Page 139 of The Cruelest Chaos

Let it go.

I do.

I let it go, and I let Maverick toss me back in the passenger seat, do up my seatbelt. I let him drive me to his house, where the boys are probably still sleeping and where there’s more cookie dough in the fridge.

I don’t know what I’m going to do now. The world seems full of possibilities, and it’s not just the money or the house or the new people in my life.

It’s him.

He set my heart on fire when I wasn’t sure I could feel a fucking thing anymore. But I feel him, burning in me, and I know that flame will never go out.

He’s not any less damaged than when we first met, and neither am I. It’s not even that our broken pieces fit well together; they don’t.

It’s that we’re willing to step in the glass, bleed a little for each other; that’s what matters. That’s what our love is. Broken, bloody, and perfect.

“Would you really have let me leave?” I ask him after a few minutes of silence.

He laughs. “Of course not, Ella.Not ever.”