Page 164 of Captive Audience

Here. In my apartment.

“Hello, Wildfire.”

The sound of his voice splintered something inside me. My knees wobbled. The room tilted. Before I could collapse, Rook surged forward and caught me. His strong arms banded around my body as though they’d never let me go.

His chest was solid beneath my cheek, his heartbeat pounding as frantically as mine. I clutched at his jacket and breathed him in. Salt and rain. Soap and smoke.

Rook…but different.

Like he’d rushed from wherever he’d been and some of its smell still clung to him.

For one impossible moment, I let myself drown in it. The warmth, the safety, the rightness of him holding me again. Months of loneliness spilled out in a rush of tears I couldn’t stop.

My fingers tightened in the fabric. I was afraid that if I let go, he’d vanish. “You’re really here.”

“I am.” His lips brushed my brow. “And I won’t leave you again.”

I leaned back just enough to see his face. “You’re serious?”

“Aye.” He seemed to have aged a few years in the months he’d been away, but those blue eyes burned with the same intensity that had hooked me from the start. “I’m so sorry, love. I never meant to hurt you.”

But he had hurt me. More than I’d ever been hurt before. More than I could put into words, but I’d try.

My tears dried up. Relief subsided, and something hostilereplaced it. I shoved at his chest, hard enough to catch him off guard and make him stumble back a step.

“Sorry?” I growled. “You disappear for months, leave me with annulment papers and a fucking bank balance like it’s supposed to make up for abandoning me, and now you waltz in here withSorry?”

Rook’s face twisted, but I didn’t stop.

“Do you have any idea what you did to me?” I narrowed my gaze. “I wasn’t sure if you were dead. I didn’t know if you were fucking a different woman each night to erase me from your memory. Every day I woke up was another round of not knowing, of wishing, of hoping, only to do it all again the next day.”

His throat worked, but I cut him off, my words tumbling out jagged and furious. “You broke me, Rook. You shredded my heart, and then you expected me to just…get over it? Move on like I hadn’t lost the only man I’ve ever—” My voice caved, but I forced it out. “The only man I’ve ever really loved.”

Silence settled between us. My chest heaved. My hands shook so hard I had to curl them into fists.

Rook didn’t reach for me. He stood there, taking the full weight of my fury.

“You decided on our future without talking to me, and that was a shitty thing to do, Rook O’Connell.”

His jaw clenched, the muscle ticcing hard. Then his shoulders dropped.

“You’re right.” His eyes turned red and glassy. “And I’ll hate myself for it until the day I die. I thought I was protecting you. I told myself that if I disappeared, you’d be safe. That you’d move on and forget about me. But I never stopped watching you, Asha. I never stopped caring. I saw you fall apart piece by piece, and I thought it was temporary, that soon you’d let go. But you didn’t. And Christ, neither did I.”

He fell to his knees, held onto my thighs, and pressed his forehead to my belly. “I missed you so fucking much I thought I’d go mad.”

I rested my hands on his shoulders. “Rook?—”

“No, let me finish.” He looked up at me, and his grip tightened—not enough to hurt, but enough to hold me steady. “I thoughtlosing you on my own terms would be better than waiting for some enemy to try to take you from me. But I was wrong. So fucking wrong. Because being without you isn’t living. It’s bleeding out slowly.”

Rook’s words shook me down to my marrow. Tears pricked hot behind my lashes, but I blinked them away.

He reached into his coat pocket, and when his hand came out, he grasped a ring between his thumb and forefinger. The same one that had haunted my dreams. Giant emerald held up by two small red hands, surrounded by shimmering diamonds.

“I love you, Asha Sparks.” His blue eyes held mine. “Marry me again. Not forced. Not fake. Marry me for real this time, because I swear to God, I’ll never leave you again. Till death do us part, and not a day sooner.”

The emerald glinted up at me, mocking and mesmerizing all at once.

How I’d hated it at first. How I treasured it now.