Page 127 of Vengeful Vows

I laugh, and we help Paige up, getting her to her room. Paige snorts, but she’s snoring as her head hits the pillow.

Lara leads me into her bedroom, and it’s just as neat as I had imagined. We’ve been in Paige’s fairly messy room a lot, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen Lara’s.

She has portraits up of the Burke family on the wall, and there’s a huge bookcase in the corner.

“You read all these?”

“Not yet.” She smiles. “But some of them I’ve read a dozen times.”

“I know how that goes. I have my favorites, too.”

Lara hums, tossing me a shorts set to wear to bed. It’s a little long on me because she’s taller, but it fits well. I slide into the bed and moan at the feel of the silk sheets.

“Nice, right?”

“It’s wonderful,” I mumble, the alcohol finally getting to me and making my head spin. “Lara?”

“Yeah?”

She flips off the light and gets into bed.

“You really think Declan will forgive me?”

“I think he already has. I just don’t think he knows it yet.”

I murmur something under my breath and I’m not even sure what it is, and then I’m drifting off into sleep.

It’s not dreamless, though.

I stand on a beach, my toes in the sand, my butt on a beach towel.

“Baby?” someone calls, and when I turn my head, it’s Declan, his blue eyes fond and soft as he looks at me.

“How’d we get here?” I look around. I have no idea where this is.

The ocean air feels good on my face, the sun beating down on my shoulders. I can feel everything so vividly I wonder if I’m awake or asleep.

“I’m not sure.” He is smiling. “But aren’t you glad we’re here?”

I look down, and I’m wearing a wedding dress, not the pretty dress that Paige loaned me on my wedding, but a real wedding dress, with a train and embroidered shapes on the skirt.

I look over at Declan, and he’s wearing a tuxedo.

“I thought we already did this.”

“Not for real.”

And then instead of sitting, we’re standing under an arch, and he cups my face in his hand and kisses me. “Mrs. Burke,”

“Declan?”

His voice sounds farther and farther away, and his hands are slipping from mine.

Panic rolls through me.

“You’ll never be a Burke,” he snarls, and now he’s ten feet away from me.

Now twenty.

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