Page 15 of The Saint

“I will take care of her—and I won’t stick my dick where it doesn’t belong.” That was all women wanted. Didn’t need to be in several relationships to figure that out.

“Does she have any idea how fucking psycho you are for her?”

I continued to conceal the depths of my emotions from her, to run a marathon instead of a sprint, to play the game by her rules. “I’m sure she does. I think she’s psycho for me too, but she’s doing her damnedest to hide it…unsuccessfully.”

“Unsuccessfully?”

I felt myself smile at the memory. “At the end of our argument, she basically said she was in love with me, without realizing that she’d actually said it. Like it’s been true for so fucking long that it just slipped out. Adrien told me she said the same thing, but hewas drunk out of his mind, so I wasn’t completely certain I could believe him. But looks like he was telling the truth.”

“Why won’t she say it to your face?”

“I think she’s scared.”

“Scared? If she still wants to be with you after being buried alive and literally dying, she doesn’t seem like she scares easy.”

“I think she’s afraid to admit to herself that her heart is at risk again. That I have the power to break her worse than Adrien did. Which is ridiculous because I would never hurt her.”

“To be fair, I’m sure Adrien said the same thing.”

“I’m a man and he’s a boy. It’s different, and she knows it’s different.”

He gave a nod in agreement.

“You know how much pussy gets handed to me?” Nearly every night, I ran into a woman who made a pass at me, whether it was at a bar or a meeting spot or someone’s estate. There wasn’t enough time in the day to fuck all those women, even if I wanted to. “And you know how easy it is to turn it down? So fucking easy, man. Because that’s my fucking wife. How Adrien didn’t know that is fucking beyond me.”

“I think he just assumed he wouldn’t get caught.”

“I would never get caught,” I snapped. “She would never know, and you would never rat on me if you knew. It’s about not wanting to do it in the first place. I just wish she understood that.”

“I don’t think she would have moved in with you if she didn’t understand that, Bastien. If she didn’t trust you like she does,she would have left the second you pulled her out of that coffin. She wouldn’t grab her shit and move in with you. She wouldn’t trust you to take care of her. Maybe the road is a little bumpy at times, but she’s never lost her grip on the wheel.”

I was impatient for more, but Luca made me see reason, that just because she wanted to wade into the water instead of jumping in headfirst with me didn’t mean she was any less committed.

“You already know how she feels, and that’s all that matters,” he said. “It doesn’t matter when she’s ready to say it.”

I arrived at Adrien’s house, the rest of the guys waiting by the SUV smoking cigars and waiting for orders.

The butler showed me inside. Adrien was standing in the sitting room like he’d been pacing to pass the time. The second he realized I was there, he gave a sigh. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s fine.”

“Fine? What does that mean?”

“She had a rough couple of days, but she’s been doing well ever since. Goes shopping, runs on the treadmill, bakes cookies. She doesn’t take baths like she used to, but I’m sure warming up to that idea will take more than a couple weeks.”

The relief swept over his gaze. “Good…that’s good. Has she gone back to work?”

“She quit.”

“Why?”

I shouldn’t subjugate myself to this conversation, but I wanted him to understand he’d been replaced, that he’d thrown her away and I’d put her back together. That when he’d tossed out the trash, there had been a diamond in the rubble—and now that diamond was mine. “Because she doesn’t need money when she has me.”

He didn’t appear stung by that response, his only concern for her well-being. “I’ve been worried but knew a call or text wouldn’t be welcome.”

“Bother her, and I’ll kill you.”

His eyes immediately flew back to mine, his stare shifting as if trying to understand if I meant that threat.

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