.” I handed her a tissue from a box that was sitting in the middle of the bed for reasons unknown. “You want to tell me what happened? Because you went from pissed to full system collapse in about an hour. Had to have been some heavy shit.”
She pressed the tissue under her eyes and let out a shaky breath. “To be fair, you did send in a squad of highly persistent bodyguard women to do your dirty work.”
I shrugged, feeling no remorse. “You think I’m a liar. Not much sense in talking to one of those.”
“Devon,” she whispered, resting her hand on the side of my face. “I don’t think you’re a liar. I overreacted because I was hurt.”
“I should have told you. It was an uncomfortable conversation that I should have faced head on. But I didn’t. I cowered, and then when Henry dropped that bomb, you got hit by the shrapnel. That’s on me.”
“I’ll agree that it would have been better to hear it from you.
” She leaned toward me, dropping her forehead to mine.
“But the way I reacted. All the vile stuff I spewed. That’s on me.
In the car, on the way back, I couldn’t figure out why you having a past with her made it feel like my chest was on fire.
Every way I tried to make sense of that burn, only fanned the flames.
So I blamed a pattern. Then Sebastian. Then, when none of those felt right, I just blamed you.
” Her face scrunched adorably. “I made assumptions about you. Unspoken expectations, because you had always set the bar so high, that I didn’t recognize that I just kept inching it higher. ”
“You shouldn’t have so much faith in me.”
She framed my face with her hands. “Yes, I should. Honestly, I should have more faith in you. You’re a good man, Devon.
Not because you’re perfect like that pedestal I put you on, but because you care enough to put in the work.
” Her thumbs brushed along my jaw. “You cared that Sebastian had gotten in my head about the overalls. You cared that I didn’t feel normal.
You cared that you being in the house would upset my dad.
And you didn’t just acknowledge it. You fixed it. ”
I flicked my gaze to the side. “That’s just who I am.
It’s probably why I’m so damn good and so damn bad at this job.
I think three steps ahead so you don’t have to.
I see the problems before they happen so you never feel the fallout.
” My jaw tightened. “But this time, I covered my own ass instead of focusing on you. And watching that truth hit you the way it did?” I swallowed hard. “I’ll never be able to fix that.”
“And that’s how I know I was wrong,” she said softly. “That’s not a crack in your foundation.” Her fingers tightened just slightly against my face. “It’s the strength that makes your foundation unbreakable.”
A weight settled heavy in my chest.
I didn’t feel unbreakable with her. I felt like I was dangling on the edge of a crumbling cliff. No net. No way back. Just time ticking away until the earth finally swallowed me.
Even after deciding I was all in with her.
Holding on with both hands.
There was still one thing I hadn’t said.
And it might have been the biggest omission of all.
“I want this with you,” I confessed. “More than I have ever wanted anything in my life.” I exhaled slowly.
“But you terrify me, Lofton. Because I love you. The colors I know. The colors I’m going to learn.
The colors we’re going to make together.
I love all of it. Two months, and I already love you all the way down to the marrow in my bones. ”
“Baby,” she whispered. “I love you too.”
I closed my eyes for a beat, letting that sink in and then travel to every dark and guarded place that existed within me.
“And that’s why I know the fear is real,” I said, opening my eyes.
She smiled. “What?”
“You’re my Clara.”
She went absolutely still.
I let her.
Because that was the whole of it, right there in three words.
The weight of that truth was suffocating. I wasn’t talking about the future in the abstract anymore. I wasn’t running threat assessments, or preparing for the worst, or building exits into something I hadn’t fully walked into yet.
I was already in it.
All the way in.
With absolutely no way out.
Or any desire to find one. No matter how much that scared me.
“I sat in that equipment shed with your father as he looked out at you in that round pen and saw his wife. Not a memory. Not a ghost. Just—her. Present. Real.” I shook my head.
“I saw what this kind of love does to a man when it ends. That’s going to be me, Lofton.
And I don’t know that I can survive that. ”
“Baby,” she whispered. “That’s not just you. That’s love. It’s always going to be scary, even for big bad bodyguards like you.”
I shot her a glare, but it only made her smile.
“I get it. I grew up watching that love and it was devastating to discover it’s not as common as it should be. But you’re sitting here terrified of the ending before we’ve even gotten through the beginning.”
“I can’t help it. I can see it happening. Start to finish. All the ways it can go wrong or more than likely all the ways that I can fuck it up. And then I’m a different kind of Lawrence Beck, wandering through life without you.”
She shook her head. “You’re looking for the problem. You’re scanning the whole horizon trying to find where it breaks down so you can prepare yourself. But sometimes, there is no problem to find. There’s just us.”
“I’m not equipped for this.”
“You are probably correct on that one. But you love me, right?”
I didn’t think twice before leaning in, my hand sliding to the back of her neck. I pulled her to me, my mouth finding hers with a slow and deliberate kiss, as if I could somehow make her understand that every piece of me would forever be hers.