Page 24 of Redemption (Favorite Malady Duet #2)

DANE

Two Weeks Later

I can hardly believe that Abigail willingly sleeps in my bed and welcomes me into her body every night.

Only a few weeks ago, that seemed like an impossibility.

After the crash—when she’d tried so desperately to get away from me—I’d been determined to keep her.

But I hadn’t been sure if she would give herself to me ever again.

My sweet, compassionate Abigail still wants me. It wasn’t my mastery of her body that made her surrender; it was my vulnerability. Raw honesty.

I’ll answer any question she asks of me if it means more intimacy with the woman who is my everything.

Her birth control shot should be effective by now, so I won’t have to use the precaution of condoms anymore. The feeling of her wet cunt gripping my cock when I claimed her in the rain was the most exquisite ecstasy of my life.

She didn’t ask where I obtained the shot, and I chose not to tell her about the delivery. I think we’re both avoiding difficult topics.

Like the fact that I won’t allow her to leave me. I won’t risk her running to a driver to ask them for rescue.

She seems completely absorbed in her work, shutting herself away in her studio for hours every day. It wasn’t difficult to get the shot delivered while she was painting. I have the necessary professional documentation to obtain what I wanted. The arrangement was easy enough.

And it’ll be well worth it when I get to fuck her without the barrier of a condom separating us.

We haven’t engaged in anything more than slightly rough sex since that day in the rain, but I know she needs more.

I worry that she’s not ready to accept the darker things we both enjoy, but I can tell she’s not fully satisfied.

I’ve seen Abigail when she’s utterly spent and sated, and I’m determined to make her that blissful again.

I have a plan in place to coax her darkness back to the surface, but that will have to wait for tomorrow.

No matter what happens, I will not force her again. She’ll get her safe word back, and I will honor it.

I’ll do anything to keep her trust.

“Dane?”

I’m rushing toward her studio without hesitation. She doesn’t sound distressed, but I can’t help feeling on edge whenever she’s out of my sight. After the crash…

I shake off the bloody memories and focus on her sunny smile.

“I’m fine,” she promises, reading the worry that lingers around my brow. “I want to show you something.”

She steps back, inviting me into her private haven.

For a moment, I falter. The last time she showed me something in her studio, it was her horrific self-portrait. That confrontation had shredded me. These last two weeks together have been so wonderfully easy. I don’t want to go through another difficult conversation like that.

“Don’t worry,” she soothes. “It’s nothing bad. Well, I hope you think they’re good. I’ve been working really hard, and I’m feeling so inspired. But they’re nothing special. I like them, though. What do you think?”

She steps back, revealing three small impressionist paintings. One is still on the easel, and the other two are propped against the wall on either side of it.

“Abigail,” I breathe.

“I know they’re not masterpieces or anything,” she rushes to downplay her art. “But it’s just so beautiful here, and I wanted to try to capture it. They’re silly. I don’t plan to frame them or anything like that. They’re just for me. But I wanted to show you.”

“Abigail.” Her name is a quiet interruption this time. She’s babbling because she’s anxious about my reaction, but I’m speechless.

I stare at the paintings, and something tugs at the center of my chest.

The one against the wall to the left of the easel is the view through our conservatory—probably her first glimpse at the Yorkshire Dales from the kitchen.

The painting to the right is a close-up of a grey stone wall. She’s captured the dull sheen from the rain, and a broad, masculine hand is splayed against the wall. Thick veins stand out on the back of the hand, and the fingertips curve as though clawing at the stone for purchase.

It’s my hand. When I braced myself after fucking her against the wall in the ruined barn.

The third painting holds my attention the longest. It’s the scene from the barn, the one she so eloquently described with her artist’s eye. But the perspective is slightly different. The rolling, sun-dappled hills are the same, as is the blue river and the glittering lake.

It’s the two figures in the foreground that fascinate me. Their backs are to the viewer, but a tall man with dark hair is embracing a smaller woman. She’s barely visible—the only hint that she’s there is the perfect purple curl that’s twined around his finger.

They look like they belong there.

Like it’s home.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. “Did I not get it right?”

I shake my head, struggling for words.

“That’s not me,” I finally manage, pointing at the man in the central painting.

“What?” She peers at her work with a critical eye. “There’s something off about your hand. I know. I worked at it for days, but it’s just not?—”

“Your art is perfect,” I assure her. “But I’m not… This isn’t my home. I don’t want it to be.”

Her lips part, and her eyes shine for a moment before she blinks quickly. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I’ll put these away.”

Fuck. I’m saying all the wrong things when she was making herself vulnerable by sharing her work with me.

“Your paintings are masterpieces, and I intend to frame each of them,” I say sternly.

If I have my way, she’ll be featured in a gallery soon. But she’s not ready to accept that yet.

“This place is messing with my head,” I admit. “I chose to walk away from my title and everything that comes with it, including the estate. I hated this place when I was growing up. But you see it so differently than I do.” I gesture at the painting again. “I don’t belong here.”

Her features are pinched with concern. “It doesn’t have to be your home if you don’t want it to be. You can choose your home. I chose mine. Back in Charleston.”

She cuts her gaze away, and for a moment, I think we’re going to return to the thorny issue of her leaving Yorkshire. Without me.

“This place holds nothing for me but memories of cruelty and blood,” I say before she can go down that road.

Her eyes snap back to mine, bright and incisive. “You’re talking about your sister’s death? The car crash?”

I run a hand through my hair, and now I’m the one to look away. “Yes.”

“But it’s more than that.” She sees right through me. “You can talk to me, Dane.”

I don’t want to tell her some of my darkest truths, but I have to prevent her from thinking about Charleston.

“I was a violent child,” I admit. “I was the cruel one. Well, we all were, I suppose. Except maybe James. He’s just a spoiled little prince.

” I force myself to meet her eye. “My parents are cold and narcissistic, but they never beat me. My mother always said she didn’t know where I got it from, and I guess that doesn’t really matter.

The fact is that I was dangerous. It wasn’t until I was eleven that I realized I had to hide that part of myself. ”

“Dangerous, how?” she asks carefully.

“I lashed out at other children. I hurt them.”

All those times I came back with little spots of their blood dotting my shirts, and my mother would berate me for ruining my pristine clothes.

Not because we couldn’t afford more, and not because she cared about the other children.

She only cared about what other people would think if they found out.

At least, the people who matter.

If the children of staff members had “accidents” around the estate, my parents didn’t give a fuck. And if their parents put up a fuss, hefty bonuses made the problem go away. Or outright dismissal if my mother was irked enough.

“What changed when you were eleven?” Abigail presses gently. “Why did you stop being violent?”

“I almost killed another child. A child who mattered , according to my mother.”

I force myself to continue over her horrified gasp. I’m staring at the painting of us together, the one that looks so right but all wrong at the same time.

“Peter was a bully,” I explain. “He often picked on me for being a freak. The other children were right to sense something off in me. I wasn’t good at concealing it back then. I didn’t even try.

“I never retaliated at school because I knew better than to get caught. But then one day, Peter was tired of never getting a reaction from me. So, he ran his mouth about Katie. He said I’d probably killed my sister.

He said it was my fault she was dead.” I glare at the painting.

“I shoved him out of the window. He spent two weeks in hospital.”

Abigail doesn’t seem to have the words to respond to that cold declaration, so I carry on.

“The police were called. I was questioned. Mum made it very clear that I would be locked up if I didn’t figure out how to mask my true nature.

She said I was lucky that Peter’s family accepted a payoff and a few threats with the weight of the family name behind them.

” I sneer around the last. “She thinks she can buy anything she wants. People. Freedom. Absolution.”

I stop talking. I’ve said too much.

Abigail is far too quiet, and I don’t dare to look at her and see her expression of revulsion.

“You were a traumatized child.” Her softly spoken words hit me like a blow to the chest. “It sounds like you didn’t have any support after you saw your sister die.

Your father was responsible for her death, and he didn’t suffer any consequences, did he?

That’s what you mean when you say your mother thinks she can buy anything. Isn’t it?”

I stare at her with open awe. “You’re not… You don’t think I’m a monster for what I did to that boy? I hurt people, Abigail. Children.”

“You were a child yourself. You had witnessed something horrible, and you were living in an emotionally abusive home. It doesn’t sound like anyone showed you another way to behave, and you lashed out.”

“That doesn’t scare you?” I challenge, hardly able to believe she’s not cringing away from me.

“There have been plenty of times when you’ve scared me, Dane. Now isn’t one of them. I’m not afraid of the boy who suffered so much pain. I’m sorry you went through that.”

I just told her I almost killed a child, and she’s apologizing to me.

She truly is my miracle.

I decide not to say anything else that might change the way she’s looking at me right now: like I’m worthy of compassion. Empathy. Affection.

“I didn’t know you felt that way about the estate,” she says. “I can change the painting. I can destroy it if you want me to. We can burn it together.”

I grasp her hands in mine, pulling her close. “No. Never destroy anything you create. Especially not on my account. The world needs your art.”

Her cheeks color my favorite shade of pink. “I’m really not that talented.”

“Yes, you are.” I look at the central painting again, the one of us standing together, looking out at the countryside. “You made a place I loathe look like home. That’s a gift, Abigail. Don’t you dare hide it or destroy it.”

The longer I look at the painting, the more it feels right. And I start to realize that maybe it’s not the setting that makes it feel like home. Maybe it’s that perfect purple curl curved around my finger.