Page 59 of The Broken Wolf's Redemption

His heart was still a mess, beating like it was going to kill him, just not the molten metal kind.

He wanted to take her face between his palms and assure himself she was real. Briar May said not to hold out hope. He shouldn’t have, but that’s exactly what he’d been holding out for the past two months. It wasn’t logical, but logic didn’t have anything to do with Seren. It never had.

His legs felt watery and weak. It was either step back or fall over. “Do you want to come in?” How was it that his voice sounded so normal when he was going to black out?

She bit down on her bottom lip and looked around him. Her little gasp was the most adorable thing, echoing through the empty space. “Are you serious?”

He’d made dinner and kept it in the oven. It was ready for eight, but he would have kept it there until it was morning, and the chicken and pasta was dried out and shriveled. He would have left the candles burning and let the white roses on the table wilt down to nothing. He would have sat there all that time, each breath hurting like a motherfucker, waiting for her.

It was more than a relief when she stepped in and let the door shut behind her. She could have told him to go fuck himself and walked away. He would have let her go. What other option was there? This had to be her choice. He’d forced her before, blackmailed, manipulated, done the worst of it. This time, he had to let her take those steps on her own. She would either walk to him or away from him, and either way, he had to accept her decision.

He’d been holding his breath, and now that he let it out, that was a relief too. His chest was a minefield, hard packed earth with rusty, sharp corners, but having Seren in his space, choosing to be there, was like a farmer taking loving control over barren land, clearing brush and farrowing, removing all that debris until nothing remained but fertile, soft soil.

She took one step in and he took one step forward and then it happened.

He couldn’t hold himself up any longer.

He thought it might just have been his imagination that his legs were weak, but it wasn’t. It was real. That was his truth, to end up on the floor, bowed before her.

She gasped again. Her hands hovered over his shoulders for a few seconds before they landed on his arms. He kept his head bowed, the pressure too much for him to bear. It was going to split his skin. It was going to tear him in half.

“Rome.” Seren’s hands were steady and gentle. She’d seen him injured plenty of times, and each time, he’d tried to keep his pride, but this time, there was no pride left.

She was there. She’d come. She wouldn’t have come if she didn’t care. If she didn’t believe that what they’d done meant more than just the evil that had been done to her. She could easily have said no, but she’d driven to his place. She’d put her faith in him one more time, all on her own, and now her hands were resting on his shoulder. One moved, caressing his hair, her fingers tangling in the black strands. The other skated over his jaw and tilted his face up.

“What’s happening? Are you okay?”

No. Jesus fuck, no. No, I’m not okay, but now you’re here.

His sinuses burned like he had an infection. The pressure behind his eyes and nose mounted until his skull ached.

He wanted to pull himself up, to get to his feet, but he remained where he was. His lungs were deflated by the shrapnel moving around in his chest. He was bleeding on the inside. He’d been that way for so long, how was he even still alive?

“How do I ever say that I’m sorry for what I did to you? I’ve missed you. I thought I knew emptiness before, but… but… no. Meeting you was torture. You are torture. I’m almost certain now that I can’t survive without you.”

“Rome.” She tugged at his shirt, her tone insistent and hard.

He stumbled upright, propelling himself, hoping he could get there. He swayed when he stood like an already broken tree in a windstorm.

There weren’t tears in her voice, but they were there on her cheeks. She’d gone pale. Ashen. Her skin was like porcelain against her dark eye makeup and her scarlet lips, her bright pink hair. Tears glistened in her eyes, darkening and crystalizing the blue like icebergs in frigid water.

“Rome, I… Please don’t get on your knees.”

“Please don’t get on my knees or please don’t apologize? Please don’t make it harder when all you want to do is forget what happened, or please don’t tell you what I’ve finally been able to admit to myself was the truth? Please don’t tell you that if you’d let me, I would be honored to be your everything, even if that doesn’t include being mates?”

“We don’t love each other.” There was such naked fear on her face that his stomach clenched and churned. He’d made dinner, but he couldn’t imagine eating a thing.

“Does that mean you know that I can’t love you properly because I’m incapable, being made the way I am?”

She shook her head viciously. “Please don’t say that. What I mean is that we don’t love each other. What our bodies say is different than our hearts. You’re moving. You’re leaving. How do you think that it could ever work? I’m not going to give up what I’ve built here.”

“I know. But you have two days off a week. You could visit. We could come back. It would mean driving, but what are a few hours a week?”

“I like my days off. They’re not to be… they’re not to be monopolized for something like this.” She inhaled shudderingly and dashed at her cheeks like she was desperate to remove the moisture. “We both said we never wanted a mate. I even went as far as to say that I never want to be in a relationship again.”

“I could be everything that isn’t that.”

“You mean friends who fuck?” Her nose scrunched. She clearly found the idea distasteful. “In the name of honesty, I’ll admit that I found you attractive and that yes, okay, I wanted you before the stupid contract. The reason I went to you and not anyone else, even if I saw you as my last shot, wasn’t because—it wasn’t what I told myself it was. I never truly hated you for what you did. Only myself, for liking it. What does that make me?”

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