Page 127 of Unbroken

One very long and painful conversation later, Devon and I slumped against the workbench. “She was so reckless,” he murmured, running a palm up and down his face.

When the professor Sydney had been flirting with all semester finally reciprocated, she couldn’t resist. He’d played her perfectly. It had all started off innocently enough, or as innocently as it could have. He was interested in her in the beginning, just her without an ulterior motive—as far as we know—but she admitted that when she’d mentioned me and my story, he’d changed.

He’d pushed to visit her family immediately, and one visit wasn’t sufficient. She just hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself or anyone else that his intentions were anything but true. That was why, when we’d called her before to tell her about my phone call with Julian, she’d still been protecting him and making stupid excuses. She didn’t want to be wrong.

She swore she would end things, and then she apologized over and over and over again.

“She didn’t mean to,” I whispered. A new wave of emotion hit me. Emotion I couldn’t quite identify, but it was sweeping and overwhelming.

I stared down at my hands and inhaled a shaky breath.

“She might not have meant to, but it happened nonetheless,” he continued, annoyance and frustration obvious in every word. He was too caught up in what Sydney had—or, better yet, hadn’t—done, but I’d moved past it. She was apologetic, and we had bigger things to deal with.

“Dev—” I began.

“No, Blake. She put you in danger, and?—”

The emotions finally bubbled over. “And Julian is the least of our problems, Devon,” I snapped before I could think it through. “Sydney is going to break up with him, and it seems like he gave up on me. If we have to, we’ll go the restraining order route for both me and Sydney. I’m not worried about it, and neither is she. It sucks, but it’s over.”

I was fuming, my hands shaking as I paced away from him. When I chanced a look back at him, guilt marred his features.

“Fuck, Blake,” he said, crossing to me in two quick strides. “I’m sorry. I didn’t?—”

“I know, I know,” I said and took a breath. I tilted my head back and stared at the wood beams in the unfinished ceiling as my hands landed on his chest. “I’m just…I don’t even have a word for how I feel right now. Annoyed? Frustrated? Infuriated? None of them seem to fit.”

Not being able to name the feelings was going to drive me crazy. It was anything and everything all at once.

“I—” he began, but I cut him off immediately with a quick shake of my head.

“And I swear to god, if you say that ‘all my feelings are valid’ or ‘you’ll get through this,’ I’m going to go nuclear. I don’t want any cliched, unhelpful expressions or platitudes people use when they don’t have anything better to say.”

Slowly, the corners of his mouth tipped up in a smile that he was trying—and failing—to hold back. I narrowed my eyes in suspicion at his reaction. Gently, he smoothed the furrow between my brows with his thumb, then grasped my chin. He tilted my head up an inch, so I had no choice but to look directly at him.

“I was going to say that I love you.Sofucking much. That work?”

Similar to Devon, an uncontrollable smile spread across myface. “Yeah, that works.” He ran his thumb over my smile before he leaned down and pressed our lips together.

“I love you, too, by the way,” I whispered against my mouth.

He kissed me again and again. “Good. Now, get back to work.” I stepped back, but he clung to my hands, groaning when I kept walking backward. “Don’t groan. You told me I was a distraction when I was in here last time.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “But you’re the best distraction.”

“I know. I’ll show you what an amazing distraction I am later, when you’re making the dinner you promised me.”

Our fingers slipped apart, and I turned to leave, feeling somewhat lighter knowing that we were moving forward. That we were moving in the right direction. And Devon was by my side.

FIFTY-EIGHT

Blakely

“Thank you so much,Blakely. This room has been bugging me since I moved back in here,” Shelly said. She swung the spare bedroom door open to reveal boxes and boxes of…stuff.

“Oh, wow,” I mumbled. When she’d asked for my help going through and organizing the contents of the spare bedroom, I hadn’t imagined there would be enough belongings and boxes to actually fill the room. They were lining the walls and stacked several high.

“I know.” She sighed and walked the few steps she could into the room. “When we sold my old house, Devon put anything he wasn’t going to use in here. Then, when I moved back from Houston, a lot of that stuff piled on top of the other stuff.”

She lifted the lid of a black plastic box and peered inside for a second before shaking her head and replacing it. “I’m not sure where to even start. Maybe you take that side, and I’ll take this one. We’ll see how far we get.”

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