Page 125 of Twisted (Never After)

I close my eyes and catch her, pulling her flush against me as her limbs wrap around my body and she sobs into my neck. “I thought…I thought you were dead,” she says.

“Shh,” I soothe, running my hands up and down her spine, my chest feeling like it might explode from having her in my arms again. “You think I’d allow death to come for me when I knew you were out there with another man?”

She presses kisses all over my neck and my face and then pulls back, staring at me. “How could you send me away? How could youdothat to me? You said you’d never let me leave.”

I sigh, tensing my arms around her. “I would do anything for you, including setting you free. Don’t you get that yet?”

She sniffles, shaking her head, her fingers tickling the nape of my neck. “I don’t want to live if it isn’t with you.”

Slowly, she slides down my body, and I push her back, holding her by the arms as I take her in, my eyes desperately covering every inch of her to make sure that she’s whole. That even though she’s been through an incredible ordeal, she isn’t too broken for me to piece back together.

“How did you get here?” I ask, rubbing my palms up and down her body to check for broken bones. “Where’s the boy?”

“I took a cab. And Aidan’s dead.”

Her voice is monotone, and I jerk back, my brows shooting to my hairline. “Come again?”

She seems apathetic about the entire thing, which is not like her, but I let it go, realizing that she lost her father, thought she lost her best friend and her husband, and now has lost the first boy she ever loved. She’s allowed to disassociate for a while if she needs. I’ll be here in the end to bring her back.

“I’m so sick of people telling me what to do.” She shrugs. “And he wouldn’t let me leave, was going to hurt me and take the lamp, so I did what I had to do.” She pauses, staring up at me from beneath her lashes. “I’ll need your help cleaning it up.”

I brush her hair away from her face and nod. “I’ll take care of it.”

She swallows, looking down at the floor. I reach out, tipping her chin up so her glossy eyes meet mine. “Would you like to see your friend?”

She gasps. “Riya’s alive?”

“She is.”

Now tearsdoescape her eyes, and she covers her mouth with her hands, nodding. “You saved her. You sent me away so you could saveher.”

It’s true, even though it almost killed me to watch the boy take her away, kicking and screaming. I couldn’t focus on saving her best friend and subduing Darryn at the same time as long as she was there too. It had to be one or the other.

And I couldn’t let her lose another person who she loves, even though it meant setting her free and having to trust that she’d come back home.

I cup her cheek, bringing her into me. She smiles, rising up on her tiptoes and brushing her mouth across mine.

My chest warms, heart beating harshly against my ribs.

I’ve spent my entire life feeling less than. I spent countless years and killed numerous people, all to work toward gaining the upper hand and becoming something more.

Who knew this whole time, all I ever needed washer.

My wife.

And she makes me feel like the most powerful man in the world.

Epilogue

JULIAN

Yasmin is glaring at me from where she’s resting in our bed.

It’s been two months since the disaster that turned into our new beginning, and in that time, things have finally started to calm down.

Riya is out of our house now and back on her own, almost completely on the mend.

Aidan was added to Isabella’s meal over the next week after I hunted down where he had her in some small house that he somehow got out in the hills of Badour.