Page 116 of Left in the Dark

I know we have so much to talk about. But as I watch him interact with the staff and take the water and bottle of pain medication before he turns to me, looking at me the same way he used to when we were eighteen years old, I realize he’s worth fighting for.

We’re worth fighting for.

CHAPTER 75

Zayne

Iwouldn’t describe myself as an emotional person, but there’s one exception that brings out parts of me I didn’t know or remember existed. The woman who is my first, and I strongly suspect, my last love.

Delaney.

Myminx.

She stares at me with bloodshot eyes, the green vibrant next to the red. Her eyes never leave mine as I open the bottle of water and hand it to her. She holds out her other hand, and I dump two pills in it.

She pops them in her mouth and lifts the bottle of water. I watch her drink, her throat working as she swallows the pills and water, never once questioning the medication I gave her.

Her eyes are a myriad of emotions, swelling from her to me. I take it all, embracing her pain, longing, sadness, and betrayal, knowing I can handle it.

Because of the trust and love I see in them, I can handle anything this woman throws my way. I’m the only man strong enough to accept her as she is and love all of her, the good and bad.

After fifteen years apart, I know she can handle me.

Even when she climbed from the bed and raged at me, suffocating me beneath the weight of her emotions, and pissing me off when she dug her claws into the festering wound of leaving me broken and alone by the bonfire. When I was enraged at the things her father, brother, and his asshole friends did, she didn’t buckle beneath the weight of it, even though she was injured and weak.

I take the empty water bottle from her hand. Like two magnets, we step closer, drawn together by love and fate.

My hands move to her face, and she wraps her hands around my forearms. My thumbs stroke her cheeks. “I know we have a lot to talk about. I need to give you my perspective of what happened fifteen years ago.”

Her lips part, and my eyes drop to them.Fuck, they look even better swollen from my kiss.

My gaze flicks to hers. “But right now, I need to taste you again.”

She nods, a beautiful sigh coming from her lips the second mine graze hers. Her hands slide from my forearms to the back of my neck as I tangle my fingers in her silky strands.

Fuck. She tastes like everything good in this world that I don’t deserve.

I’ve done horrific things in the last ten years. Violently torturing and killing people as a way to deal with the endless rage that burned in my veins. There were days I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror.

But her light infuses my blackened heart and soul with warmth, brightening the darkest parts of me. She accepts them, just like she does the rest of me.

It’s so freeing to be loved so wholly. So completely.

I didn’t even realize I’d been crying until I felt her fingers on my cheeks. I pull back slightly, opening my eyes.

Hers are full of moisture that slides down her cheeks the second she opens them. “I feel it, too. It’s so powerfully raw. A mixture of beautiful and heart-wrenching.”

I nod, grateful I don’t have to voice the emotions coursing inside me. She knows me better than anyone else, and she feels what I feel. We were like this as young teens and new adult lovers.

Here we are, thirty-four years old. Born two weeks apart, every cell in my body is ingrained with the fabric of her DNA. Our souls have been woven together for years, and even though time separated us, we found our way back to each other again.

“You wanna fight for this just as much as I do?”

She nods. “Hell, yes. I know it won’t be easy?—”

“When have we ever been easy?” A smile blooms across my face.

“Lots of times… and also, not.”

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