Page 61 of Sweet Revenge
He crumpled the note in his fist then smoothed it out again. “I mean, why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
Her jaw tightened. “What were you going to do? Rush down there and run a handwriting analysis?”
Declan scowled, reading the note again. She had all day to text him about this, and he hadn’t heard a word from her. “If this had happened ten years ago, you would have told me immediately. I don’t know why you still don’t trust me.”
“I think the better question is why don’t you trust me?” She held her arms out to the side. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not the same girl I was ten years ago, Declan. I don’t come running to you with every problem anymore because I don’t need to.”
She dropped her arms with an exasperated snort. “You keep trying to force me into this perfect image you have of me. Do you want to get to know the person I am now? Or do you keep hoping the girl I used to be will magically appear? Because if that’s what you’re waiting for, you’re going to be disappointed. She’s gone, and she isn’t coming back.”
Without another word, she turned on her heel and left the room. Declan squeezed the note in his fist and tossed it across the room. Fuck. Had he been putting her into a box? Probably.
Memories were all he had of her, all he saw when he looked at her. If he didn’t want to fuck this up, he was going to have to stop seeing the past and start seeing what was right in front of him.
ChapterTwenty-Nine
She heard him step into her room, catching his reflection in the mirror over her shoulder when he stopped in the doorway to the bathroom. The fact that he looked at least a little chastised made her feel slightly less pissed off.
“I want to show you something,” he murmured.
“Is it an apology?” She made eye contact in the mirror while she rubbed moisturizer into her skin. “That’s about the only thing you need to say right now.”
“Please?”
She sighed, turning to face him and placing her hand in his outstretched one. He guided her up the stairs to the third floor, but instead of turning toward Brogan’s lair, he led her down the hall to where the old library used to be.
He turned the knob and led her inside. When he flipped on the lights, her breath caught in the back of her throat.
She’d discovered this room one rainy summer day when Declan had been called away by his father to do something for the syndicate and she’d been left to her own devices. It had been covered in a layer of dust, what little furniture it had draped with white sheets. The few books that remained on the shelves had been in terrible condition.
She’d brought a few old journals downstairs and asked Marta about them. Inside the journals were pages and pages of short stories written by Faith Callahan, Declan’s great-grandmother.
She’d shown the journals to Declan when he got home, and all she’d been able to talk about for months after was the library and how she wanted to restore it to its former glory, maybe even expand it into the empty room next to it.
There’d be a place for reading in front of the fireplace, a cozy window seat, a drawing desk where she could sketch, and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined with books in every genre. He’d taken her dream and made it real.
The library, exactly as she’d pictured it in her head, stretched before her. He’d even knocked down the wall between the adjoining room to make one big space. The window seat was stacked with pillows in her favorite colors, the rug under the seating area swirled with greens and golds.
When she turned to face him, he was staring at her. “You did this from memory?” He nodded. “When?”
“A couple years ago.”
“A couple…”
She did a slow turn, taking in the room again, and noticed a glass case tucked into the corner. When she approached it, she recognized Faith’s journals inside. One of them lay flipped open to the story that had always been her favorite, about a woman who fled west seeking escape and adventure and the man who’d followed her because he loved her.
“I have kept you in a box,” Declan said, drawing her attention. “I didn’t know where else to keep you.”
She moved to stand in front of him while he weighed his words carefully.
“When my father died, Aidan wanted to turn this room into a home theater. Take out the windows, tear down the bookcases. But I couldn’t let this room go. It felt like the last tangible thing I had to remind me of you.”
He reached up to cup her face, brushing the pad of his thumb across her cheek. “I couldn’t tear down the last thing I had of you. So I rebuilt it instead. I made it into something new, something uniquely you, for you. Even if you never saw it.”
When a tear slipped down her cheek, he leaned in to kiss it away. “I see the girl you were sometimes, the one who was quick to laugh or tease. She’s there under the razor-sharp wit and calculating gaze. But you’re so much more than the girl you were, Evie. And I want to know you.”
She pushed onto her toes, pulling his lips down to meet hers in a kiss that was soft and sweet. Her body tingled when his hands moved to her waist, his fingertips playing over the skin at the small of her back.
She didn’t know why the library meant so much to her, but it did. Not just the fact that he had taken something she was passionate about and brought it to life, but that he had remembered all the little details.
