Page 136 of Finding Forever

“How do you feel about it?” she asked.

“Grateful.” His lean stomach and taut abs flexed distractingly as he rearranged himself to face her more fully. “You did this Fern. I was harboring all this resentment and didn’t even realize it. If not for you, we would all simply have carried on like this. I would have remained emotionally distant from my siblings, from my father, and while we all knew it wasn’t as it should be, none of us knew how to fix it. Thank you.”

“You love one another, I’m sure you would have figured it out eventually, Cade,” she told him and he laughed, the sound carrying not a trace of humor.

“You place a lot more faith in us than we deserve, Fern.” She smiled and ran her palm over his stubbled jaw.

“I’m glad that you and your father had that talk, Cade.”

He caught the hand on his jaw and dragged it to his mouth to drop a kiss in her palm.

Fern chewed the inside of her cheek pensively, before sighing.

“I have something to tell you too,” she confessed. “And I think you’re going to be angry.”

“Why would you think that?” She licked her lips and his eyes hungrily followed the movement of her tongue. Belatedly recalling his fascination with her mouth, she snapped her fingers in front of his face to recapture his wandering attention.

“My eyes are up here, mister,” she admonished, and his gray eyes lit with amusement at her words.

“Sorry,” he said and she rolled her eyes.

“Okay, so Granger has been pestering Cyrus for a meeting with me.”

Every trace of amusement fled from his face and eyes in seconds.

“No. Absolutely not.” His voice was adamant, forged in steel, and his eyes had frosted over.

“Well, see, the thing is… it’s not up to you, Cade. It’smydecision. And I’ve already told Cyrus yes. The meeting has been set up for tomorrow morning.”

“When did Cyrus inform you of Abernathy’s demands?” Cade asked, his voice lowering dangerously and she sucked her lower lip into her mouth before shrugging.

“On Monday.”

“You sat on this fortwodays before telling me?”

“I wasn’t going to tell you at all, because I knew you were going to get all unreasonable and overprotective about it.”

“Forfuck’ssake, Fern,” he swore, running his palm over his freshly shorn hair. “I don’t trust him, and I don’t want you anywhere near him.”

“I understand, Cade,” she appeased, her hand going to his hard, thickly-muscled thigh to give a reassuring squeeze. “But Cyrus will be there, as will his associates. As well as Granger’s attorneys. We won’t be alone. But I want to see him. It’smymoment, but I want you there. I need you there. As my husband. To support me,notto protect me. I want Granger to know that I can take care of myself, despite the years he stole from me, despite how he attempted to erode my self-confidence and self-esteem. I want him to see that I survived him and that I’m thriving without him. Do you understand?”

His eyes had gone dark with suppressed emotion but he nodded.

“I understand and I’m so fucking proud of you. I’ll be there tomorrow as your biggest cheerleader.Always.” His voice was shaky. “But Fern, I have to tell you something too. Something I know will likely come out at your meeting with Abernathy and I don’t want you blindsided by it.”

Fern waited, nervous now, not certain she was ready to hear what he wanted to confess. Not when he looked so sick at the prospect of whatever he was about to divulge.

His throat bobbed as he swallowed.

“After you told me what Abernathy did to you and yourfriend… I waspunch a walllevels of pissed off. No sorry, that’s too mild compared to what I was feeling. It was morepunch his nose into the back of his skulllevels of blind rage. I wanted to hunt him down and fuck him up for what he did to you.” He snuck another nervous look at her. “I stayed up that night and formulated a plan to destroy him. To raze everything he’d built all the way down to the ground. So—uh—that’s what I did.”

She blinked at him in confusion as she tried to make sense of his words.

“What do you mean that’s what you did? What did you do? What do you mean?”

“He’s bankrupt. I did to him what he did to your friend. And I did it in your name.”

“What?” she asked faintly. “You did what? In just two months?”

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