Page 78 of A Sinner's Saint

I can see the wheels turning in her head. I’m not above getting on my hands and knees and begging her for another shot. I need her to believe in me like she used to. I need her to believe in us.

“Believe in us, Cammi. You know it’s always going to be us. When it comes down to it, neither one of us is complete without the other. There isn’t a universe out there where I exist without you.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

Iwant to throw caution to the wind and say yes. I want to be back under the Eiffel Tower and have Vin’s proposal be real. But I don’t need all the fancy romance. All I’ve ever needed is him and here he is, handing himself over to me. Forever.

Or at least for as long as a marriage might last. I do think that the connection Vin and I have is intense. It runs deep within my veins. I’m just not sure I can trust him to actually stay. If I sayyes today and he wakes up tomorrow or even ten years from now and decides that he’s made a mistake, would I survive?

Would I survive the next ten years without him if I say no, though? I’m not sure. I know I’ll always wonderwhat if. It’s been complete and utter hell this past year having to live day by day knowing he was living a separate life, without me. Knowing I couldn’t talk to him, cuddle with him. I really just want to cuddle with him.

I shuffle over on the bed. “I want you to lie down with me, Vin. I want you to wrap your arms around me and make me feel safe the way only you can,” I tell him.

He’s asking me to believe in us. I want to. I really, really want to.

Vin silently climbs onto the bed and pulls my body up against his. I rest my head on his chest. The rhythm of his heartbeat soothes me. He is the one haven I let myself completely lean on, and then he ripped it out from under me.

“I’ve been so lost without you. I don’t know what to do anymore, Vin,” I whisper.

“Do what your heart is telling you to do, Cammi. I love you. I will love you no matter what your answer is,” he says.

Right here, in his arms, I feel like I can breathe again. I feel… free. “Is this real?” I ask him.

“I fucking hope so,” Vin says.

“If I say yes, what does that look like to you? Us being married?”

“It looks like the second part of the story,” he tells me. The story. Vin used to tell me the same bedtime story over and over again. It was our story.

“Tell me part two,” I urge him. Because I need to know.

“When the sinner found his way back to the saint, he became alive again. So much so that he never wanted to go back to the depths of hell. He wanted to stay in the light that surrounded thesaint. So he did. He married her, worshiped her every day for the rest of his life. He earned her forgiveness, and together they healed. The sinner and the saint had a lifetime of adventures. They travelled the world and made so many memories. Good ones, while the bad one served as lessons on mistakes they’d never repeat.” Vin’s words speak to my heart. I want that happy ending.

“Yes.” The one word escapes my lips. I’m scared. So damn scared. But I won’t let fear stop us from having our life together.

Vin’s body stills beneath me. “Yes?” he repeats.

I roll over onto my stomach to look up at him. “Yes. This is when you kiss me, Vin. Kiss me like you proposed and I said yes, because you did and I did.”

Vin’s lips descend onto mine, his touch so soft, tender. His palm cups my cheek as his tongue pushes into my mouth. I feel everything in this kiss. I doubted his love. There were moments I thought I had made it all up in my head, and he wasn’t in love with me like I was with him. But this kiss… After this kiss, I know he loves me.

Vin pulls back, and his eyes connect with mine. “I love you. I promise I’m not going to fuck this up again.”

“I hope that’s a promise you can keep.” I rest my head back on his chest.

“I’m going to do whatever it takes to keep you safe, Cammi. You and our heart,” he says.

“Our heart?” I ask him.

“Your heart is my heart. I’m not going to live without you ever again. I was so fucking scared, Cammi. And I’ve been scared before, but I would willingly go back into that room with the monsters if it meant your heart would continue to beat.”

I try to picture what he saw. How I dropped onto the ground, my body lifeless. I couldn’t imagine if the roles were reversed. “Iwouldn’t want you to do that, Vin. Besides, the monsters are all dead now. Right?”

“Right.”

“The nightmares?”

“They’re different now,” Vin says.

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