Page 109 of The Scandal You Started
Her vision of Dominic’s throat went hazy as she focused on the unpleasant taste of her last sentence washing around her mouth.“I’m not sure I’ve ever believed that, though. I think they were just two people who realised they’d married the wrong person.”
She blinked the cloudiness away. “Anyway, they got divorced, and I lived with my mum and saw my dad every week, and it was fine. They both seemed a lot happier after a while too. Then, after two or three years, my dad started dating his current wife, Isha, and around the same time, V joined the lab.”
“I remember when Benedict told us V was his uncle, George and I were so excited.” She smiled to herself. “He was younger than most of the other scientists—about thirty—so in our minds, he was basically our friend, so the three of us stayed glued to his hips for weeks.
“He never complained, though. Even though he clearly didn’t know what to do with us at first. But we adored him. So when my mum told me she was dating him, I made George and Benedict help me plan a wedding for them. We even presented the plan to Mum and V.”
She chuckled, but, fuck, it hurt.
Thinking about the wedding that should have been but never was gouged deep into old wounds and made them bleed like they’d never healed.
But did that kind of pain ever really heal when thewhat-ifsnever seemed to stop?
Maybe Dominic heard the ache in her voice, because he cupped her jaw in his palm and gently raised her chin like she was made of the finest porcelain.
Sadness and sympathy drooped his eyes and mouth, and he radiated with a tenderness that should have swept reassurance through her veins. Instead, it knotted a thorned rope around her rib cage, not tight enough to cut, but it was discomforting. That unease led to a panicked, almost frustrated need to rip the rope to shreds, no matter if it bloodied her hands.
Rayna didn’t like it. The feeling. She wasn’t good at dealing with it.
That was why she avoided talking about it. Moments in her life she didn’t want to relive. Heavy emotions she didn’t want to feel. Not then, not ever again.
Feelings that ran too deep hurt. That’s why she kept most things surface-level and easy—conversations, plans, relationships. No-strings was safer. It was fun. It never hurt. It was better for her.
But Dominic…
Rayna clasped his wrist, needing to get his hand off her, but when she pulled, his hand lifted.
Easily.Too easily.
He didn’t try to stiffen his muscles and use his strength to keep his hand there. He just let her push him away. And that made her pause.
It no longer felt like he was forcing her to face what she didn’t want to. Not as much, at least.
Rayna didn’t let go of his wrist, but she eventually loosened her grip.
He cast her jaw in his hand again. “Did they marry?” he mumbled.
She folded her arm and hooked it over his, tucking his forearm against her chest, as a lump began forming in her throat. “No…she died less than six months after he proposed.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t really know,” she admitted. “No one’s ever told us the full story, and George and I gave up asking after a while.”
“George?”
She hummed. “Originally, there were two POTeMs in the lab. One to bring and take Studies, and the second to do research on time travel in general. My mum and both of George’s parents were the ones who conducted experiments and tests using thesecond one. But one of the tests went wrong, and the machine released an explosion of energy. My mum, George’s parents, and another historian at the lab were in the room when it happened.”
Dominic breathed out her name.
“V came to pick me and George up from school that day. I remember he was deadly quiet and pale. We kept asking what was wrong, but he didn’t say anything until we got to the hospital.”
She struggled to get the next words out. “The four of them died. Two days later.”
In the sorrowful silence, she listened to the pounding drum of Dominic’s heart, trying so hard not to feel the burn of her own.
“My dad and Isha took me in after that,” she continued absently. “And George’s grandparents—his mother’s parents—took him. We ended up living really far from each other and the lab and Benedict. And I hated it. Not Dad and Isha—they were amazing, and Sameer, my half-brother, was about a year old, so I wasn’t alone, but I felt like I was.
“I missed V. I missed the lab. I missed George, Benedict, Uncle Declan, and Aunt Win.I missed my home.”
