Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
“Thanks, man.”
I’d left the car idling, so I drove around to a spot near a side door.
Timothy slipped out, then ducked back in to help Dani out. He swung her directly into his arms. I didn’t know if she was spent or wounded or too full of grief to walk, but he knew what she needed.
For so long, I’d wondered if Aria and I were the only ones who shared the scale of this connection. I knew better now. Recognized what we’d been taught was a sin was actually a gift.
Timothy didn’t say anything—he just carried Dani up the sidewalk before they disappeared through the door.
I moved to the trunk, grabbed our duffels, then wound around to Aria’s side.
She stepped out the second I got there.
Everything about her was overpowering. So perfect and right that a knot tightened at the base of my throat.
We didn’t say anything, either, as we made our way up to our room, as I touched the key card on the reader and let us in to the warmth that billowed from within.
We slowly—carefully—undressed each other, ridding the other of tattered clothes marked with the carnage of what we had faced.
She gently brushed her fingertips over the wound on my chest. A gash that had clotted over, the jagged seam sealing with the belief she, Timothy, and Dani had poured into me.
I took her hand and led her into the bathroom, and I turned on the shower. It took only a second for it to heat, and the second it was warm enough, I stepped in and helped her inside.
We stood beneath the spray as hot water pelted us from above, our arms wrapped fiercely around each other, holding the other up.
And Aria sobbed.
Sobbed and sobbed.
While I ran my fingers through the knots in her hair, whispering against the crown of her head, “I know, baby, I know. It’s okay. It’s over now. It’s over.”
When the tears finally subsided, I washed her hair, fingers massaging through the locks before I lathered a washcloth and ran it over every inch of her gorgeous body.
Over the scars and the curves and the history that had been written on her.
Did my best to remove any visible traces of the traumas we had endured, though I knew the true scars could never fully be erased.
Then, with trembling hands, she did the same for me.
Once we were both clean, I turned off the faucet, grabbed a towel, and wrapped her in it; then I stepped out so I could pull her to me. Lifting her off her feet.
Lush locks of black curled around her shoulders and chest, sticking to her damp skin, while the slender arms that were the strongest I’d ever encountered were locked around my neck.
I’d once thought her too thin and frail, as if the life we’d led had whittled her down to skin and bone.
But no.
She was fierce.
Formidable.
The strength the world had been waiting for.
I dragged down the covers on the bed, then laid her down in the middle of it before I climbed in beside her. I propped myself up on an elbow and took her hand with the other and splayed it over the thunder that ravaged in my chest.
A ravaging that beat because of her belief.
“You saved me, Aria.”
She blinked up at me. That gaze an endless well of sincerity.
“And you saved me,” she murmured.
I moved her hand, shifting so I could link our fingers together and lift them between us, scattering kisses over her knuckles as I whispered, “I guess we saved each other.”
“I think that’s exactly what we were meant to do. What we were all meant to do.”
“Yeah. I think you’re right.”
She fought the moisture that resurfaced in her eyes. “We lost so many.”
“I know.” The words were gravel. “But you have to think of the multitudes that were saved.”
Aria wavered, her throat bobbing, emotion thickening her voice. “Is it really over?”
I ran a thumb down her cheek. “I have to believe that it’s over. Have to believe we’re free, Aria. You’re free.”
Her lips trembled, giving way to a sorrowful, soggy smile that was still wrought with joy. She released my hand so she could trace her fingertips over the edges of my face.
“I was so scared.” Her confession was choppy. “When I thought I lost you.”
I ran the pad of my thumb over the scar on the left side of her mouth. “I don’t think I could have gone anywhere without you.”
“But it seems so unfair. For Josephine and Ellis. I wanted . . .” She trailed off, unsure of how to phrase it.
“We all did, but we can’t know all things. We can’t know the full purpose of Ellis’s path. Of his journey. But the one thing I do know is he would have been proud to have given his life like this.”