Page 182 of At the Edge of Surrender

Because I knew it then, and maybe I’d known it all along.

I loved her.

I loved her more than anything I’d ever loved in my life.

Emery and my little Angel Face.

“Ah, brother, it’s the most terrifying thing you’ll ever feel, and the best gift you’ll be given. And once you feel it, there is no going back. That’s it. It’s over for you.”

Sounded about right because I was done for.

On my knees.

These two girls my everything.

FORTY

EMERY

It waslate afternoon as we slowly drove down the dirt lane and came to a stop in front of Kane’s house.

Stillness hovered in the air, a calm quiet that gleamed against the windows and sent peace echoing back.

The sensation was fully at odds with the turmoil that blistered through my being. The tattered fragments of fear that lingered in the periphery of my senses.

Except vestiges of that peace were there, hinting at the edges of my consciousness when I shifted to look at Kane who sat in the driver’s seat of his car, his jaw taut with the strain, though his green eyes were soft when he turned them on me.

“Wait right there.” It didn’t matter that his tone was harsh and grating. The comfort of it still swam around me.

I didn’t have the time to protest before he was out and rounding the front of the car, his tall, lithe body rippling with power as he moved.

My door was pulled open to the potency of his aura.

His presence intense.

It washed over me in an inundating wave that pushed me up to the edge of surrender.

His care so starkthat my throat locked up.

“Here we go,” he murmured as he dipped in to pick me up.

“I can walk, Kane. I’m not even injured.”

I’d sustained nothing more than a bump on my head, though the impact of it was going to leave a scar. A deep, invisible scar that only I could see.

The terror I’d felt in that moment.

Fighting for my life.

I knew I’d been so close to losing it.

Kane didn’t heed my deflection. He slipped one arm under my knees and the other under my back, that voice low with tremoring emotion as he murmured, “I want you in my arms and not anywhere else.”

My spirit tremored. Trembled in this want and adoration that I shouldn’t feel.

I gave a slight nod, and he pulled me into the strength of his hold. Arms flexing and bowing with the magnitude of the man.

“I’ve got you.”

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