Page 76 of Devilish Ink

“Where the fuck have you been?” I asked, my voice hollow.

He opened his mouth.

“No, I don’t want to know,” I cut him off. “I don’t fucking care. You left me. you fuckingleft me.”

I didn’t know what to feel anymore. Angry? Used?Relieved?

“Let me explain.” He lifted his hands and stepped forward. “Can I come in?”

“No.” I blocked his path.

“Ry, please.”

I shook my head as if that might send a message to my brain: close the door. Shut it now. Do not step aside.

Lee’s eyes did not leave mine, even as I trailed over his body with my wary gaze.

“You’ve left me in a free fall,” I said. “And I don’t think I’ll survive it.”

He stepped up to me. His drenched chest came against the thin cotton of my t-shirt, soaking through.

My nipples hardened. I melted against him, every single cell aching for his touch after so long.

“This is me catching you,” he whispered.

With one touch, he’d stripped me of all my remaining defences. The t-shirt felt like tissue paper over my stomach, quivering with every hard-fought breath.

His eyelashes dripped water droplets onto my uplifted face. One fell on my closed eyelid. One caught my cheek like a tear. I tasted the salt of his sweat on the dip of my Cupid’s bow from a third.

He stepped us inside, his arms wrapped around me, me buried against his chest, body trembling against his, the door clicking shut behind him. His chest rose high. I rose with it. We fell together.

“Ry, I need to tell you something.”

His arms tightened around me even as I tried to crane my head to look up at him. I thought he might crush me. The weight of him. The strength of him.

“I love you,” he said to the crown of my head, his lips moving against my hair. “I love you, Ryleigh Elizabeth Carroll. You are mine. And I am yours.”

His heartbeat smashed against my ribs as my head spun from his words. “Lee…”

“You are mine,” he repeated, holding me, somehow, even tighter. “And I am yours… But there is one more thing I need to tell you.”

“Lee, what is—?”

“Rian is my brother.”

LIAM

“Rian is my brother.”

Finally, after all these months, the truth tumbled out. Once I started talking, I couldn’t stop.

“My name is Liam…not Lee. Although,” I tried a soft smile, “I’ve come to love that nickname. And I hope you keep calling me Lee.”

What do they say? The truth shall set you free?

Except as Ryleigh pulled back from me, I caught sight of her face. The shock and confusion as she shook her head and stared at me with wide eyes…then the utter bone-shattering betrayal as my words sank in.

“No,” she said, her voice shuddering. “No. No.”

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