Page 52 of Into These Eyes

Gavin

I n the face of all the pain Jamie’s father just hit her with, her selflessness floods my chest with a deep warmth that emanates straight from my heart.

While that prick revealed the numerous lies and manipulations in his marriage, my only thoughts were for Jamie, and how his words had impacted her.

All she saw was my freedom.

I still can’t wrap my head around the idea that my life might soon be my own again. It’s surreal, too much to take in right now.

Surprising me, she closes the laptop and pushes it away. Good . She needs to rest and unwind, to take a moment to absorb her father’s revelations.

When she swivels her stool away from the counter so she’s looking straight at me, she’s suddenly apprehensive. “Gavin?”

I turn and face her, the brush of our bare knees sending a spark right through me. Positioning myself so my legs bracket hers, I give her my undivided attention.

“Your affidavit … We’re up to the part where you find my mother on the ground.” She takes a deep breath. “I think … well … I think I’d like you to tell me about that … personally. Not as a stiff, formal recollection for a legal document.”

Her fingers grip her thighs just above her knees, the tension in her muscles so intense I don’t miss the slight tremble in her arms. Any ideas I had earlier about what tonight might hold have gone out the window.

Right now, I just want to reassure her, pull her against me and protect her from any more emotional turmoil.

But I don’t. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.

And I know she’s been avoiding it. I can only hope it’ll be cathartic and not hurt her further.

Now that the moment’s here, I’m not sure the timing’s right.

Not on top of her father’s video. But it’s not my decision.

It’s hers. And I’m convinced she should hear it.

She hesitates, and when I see her struggle to form the words, I grab the edges of her stool and pull her closer. Gently pressing the inside of my thighs against the outside of hers, I cocoon her in a safe space. “Ask me.”

After exhaling a long breath, she does. “When you found her, was she alive?”

“Yes,” I answer, locking my eyes with hers, watching the surprise and torment as she takes in a tiny gasp.

“She suffered, then?”

“I don’t … I can’t be sure about that.” I wish I could lie to her, but I won’t.

She bites her bottom lip with indecision. When she releases it, she says, “Tell me. Every detail. From the moment you found her.”

I take myself back to that night. And hesitate. Something shifts inside me, and I suddenly feel like I’m falling down an endless dark hole. When her warm hand blankets the fist I’ve formed on my thigh, she anchors me to her.

“Gavin? Are you okay?”

I don’t know what the hell that was or where it came from, but I have to tell her what she needs to know.

“When I fell to my knees beside her, she was breathing fast, shallow breaths. Like an idiot, I grabbed the knife’s handle. I remember thinking that if I could just get it out of her, she’d be okay, the way she was before it went into her. Stupid the things that go through your head.”

I take the fist from my other leg and drag it down my face, as if I can erase the painful memory with such a simple action. At the very least, it gives me a moment to pull myself together. This is about Jamie, not me.

“They kept saying you were strangling her. That’s what it looked like in the video, but—”

“No!” I blurt, shaking my head. “Jamie, no. That’s not what happened.”

“I know, Gavin. I know that. What I don’t understand is why it looked that way in the footage.”

I stare down at her hand covering mine and I uncurl my fist, turn it over and hold onto her.

“Show me,” she says as gently as the squeeze she gives me.

While she grips the hand that once held the knife buried in her mother’s chest, I reach for her and cup the back of her neck. Slowly, I brush my thumb back and forth over her jaw. Just the way I’d touched her mother. Then I look into her eyes.

And oh, God, it’s like I’m back there, living it again. I swallow hard over the rock in my throat, determined to get this over with.

“When I touched her like this, she turned her head and looked right through me, and I forgot all about the knife. Because I knew she was going. So did she … so I told her, ‘ You’re safe. I’m right here.

I’m with you .’ And something changed. She wasn’t looking through me anymore, but into me.

This … warmth filled her eyes. All the fear vanished.

She knew she wasn’t alone. And then … I felt her go.

I saw it in her eyes, and I felt it in her skin. She just wasn’t there anymore.”

Jamie stares at me with those incredible eyes. While similar to her mother’s, they contain a completely different soul. I shut mine for a moment, needing to escape the intensity of the various emotions passing through her.

Through me.

“Gavin?”

I watch a tear slide down her cheek before I meet her gaze.

“How did you know?” she asks softly.

I tilt my head in confusion.

“How did you know she was going? How did you know to comfort her? To not run off for help and leave her alone in those final moments?”

I blink at her. That’s not what I expected her to ask.

“I knew … because I’d seen it only a month before. I was there, when my mother died … while I was looking into her eyes, holding her hand, wishing I could stop her drifting away.”

“Oh, Gavin.” She squeezes my hand hard. “I’m so sorry. What you went through …”

“It’s okay,” I tell her, my voice cracking over the lie. Fuck .

“It’s most definitely not okay. No lying, remember?

” She releases my hand and slips off her stool.

Standing between my parted legs, she wraps her arms around my shoulders, pulling me into her, resting the side of her face against mine.

It’s the most natural thing in the world to circle her waist and hold her close.

“I’ve wanted to tell you for so long,” I say on an unsteady breath. “I’ve never told anyone. I’ve held it inside, waiting … because it’s for you, no one else. It’s yours.”

“And yours, Gavin. Don’t you see that?”

And then I start fucking crying. All this time I thought it’d be her that needed comforting, but I’m the one falling apart. I’m the one who was there, who experienced the horror that night.

As my body shudders, she tightens her hold on me.

Pressing my face into the curve of her shoulder and neck, I sink into her and lose myself.

I take her compassion, her arms around me, her fingers in my hair, the tightness of her hold.

I take what she offers and let it seep into my soul.

Never once does she try to move away, or pat my back in a dismissive, that’s enough gesture.

She makes me feel like she doesn’t want to let me go. And that means the fucking world to me.

I should have known, should’ve seen it coming a mile away.

I’ve never explored the impact of what comforting a dying, violently assaulted woman had on me .

Almost immediately after Jamie’s mother slipped away, I’d been chased down and arrested.

I’d buried it deep, locked it away and refused to think about it.

Because I’d been waiting for the chance to tell Jamie that her mother hadn’t been alone.

That the man who killed her wasn’t the last person she saw.

There’s no doubt the universe can be cruel, throwing that at me so close to my own mother’s death.

Maybe, on top of everything else, it was just too much for me to cope with, so I shut it down.

Or maybe my mother’s death prepared me for Matilda Evans.

If I’d never witnessed that look before, I wouldn’t have known she only had moments to live.

I’d have run off to get help and Jamie’s mother would have died alone.

As my body begins to relax and my mind clears, I tune in to her fingers gently massaging my scalp, the soothing circles she’s drawing on my back.

God, this woman. Her touch is so damn caring and genuine, it’s calming my heart, my whole being. I want to stay like this forever.

“I’m sorry,” I mumble against her shoulder.

“You know,” she says, still holding me, ignoring my apology, “I only ever thought of Mum’s death as being all about me and my family.

Even after I found out you were innocent, I didn’t think about you finding her, what it must have been like, how it affected you.

Seeing someone else die so close to your mother’s death …

I’m the one who’s sorry, Gavin. I didn’t realise. I’m so selfish.”

Though I don’t want to, I pull back a little. I can’t let her believe that about herself. My hands slip to her waist, but no further. I’m not ready to break the contact yet. When she leans away just enough to look at me, I understand she isn’t ready to give it up either.

“Jamie, you’re the furthest thing from selfish I’ve ever known. You didn’t have to step up when your mother died. You could’ve acted like a typical teenager. But you put everyone’s needs before your own. Like you’re doing right now.”

Her eyes flick between mine, searching, probing. When her hands smooth over my shoulders and cup my face, I know she sees the truth there.

“I’m so glad someone was there for her in her final moments.” Her thumbs brush the outer corners of my eyes, tickling my lashes. “I’m so glad she was looking into these eyes when she passed.”

Her courage to completely open herself to me, the way she’s talking to me, touching me, looking at me … I’ve never experienced anything like it. She’s warmth and safety, unguarded care and empathy. I’m not quite sure, but I think I understand what this is.

It feels like … she’s loving me.

“Thank you, Gavin. Knowing that means more to me than you can imagine.”

“I’m so sorry that happened to her … to you.”

“And you,” she says, her fingers working a delicate spell at the nape of my neck. “A beautiful act of kindness, and what did it get you?”

My thoughts instantly go to the sorrow of comforting her mother, the trauma of her dying in front of me, then the shock and rage over my arrest and imprisonment.

But as I look into her eyes, I suddenly understand something entirely different.

Something that’s been lingering inside me for weeks now, an idea I’ve kept just out of reach.

Because, as much as I’ve wanted everything I’ve been through to mean something significant, it was downright horrifying to believe it happened for a reason.

Not anymore.

“You want to know what it got me?”

She nods, her gaze never leaving mine.

My heart throbs painfully in my chest, but the revelation is so powerful, I have to share it with her. So I let the truth tumble from my lips. “It got me here. It led me to this moment. With you.”

Tears fill her beautiful eyes. But this time, she doesn’t try to blink them away. This time, they spill freely over her cheeks. It’s exquisite.

And then she kisses me.

I’m so stunned, my heart stops, its next beat suspended as it waits for my brain to catch up.

Her lips are on mine.

Her hands are in my hair, her soft breaths fluttering against my cheek.

Her mouth cradles my top lip, while mine embraces her bottom lip.

We don’t move. Our mouths simply touch and press.

I don’t crush her to me or take over. Now isn’t the time, but it gives me hope that that time will come.

For now, I remain completely motionless.

This isn’t a passionate kiss. It’s a kiss of gratitude and pure affection.

It’s an intimate acknowledgement of the connection that binds us.

Her heartfelt care feels like a flashlight beam lighting up my insides, destroying the darkness within.

When she gently pulls away and takes a step back, I can see she doesn’t know what to do or say next, and neither do I.

Not until my gaze falls to the shoulder of her dress and the dampness I’ve left behind.

“Well, I guess I finally got some payback,” I say, hoping to break the tension.

Startled out of her awkwardness, she frowns. “Sorry?”

I touch her shoulder, waiting until she notices the wet fabric. “Payback for slobbering all over my shirts.”

She gasps, her eyes sparking with amusement. “I did not slobber on you!”

“Pretty sure you did.”

She punches my arm with a laugh. “At least it wasn’t man-slobber.”

As she steps away, I tug her back. “I’m sorry … if I made you uncomfortable. I embarrassed myself.”

“You didn’t.” She squeezes my hand, her face growing serious. “All I saw was a man not afraid to feel. To me, that’s beautiful and brave. And like you told me … honest.”

Christ, I want to give this woman the world, but I don’t even know where to fucking start when I have nothing to offer her. Though, now that we have her father’s video, there’s a good chance that’s going to change. Just not this instant.

Slipping out of my grasp, she picks up her laptop and retreats to the dining table.

In the bathroom, I wash my face, stare into the mirror, and take a deep breath. I can’t deny that I feel a sense of peace after telling her what I’d kept locked inside. Of all the darkness and vile depths that night brought with it, Jamie showed me something that positive came out of it.

But it’s her reaction to the revelations that has my head spinning. Along with her ability to empathise and comfort, she saw the raw, vulnerable man I am … and kissed me anyway.

I’ve always felt that indescribable pull toward her, but I’ve never paired it with a particular emotion. Now it’s lit up in my head by a billion neurons that won’t stop firing.

Fuck .

I don’t just want her. I’m head over heels in love with her.