Page 104 of Reign

He grumbles in agreement. “I mean about the whole self-defense thing.”

“You mean my attempted murder.”

“Don’t call it that.” A rough edge overtakes his voice. “It’ll never be that. She was close to killing you.”

I shrug it off, but Chase reads me better than that.

“C’mon, sweet possum, talk to me.”

“It’s terrible,” I say eventually. “I hate thinking about it. I have nightmares, sometimes even when I’m awake. The way her face contorted and the crunch of her … her skull. It’s always here in my head. But my fear of the police not believing me because of my past—that’s over now. There are enough witnesses and Sabine made her motives clear when she screamed she wanted to kill me.”

“The Article mentioned something like Eden and Emma tried to get Sabine’s hands off you, and in the struggle, Sabine fell. But that’s not what happened, is it?”

This is for Chase. Ivy. My Mom.

“No,” I admit. “Do you think differently of me now? Now that…” you know what I’m capable of?

Chase speaks through my flashback. “I’m thinking what I’ve always thought. That you’re a gorgeous, perplexing, frustrating, addictive girl who I never want to let out of my sight again.”

I study him, wondering how two such screwed up people could still find happiness amid all this horror.

As if in answer, Chase shuffles to make room for me to snuggle closer. “Get back here. I’m cold.”

This time, I don’t hesitate.

“I love you,” I whisper into his skin. “Don’t ever leave me again.”

He tips my chin up and kisses me, slow and light, breathy and sweet. “Remind me never to push you into a lake.”

I smile, then at his goofy, lopsided grin, start laughing.

Soon, we’re both shaking with painful, needed laughter, our hearts entwined with our voices as we unconsciously wish for better, lighter things to come.

Epilogue

Chase

Graduation - 4 Months Later

“Are you ready yet? I feel like you should be ready by now,” I say as I twirl my tie between my fingers, wearing a path in Callie and my sister’s wood flooring.

“Almost!” comes Callie’s faint call through her door.

There’s a faint twinge in my gut as I move, my skin tight, uncomfortable, and itchy over the ache. I absentmindedly brush a thumb over the scar tissue.

Callie flings her door open. “We just have to—oh.”

She gives an appreciative sweep from my feet to my head. I’m in a pantsuit, shirtless, swinging a tie around, and she looks like she wants to lick me from top to bottom.

“Like what you see?” I ask, summoning my arrogance instead of shrinking and covering the nasty mark on my abs like instinct tells me to.

“Very much.” She bites her lower lip.

My pants tighten at the groin because of it.

A blush creeps across her cheekbones and she glances behind her. “Um. Emma? You almost ready?”

Aaaaand shrinkage. Nothing like the mention of my sister to deflate the moment.

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