Page 39 of A Man of Prestige

I shake my head as I pull it away from hers, so we are forced to look at each other’s tearstained faces. “It’s no one’s fault. We were young and stupid.” The words come out without me thinking because they are true. I’m still raging inside, but I can’t deny the fact that I still love this woman. Envisioning her going through this alone kills me inside. I can’t be angry with her, knowing what she went through.

We both look over at the small wooden box and she reaches for it, bringing it between our bodies. We stare down at it.

“I think she would have had your nose. She was so tiny. I got to hold her for a while. It was the best and worst two hours of my life,” she whispers.

I stare down at her. “So, the six months before you deployed…wasn’t because of a delay in your assignment,” I say, remembering what she told me when I’d seen her at the conference, and we talked about what we’d been up to since we last saw each other.

She shakes her head. “No one knows but you, Elena, and me.”

“Fuck,” I whisper as I push hair away from her eye. I lean forward and kiss her forehead. “I should have been the one there for you.”

“It is what it is. Like you said. We were young, we both made mistakes.”

“No more mistakes,” I say.

She looks up at me.

“I love you, Ella,” I whisper. “I never stopped loving you.”

She swallows and wipes her nose with the arm of her shirt. I smile down at her. It’s such an Ella thing to do.

“I love you, too, you giant pain in my ass.”

I chuckle as I lean down and kiss her, our hands both holding our daughter’s remains.

Chapter18

Ella

We lie in bed.We haven’t made love. We’re still in our clothes. Angela’s box still lies between us. We’ve spent hours talking after Aiden sent a message to his security team about a cloaked figure he had seen near us after the concert. I told him I had felt like we were being watched all day. Apparently, his security guard is now outside my front door.

I tell him about what I did after I left him. He told me how he looked for me and even sent a few letters when he figured out that I was stationed abroad. I frown because I never got those letters.

It’s late now, so late that it’s beginning to be early.

“Why did we waste so much time?” he asks as he runs a hand over mine.

“Because we’re young and stupid? I thought we established that already,” I muse.

He glares at me. “Not completely true.”

I shrug. “I don’t know. But I don’t want to waste any more time.”

“We won’t. I promise,” he says as he stares into my eyes. I smile as a weight I didn’t know was on my shoulders lifts for the first time in so long that I feel physically lighter.

“What now?” I ask.

“Now, we begin,” he says as he leans over and kisses me, but our kiss is cut short by his phone ringing.

He leans back and pulls it out of his pocket.

“Sebastian?” His voice is laced with concern and his brows furrow as he listens.

“Shit. Yeah, on my way.”

He hangs up and looks at me. I thought our discussions all night were serious, but this, whatever it is, is clearly much, much more serious.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, swallowing down my fears.

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