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Twenty-Seven

Draven

When the outside airhits my face, I feel like I can finally breathe. This woman. This amazing, one-of-a-kind woman just told the entire fucking city she’s done bending for the whims of men, and I’ve never felt more elated.

She’s choosing one man over all the rest, and somehow I’m the lucky one. The bastard who wore that title like armor, shielded his heart with layers of mangled metal so he could pretend it didn’t exist. Somehow she’s peeled every layer away and decided she likes what she’s found underneath. More than that, she actually loves me.

I was a bastard born with nothing of his own, and somehow I’ve ended up with everything that could ever matter.

When we reach my car, I find myself happy I was coward enough to have it waiting for me out front. I didn’t know why I packed a bag and planned to run like a bitch, but I knew watching her say “I do” was going to kill something inside of me. The only saving grace being I packed some of her things too, so deep down I must have known we’d be leaving together. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking.

But here we are now, and as I buckle her into the passenger seat and kiss along her face, I know we were always going to end up right here. “I fucking love you, woman.”

“You’d better. I’m afraid I’m not done asking you to risk your life for me.”

“I’d risk it all for you, little keeper. I’m sorry I didn’t prove that here, but I will. I promise.”

I close her door and rush around to the driver’s side so I can begin proving it right now, but she’s shaking her head as I start the car.

“It needed to be me. You understand that, I know you do. It needed to be me.”

I do.

As much as I’ll always hate myself for not being her hero, I know she had to do this. She had to be her own advocate, her own hero, and she had to do it like this. “Now everyone knows that’s my baby in there.”

I’m speeding a little too quickly as we leave the property, but if I don’t get her somewhere I can rip that wedding dress off of her body soon, I might lose my goddamn mind.

She’s going to be my bride and mine alone.

I won’t have to pretend to be my own child’s uncle. I can raise them myself, with her bymyside, not by my brother’s.

Fuck, that’s an intoxicating thought.

“I’m sorry I didn’t warn you,” she says quietly. “I don’t think I really made up my mind until I got up there.”

“You don’t have to apologize.” My hand flies over to rub her gorgeously swelling belly. “In fact, you never have to apologize for anything ever as long as we live.” She’s the reason we’ll live at all. No matter how long or short we have, every moment we share belongs to her.

“I just knew. When Alex said ‘I do,’ I knew that we’d spend the rest of our lives in a battle we’d never win. That Ephraim would never stop, never be satisfied. I’d have rather died on that altar than give him another piece of me.”

“I know,” I reply softly. “And I’d have died right next to you without hesitation. Hell, I would have preferred it to actually witnessing...” I trail off, unable to say how much it would have obliterated my heart to see her actually married to someone else, but I don’t have to say the words. She knows. “I don’t know if I could have done it. My fingers were itching for my gun, and I don’t know what I would have done.”

She laces her fingers with mine, squeezing gently. “It’s over, at least for now. I think we have more friends than we thought.”

“Helps your dad brought backup, and Alex and I have grown closer to father’s security than he is. We’ll be alright, and if not, we’ll deal with that too. I won’t fail you again.”

Her head tilts. “You didn’t fail me. What on earth makes you think you did?”

“We should have never been there, Sullivan. I took too long to fix it.”

But she didn’t need me to fix it, and she knows that. I know that. Everyone knows it now.