Page 107 of The Devil's Torment

“You did?”

“Yeah. Her name was Petra Downey. She was twenty years old. She ran away from home at sixteen, and her parents died in a car accident a couple of years later, having never found her. But she did have a cousin on her mother’s side, and a couple of friends who remember her from school. Her cousin is going to arrange to have her buried next to her parents.”

“That’s good. I’m glad she’ll be home where she belongs.” No thanks to Beth, but I keep that to myself. Nicholas doesn’t need any more ammunition to hate on my sister, and if I were in his shoes, I’m sure I’d feel pretty similar.

We lie in the bath until the water cools, then he helps dry me off and change into nightwear. It’s only eleven-thirty in the morning, I haven’t done anything physical, and yet I’m exhausted. Doctors can tell you to expect fatigue, but experiencing it is something else entirely.

Nicholas brings chicken soup and freshly baked granary bread from the kitchen. The smell alone is enough to make my mouth water. To eat something homemade after weeks of hospital food is heavenly. I finish it, refusing an offer of seconds. The food coupled with the hot bath and the emotional upheaval of leaving the hospital has left me with hardly any energy left.

I sink into the pillows and close my eyes.

It’s dark out when I wake. The clock on Nicholas’s side of the bed reads six thirty-four. Wow. I’ve slept for over six hours. I turn on the bedside light, blinking at the sudden brightness.

“How are you feeling?”

“Oh.” I didn’t see Nicholas sitting in the chair in the corner of our bedroom, a sleeping Penny resting in his lap. “You scared me.”

A smirk tugs at the corners of his mouth. “I’ve been known to scare one or two people in my time.” He puts Penny on the floor and stands. She immediately curls into a ball and closes her eyes.

Perching on the edge of the bed, he tucks a lock of hair behind my ear. “You need anything, Half-pint?”

“Yeah.” I pat the empty space beside me. “Hold me.”

I don’t know why, but his face crumples at that simple request. He rounds the bed and lies down, and I roll over and nestle into him. A violent shudder coils through his body.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

There’s a hitch to his voice like he’s struggling to hang on to his emotions. I lean back to get a look at him. He’s… oh, God, he’s crying.

“Nicholas? Oh, my God, what’s wrong?” I’ve never seen him cry. Never. It breaks me. I can’t stand it.

“Victoria.” He cups my cheeks and tilts my face upward, his eyes shining with more tears. “I almost lost you. I almost fucking lost you, and I hadn’t even told you that I love you.”

My heart lodges in my ribs. For months, I’ve hoped and prayed to hear those words from my husband’s lips but never expected to. I’d convinced myself I didn’t need to hear them, that his actions were all that mattered.

How wrong I was.

I burst into tears.

“Hey.” His arms tighten around me, and he kisses my eyelids, my damp cheeks, my lips. “Don’t cry. I can’t bear it when you cry.”

“I can’t bear it whenyoucry,” I sob, and then I begin to laugh, and once I start, I can’t stop. “I love you, too. You know that, right? I’ve loved you for so long, Nicholas.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “You have?”

“Yes. It started as a teenage obsession, I guess, but deep down in my heart, I always believed you were the one for me. Then I lost you when you chose Beth, and I thought that was it. But fate gave us another chance. It gave us time to figure out what and who we wanted. It gave you time to realize you were capable of loving someone again after your mum’s death destroyed you. You’re everything to me. I love you, Nicholas De Vil. With all my heart.”

His often-harsh features soften, his eyes melting like chocolate over a hot stove. “I love you. More than life. And I’ll spend the rest of mine showing you that you’ll always be my number one.”

He kisses me, and I lose myself in the warmth of his embrace, the power of his love, the strength of his support.

A few months ago, I walked down the aisle and married a man I prayed would one day love me, but never truly thought it would happen. A man who told me he didn’t do the love thing. A man who’d had his heart ripped out when his mother killed herself. A man who thought he wasn’t enough when the truth is, he’s everything.

My everything.

And now I know that I’m his everything, too.

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