Page 105 of Come Back for Me
He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. I see everything in his heart in those gorgeous green eyes. I feel what his soul is saying as his lips claim mine and he slowly slides into me, changing my own soul irrevocably.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Connor
I’m going to hell.
I can’t seem to care enough about the descent to get there to stop. My entire plan was thrown out the door when she begged. Denying her was impossible, and I had to have her just once.
I know I’m a bastard. There isn’t a doubt in my mind that she’ll hate me for this, but at least I can hold this night with me when she’s gone.
“That was . . .” Ellie says, trying to catch her breath.
It was every fantasy I’ve ever had.
It was every fantasy I never knew to have.
It was everything I hoped and feared, and it’ll be the last time.
“Yeah,” I say, lying on my back, staring up at the ceiling, and wishing to God I could have more time. “It was.”
She curls against my side, her arm resting on my chest, and I hold her tighter. I keep telling myself to say the words, to tell her what I know and give her the truth, but then I bargain for another moment. I would go back in time, do anything to undo the past, but I can’t, and I hate myself more than I can ever express.
All I want is to make her happy, and now, something that happened eight years ago—something that changed both of our lives but was neither of our doing—is going to force me to break her heart. In turn, it will destroy mine.
I always thought that if I ever told someone about what happened, the weight would be lifted from me. For so long, I’ve held it in, pushed it from my mind so that I could live with myself. How wrong I was. I would do anything to keep it inside until the end of time.
It was why I worked so hard in the military, because I needed to be a better person and try to save someone.
I knew that coming back here would resurrect a lot of ghosts from my past, I never thought it would collide with my future. A future I want more than the very breath in my lungs or heart in my chest.
Fuck my father.
Fuck Declan.
Fuck everyone who knew they’d be the sole source of pain for the person they loved and were too selfish to walk away.
My brothers and I are ready for whatever the consequences may be. They’re willing to take the fall because they know I can’t be a father to Hadley or the man Ellie needs with this secret between us.
I can’t do this to her, and yet, I have to.
How am I going to say the words? I try to concoct a plan that could mitigate the damage, but there is none.
“Connor?”
I look down at the very sated Ellie who doesn’t seem to have a worry in the world. “Yes?”
I wonder if she can see my guilt. If she can feel the angst that’s rolling around inside me, the self-resentment that is growing with each passing minute. Does she know that I love her? Does she know I was willing to fight my brothers for her? Will it matter?
“I love you.”
And that’s my undoing. She loves me, a man whose father stole two lives from her. She told me about how hard it was losing her parents. All these years her mystery has gone unsolved and now my father can’t even pay for the pain he caused her.
Why did it have to be her?
Why couldn’t it be anyone else?
“I love you, Ellie. I fucking love you with my entire fucking world and . . .” I have to say it. It has to be now. Here, in the bed, naked after loving her with all that I am, I have to break her.
