Page 110 of The Scandal You Started
Her voice cracked to her utter humiliation, forcing her to pause. “I begged my dad and my grandparents on both sides to let me go back. I even rang V. And he came. Straight away. Dad and him argued a lot at first, understandably. I don’t think it was easy for my dad to accept I didn’t want to live with him. But eventually, he let V adopt me.”
“When George found out, he cried a lot. Tried to run away from his grandparents once too. So with Uncle Declan and Aunt Win’s help, V adopted him too.”
She pulled in a breath as deep as her constricted lungs would let her and exhaled shakily. “So, yeah. That’s how V ended up with us.”
For two long, slow minutes, neither Dominic nor Rayna moved or spoke. Even their breaths were near soundless. Only the hum of the AC prevented the room from being pin-drop silent.
So when the bedsheets rustled, her heart started. And when he pressed his mouth to her hair, she flinched.
“I am sorry, my love,” he whispered, his hot breath prickling over her scalp. “I know the agony of losing a beloved parent so soon and so unexpectedly. It is difficult to face, but you told me anyway. And for that, I’m immensely grateful.”
No. Too much. Get away. I don’t like this. Don’t wanna do this.
Bundles of knots were forming inside her. The light of the lamp was too bright. She felt too exposed. An organism under the scrutiny of a microscope. It was agitating. She needed space. She needed a barrier to hide behind. She—
Dominic slipped his arm from her grasp and reached behind him. Awkwardly bending without letting go of her with the other, he managed to flick the lamp off.
Darkness shrouded the room.
Rayna lay stiff and unblinking as he sank into his pillow and enclosed her in a squeezing hug. Then he sighed, his arms relaxing, and kissed her head. Once, twice, a third time.
“It is ever so tempting to offer you false comfort in the hope that words shall make it all better,” he said. “But they will not, so I shan’t offer any. Instead, allow me to hold you while you sleep. It is still not a permanent salve, but at least it may quieten your mind.”
She didn’t answer him. Couldn’t.
There was a thick paste gluing her mouth shut, and trying to pull her jaw apart made it ache. But she didn’t push him away either.
Rayna remained as stiff as a log as he rested his cheek against her hair. She listened to his softening breaths, counted his heartbeats, waiting for the panicked anger and humiliation to rise and send her flying out of the bed.
Instead, her lashes slipped shut, and she melted against him.
For once, sharing the most vulnerable part of herself didn’t make her feel weak or pathetic.
It made her feel understood. Comforted.Safe.
Her mind did go quiet, and she fell asleep in his arms. But her chest was filled with the fuzz of dandelions, floating endlessly under a blue sky.
Standing in the middle of it was Dominic, grinning at her so beautifully.
And she ran straight into his open arms, holding him like she never had to let him go.
Chapter 33
Dominic
Ilove you. Dammit, woman, I love you so much it pains me.
He wanted to say it. Dominic was yearning to tell Rayna.
The words were on the tip of his tongue every second of every day in the week or so that followed the heartbreaking story she’d told him of her mother.
No, heartbreaking wasn’t an adequate description.
She’d absolutely shattered the organ to pieces and then built it back up with the immense trust she’d shown she held in him by sharing the burden of her loss.
He’d wanted to go on a roaring rampage and steal every bit of happiness from all the corners of the world and lay it at her feet, even if it only comforted her the tiniest amount.
But that wasn’t why he was growing desperate to profess his love.
