Page 167 of One Bossy Disaster

I’m expecting tears, more sympathy I don’t feel like I deserve.

Instead, she takes my hand, lifting it gently to her lips and kissing my knuckles one at a time.

“It’s so horrible. I watched my father go through the same thing, so much pain and doubt about the past. I guess this is what he warned me about.”

“Warned you?” My head snaps up.

“It’s nothing, don’t worry. He just... he heard about the scandal. He’s too good at reading me, and I couldn’t deny that one thing was true about the crap he was hearing. He told me not to get mixed up with you—and now I know why.”

“Wise man,” I bite off. I think my hollowed-out smile weighs a hundred pounds. “He’s absolutely right.”

“Shepherd, no. I’m sure he pulled strings to even find out all that. I couldn’t when I looked it up. Whatever you did to bury the past, all the bad stuff, it worked. Mostly. And I guess now I know what you’re so worried about our little rumors unearthing.”

“It’s more than that. Uncle Aidan, Serena, that was the past. My old life. It might as well have happened to somebody else,” I say darkly. “No one talks about it anymore, not after the lawyers and specialists I sent to clean it up. Forensics cleared my name in the end anyway. I couldn’t have fired and hit her from the angle I was in.”

“Of course. It isn’t fair. You moved on, trying to live your life, and reinvent yourself...”

“What else was there to do?” I shrug. “I was innocent and—” I scrub a hand over my face. The silence hurts.

But Destiny holds me now, anchoring me to the here and now, both of her arms wrapped around my neck.

Much tighter than before.

It’s weirdly comforting, even if she doesn’t speak.

Somehow, that’s better.

No mindless words of comfort or pointless assurances that everything is fine or that what happened was so horrid.

I lived it.

I know it was godawful.

She knows it, too, and she just holds me.

She understands I don’t need words.

Just the sweet, companionable silence with her wrapped around me.

Right now, that closeness sinks under my ribs, like something inside me snapping back into place.

I close my eyes in the darkness and give in.

I let myself feel this, feelher.

My Destiny.

Fuck the bad puns.

She’s still the realest and truest I might ever have.

Her arm is still hooked across my chest with her cheek resting on my shoulder, her little nose against my neck.

We breathe together.

I start to relax.

I hadn’t realized just how tense I was until my muscles came unscrewed.

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