Total pages in book: 32
Estimated words: 32532 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 163(@200wpm)___ 130(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32532 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 163(@200wpm)___ 130(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
And throughout it, his hand never leaves mine.
“Regarde-moi,” he murmurs softly, and I obey without thinking.
Look at me.
I focus on his eyes, on the familiar blue, on the way his thumb presses lightly against my knuckles in a steady rhythm—here, now, breathe.
The world slows.
Just enough.
“I should be with him,” I say suddenly, the guilt punching through the calm like a sucker blow. “Dane shouldn’t be alone.”
“He’s not,” Zacharie’s tone is matter-of-fact. “And neither are you—” He cups my cheek, and my breath catches. “So don’t break yourself apart when there’s no need.
“I just...I feel like this is my fault. I can’t stop thinking that if I just answered—”
“You did nothing wrong.”
“Everybody around me keeps getting hurt,” I whisper. “Or dead.” Like Trina. “What if next time—”
I can’t even say it. All I can do is look at him, and he knows.
“You are not to be blamed for any of this, and nothing is going to happen to me. D’accord?”
He’s already pulling me close as I nod, and I rest my forehead against his shoulder, exhausted in a way that feels bone-deep.
The rollercoaster of my life keeps rattling forward, tracks screaming, alarms blaring. But for this one suspended moment, with his hand in mine and his presence anchoring me, I’m not screaming.
I’m breathing.
And I don’t know whether to be grateful for that...or terrified of how much I already need it.
Time stretches into something soft and cruel, people coming and going around us—doctors, nurses, someone pacing with a phone pressed to their ear—but Zacharie stays exactly where he is, like the axis the rest of the room spins around.
I shift in the chair, my side protesting with a dull, familiar ache, and even though I haven’t made a sound, he just knows, with the way he angles his body so I can lean into him without twisting, his arm coming around my shoulders in a way that shields more than it supports.
That’s how it’s been all night. He sees a need, and he repositions.
A nurse approaches, clipboard in hand. “Family?”
“Yes,” Zacharie says without missing a beat.
The nurse nods, makes a note, and it’s the doctor who comes out next to speak to us. I try my best to understand what he’s saying, but he might as well be speaking in another language. When he walks away, I glance at Zacharie uncertainly, and once again, he understands even me without saying a word.
“Dane’s going to make it,” he says simply.
It takes a few extra seconds for the words to sink in.
Dane will be...okay.
And the moment I realize this is the moment my body stops playing the martyr, the adrenaline rush fading, and exhaustion comes crashing in.
Chapter Eleven
ZACHARIE HAD EXPECTED resistance.
He had prepared for it, in fact. The speech was already forming in his mind as he drove them back to his estate—the careful, logical argument for why she needed to stay with him, why bodyguards would shadow her every move, why her university had already been notified that she would be taking a leave of absence for personal safety reasons connected to her cousin’s murder.
He had anticipated tears. Protests. Perhaps even that stubborn tilt of her chin that made him want to kiss her senseless and lock her away from the world in equal measure.
What he had not anticipated was this.
“Okay.”
Zacharie’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Okay?”
“Yes.” Mira shifted in the passenger seat, her body angled toward him, her expression open and trusting in a way that made something twist behind his ribs. “If you think that’s what’s safest, then okay.”
He waited for the catch. The condition. The soft-spoken objection wrapped in a question.
None came, and it was this that had his composure slipping.
The way she never did what he expected. And the way she was looking at him now, like he was her haven while the whole world saw him as their end.
“Am I disturbing you again?”
Zacharie grunted in response to her teasing, but this only had her smiling.
“I am, aren’t—”
He stopped her words with a kiss, but it was not to shut her up. He kissed her because it was the only way he could tell her what he hadn’t the ability to say any other way. He kissed her because he was relieved that she wasn’t fighting him. Kissed her because he was also frustrated with how easily she trusted him.
But lastly, he kissed her because he simply wanted to kiss her, his hunger for her building since the moment he first saw her face. She made a soft sound against his lips as he deepened the kiss, surprise melting into surrender, and when he finally forced himself to pull back, she was flushed and breathless, her eyes slightly dazed.
Zacharie’s own body was tight with need, every nerve ending demanding that he close the distance again.
Instead, he turned back to the road.