Page 105 of Almost Beautiful (Beautiful 3)

I touched my forehead to hers. “I don’t want you to, either. I want you to be happy, and free to live your life. I want you to be safe.”

“Then fight with me. See this through.”

“I can’t live with myself knowing I let you go to prison, Pigeon. I don’t want to do this, but letting you get sent to prison is so much worse.”

“We’ll do it together.”

“It’s too hard.”

“So is this!” she screamed. “Being apart is hard! Not being in control is hard! Worrying about someone is hard! Watching someone you love move on with someone new is hard! Having to explain to everyone why we’ve made the mistakes and choices we have is hard! Facing your fears ishard! Choose your fucking hard!”

She wept, her body shaking with each of her next words. “And you better choose me, Travis Carter. You better fucking choose me.”

Watching my wife fall apart in front of me, made any attempt at strength impossible. She was right. If the worst came, we could at least face it together.

I sucked in a breath. “Okay.” It was all I could manage.

“Okay?” she asked, obviously hesitant to trust me. That broke my heart all over again.

I nodded, and relief washed over her face. She nodded, too, her face crumbling. I pulled her against my chest, wrapping her in my arms, and she held me tight, whispering, “Don’t ever leave me again.”

“Do you want me to leave?” Abby asked.

I was sitting on the private beach of our hotel, staring out into the water of St. Thomas. I’d just renewed my vows to my wife and been handed the bomb of the century.

“Never,” I said, reaching out for her.

She sat next to me and held my hand, thankfully content to just sit in silence.

Shepley had been out there with me. Other than him, no one else had a clue that my world was crumbling. I hadn’t been able to speak. Too much in my own head about the future to even pretend things were normal. When Abby joined us on the beach, he stayed close.

I closed my eyes. Shepley knew something was bothering me, but he probably thought we were fighting and was sticking around to keep the peace and mediate like he always did. It killed me to keep this from him almost as much as it did to lie to Abby. They were my best friends, and I couldn’t tell them. I couldn’t tell anyone.

I looked down the beach to where my brothers began filtering from the hotel, either from their rooms or from brunch.

Tyler waved, and then tossed a football to Ellie.

What a fucking mess.Even if I could tell Abby the truth, it was toocrazy to believe. What? I was going to casually explain to her what Thomas and his partner-slash-girlfriend, Liis, had just dropped on me—that my older brother, who we all thought was a fucking ad exec, was actually an FBI agent? And not just any agent.Oh no, he was the one in charge of my case.

That sounded made up as hell. Maybe it was a good thing that part of their terms for immunity was to keep it a secret from my wife that I was now a federal snitch.

She’d lock me in a padded room.

I held Abby’s hand to my mouth and kissed it.

She smiled at me. “We’re okay, right?”

“Better than okay.”

“You’re not thinking about divorcing me again, are you?”

“It’ll never happen again. No matter what. I panicked.”

Even worse, I thought. If Abby hadn’t spoken sense into me, Thomas and Liis would be having this conversation with me back home. Abby would have moved out of the apartment and been in Wichita. We’d have started the annulment, and I’d have realized, after speaking with Thomas, that it’d been all for nothing.

My immunity extended to Abby, but if she hadn’t helped me get my head out of my ass, she’d have been long gone and it would’ve been too late to get her back.

Out of everything, that bothered me the most.