Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Water.
Water who?
Water you up to for the rest of my life?
—From Bash’s dad joke collection
Bash
Deep within his marrow and his very soul, Bash sensed the moment the formidable bastion of Arabella’s defenses crumbled.
Then she gasped a sob and sunk into him, boneless, vulnerable.
And stripped so bare, Bash wondered how his own heart didn’t explode in sympathetic agony.
It was as if his own body—physically stronger, emotionally bolstered by the truest of family and friends—absorbed Arabella’s pain. It was at once a breathless, brutal punch to his gut and a mandate.
Bash didn’t understand what magical alchemy had led them to this place.
How a fundamentally selfish plan derived from his own almost bloodthirsty need for a fucking movie role had brought him to his knees, in subjugation to a queen of a woman who was so battered, so intrinsically and achingly harmed, that her fortifications had clearly repelled any relationships except for a long-eared bunny.
And him.
Bash tightened his arms, breathing deeply as she sunk further into his embrace.
Arabella was somehow both emotionally frail and compellingly strong.
The honor of holding her was everything.
Nothing else mattered. Fully clothed, he was as naked and new as the day he first drew breath.
The powerful intimacy—far beyond the sexual union of bodies—was both a blow to Bash’s own not-insignificant fortifications and an illumination of his reason for being.
Arabella Remington was his to protect. His to care for. To cherish. His to heal.
His to love.
His.