Page 87 of Twisted Truths

“I want to talk to you about why you were here.”

“Obsidian, I?—”

He raises his hand and sits on the side of the bed. “I’ve been thinking about it all night.” He pauses, and I wait for him to continue. “I understand why you did it. I’ve done worse to protect the people I care most about, believe me.” He blows out a breath and pushes a hand through his hair. “I don’t like it—obviously. But I understand it. I would have done the same. We didn’t know each other when you first came here, and reflecting back, I see now the times when you seemed conflicted about something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

I breathe shakily, unable to believe what he’s saying. “The closer we got, the more I despised myself. I couldn’t even take anything the last couple of times I met my brother.”

He sighs, and his eyes grow kinder. “Your brother told me that months before you even got here, you opted out of the family business. That you wanted nothing more to do with it.”

I nod fast a few times. “That’s true. It never really felt right to me, but as I got into my twenties, I found it harder and harder to live with myself. After we ran a scam, all I could think about was how the people we’d targeted would recover. How long would it take them to make that money back? How untrusting would they be going through life now? Would they go into a depression and commit suicide? I just didn’t want any part of it any longer.”

He must hear the truth in my words because he gently takes my hand. “I believe you. And I believe that you’re still the same woman I fell in love with. It might take me some time to fully get back to where we were, but I’d like to try.”

Elation fills me like helium to a balloon, so fast I fear I might bust. He’s going to give me a second chance? The emotion is too much to contain, and I burst into tears.

“I never thought I’d get the chance to make this up to you.” I cringe from the pain crying creates in my ribs.

“Shhh. Careful, don’t hurt yourself.” He thumbs the tears off my cheeks. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be okay.”

Neither of us knows the future, but I’ll do everything in my power to prove to him that everything we had is the real deal. We’re the lucky ones who found true love.

Epilogue

OBSIDIAN

It didn’t take more than a few weeks for things to return to normal between Ariana and me. Basically, as her ribs healed, so did the fractured relationship between us.

She opened up about her past in a way she hadn’t before. Since I already knew how she’d been raised, it seemed easy for her to tell me about the scams her dad had both his kids run, the rules he set in place to make sure they never got caught, and how they moved around a lot so that they’d never be discovered.

While I was living in my own kind of hell with my father, so was she. Different, but no less difficult.

Knowing about her past actually brought us closer.

Her father and brother returned to the West Coast as soon as her father was discharged from the hospital. I offered to fly us out there if she wanted to spend some time by his side, but Ariana said she needed some distance from them both. That she loved them and always would, but at the moment, she wanted to concentrate on me, on us.

Sometimes when she says things like that, it takes me aback that anyone could care about me so much. Decades spent thinking I’m worthless and so much like my father that I’m undeserving of love are hard to undo, but I’m slowly unraveling those knots.

The only thing left to take care of was Brandon. Ariana never brought him up again, but I hadn’t forgotten about him. Not at all. Which is why Brandon found himself the victim of a hit and run accident that will leave him in the hospital and doing rehab for months. It was less pain than I wanted to inflict on that sack of shit, but anything more and it might get back to Ariana.

We’re in my bedroom—our bedroom now—still gathering our breath after making love. I think we make love more than fuck these days. I never would’ve believed it, but in a lot of ways, it’s more fulfilling. It doesn’t mean she’s not still my good girl though.

Nero was right about forgiveness being a decision. And once I’d made the decision to forgive her, I knew quickly that I’d already made another decision.

I decided that I don’t want to waste any more time. I know how I feel about her and how she feels about me. Why wait any longer to begin our lives together? I want to be able to call Ariana my wife.

I roll toward the nightstand and pull open the top drawer, rummaging around inside for the ring box. I’ve had it for a couple of weeks, but I wasn’t sure how I wanted to propose. I didn’t want to do some big grand gesture—and maybe that will turn out to be a mistake—but I wanted to do it when the time felt right. Which is now.

“What are you looking for?” she asks with humor in her voice.

With my back to her, I open the ring box and pull out the ring.

Choosing the ring turned out to be way more stressful than I would have thought. Especially because money was no object. I can buy Ariana literally any ring I want, which meant every option was available to me.

But when I spoke to the jeweler and told him what Ariana is like, he came up with a few sketches, and this one was perfect. It has a large pearl in the center with diamonds surrounding it in a design that almost makes it look like a star. It’s different and a little art deco looking, and god, I hope she loves it.

I roll over to face her with the ring clutched between my thumb and forefinger.

The smile falls from Ariana’s face, and she gasps, looking from the ring to me and back several times.

---