Page 93 of Say You're Mine

Forgive me for loving you too much to ever let go.

The pain is fading now, replaced by a numbness that starts in my fingers and toes and creeps inward, wrapping around my heart like a lover's final embrace. It's almost peaceful, this slipping away. Like falling into a dream from which there's no waking.

I'm not afraid. Not anymore. Because I know, with a soul-deep certainty, that this isn't the end. That someday, in some other life, some other world... I'll find my way back to you.

Wait for me, Cara. Wait for me on the other side of forever.

I'm coming home.

And then there's nothing.

Just the black, yawning abyss, and the fading echo of a love that even death can't conquer.

A final thought, tender and true.

I'll see you again, my wild brave beauty. In the next life, and every incarnation after.

That's a promise.

Chapter twenty-eight

Cara

The air in the courtroom is thick enough to choke on, pressing down on me like a weighted shroud. I squeeze Judith's hand, clinging to her like a lifeline as June's words flay me open, one agonizing syllable at a time.

"She unmade me." His voice splinters, and I feel the cracks spiderweb through my heart. "Ripped me apart and reassembled the pieces into something monstrous."

Bile scalds my throat. I press a hand to my swollen belly, to the tiny life fluttering beneath. Our child, blissfully innocent of the horrors their father is reliving.

I want to scream, to lunge across the room and rake my nails down Elaine's smugly impassive face until she weeps crimson contrition. I want to fold myself around June, shield him with my body the way he's shielded my heart all these years.

But I don't. I can't. Because this is his battle, his truth to tell. So I sit, spine straight and jaw clenched, and I bear witness.

The gavel's crack is a gunshot, jolting me to my feet. I'm moving before the echo fades, shouldering through the crowd, desperate to reach June. But the officers are already leading him away, the clank of his shackles an obscene chorus.

For one splintered second, his gaze meets mine. A thousand unspoken words crackle between us, a live wire of grief and fury and love so fierce it steals my breath. Then he's gone, swallowed by a sea of uniforms.

"Breathe, honey." Judith's arm anchors around my shoulders, steering me through the throng. I suck air into my lungs, the fluorescents flickering like strobes, nausea churning in my gut.

"I'll kill her," I rasp, tasting blood where I've bitten through my lip. "I'll strangle her with my bare fucking hands, Jude, I swear to God-"

"I know." Her grip tightens, bruisingly gentle. "But you have to keep your head, Cara. For June. For the baby."

The baby. A tether, yanking me back from the precipice. I press my forehead to the cool stone wall, breathing through the red haze. She's right. Of course she's right. Judith Deveaux, ever the voice of reason.

The ride home is a smear of shapes and colors, my heart rattling against my ribs like a caged bird. Only when we step into the house, into the mingled scents of fresh linen and Mom's homemade sauce, do I let my mask slip.

"There's my girl." Mom folds me into her arms, her embrace an instant balm. I sag against her, knees buckling, a high keen building in my throat.

"I've got you, Cara mia." She rocks me like I'm small again, stroking my hair. "Let it out, honey. You're safe now."

Safe. What a farce. I'll never be safe again, not with Elaine Deveaux's talons sunk deep in my life. But I let my mother hold me, let her love seep into the fractures of my composure.

Venturing into the nursery, Louis and Sonya's playful squabbling envelops me, their good-natured barbs and harmonized laughter a soothing balm to my mangled heart as they apply finishing flourishes to the whimsical mural June and I once daydreamed over.

"Well, look what the cat dragged in!" Louis, a Cheshire grin splitting his face, slaps down a paintbrush. "For a hot minute, we wondered if you'd eloped with a drop-dead gorgeous ambulance chaser."

I cobble together a wobbly smile, praying my bravado eclipses my fragility. "And forgo the grand unveiling of Louis Avery, nursery decorator extraordinaire? Not a chance, bucko."

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