Page 73 of Vicious Heir

It feels so fucking right, finally having her in my arms in such an intimate way.

It’s almost like she’s finally let her carefully crafted guard down enough to just be.

And she’s so fucking gorgeous.

She looks up at me from where she rests on my chest, picking up a book out of the small pile she collected earlier. I told her to choose a few of her favorites, and I’d read them. I’d do fucking anything to feel closer to her. Skin on skin isn’t enough. I want to be inside of her, fully immersed in her beautiful fucking mind.

As I tuck a long stray strand of her white-blonde hair behind her ear, she flips open to a random page of one of her “top fifty favorites,” as she called it.

Pink tinges her cheeks as she inhales a breath, and I watch the rise and fall of her chest. The freckles that pepper her skin, the porcelain perfection in front of me. The lamps she’s turned on illuminate her skin, and with the shadows all around her, she looks like something fucking holy. Something I should be praying to.

“It is terrifying,” she reads. “Absolutely terrifying to remember when each soul around you forgets. In a sea of forgetfulness, you are mourning. You are remembering. You are grieving for what’s lost. To be the one who feels it all, who remembers, who can never quite forget—not even the smallest, most insignificant details. It’s a tragedy. It’s a tragedy because everyone else is moving on while you are standing still, rushing past you as if time doesn’t exist while you are stuck somewhere between the past and present with tears in your eyes and a hollow, empty feeling in the pit of your stomach.”

The words slice into me, cut my skin like fucking razor blades made to annihilate. Each syllable lingers on her tongue, taunting me with their rich cadence and haunting melody.

“There really is nothing more gutting than the truth,” I tell her, and she nods.

She closes the book just as I notice the passage is highlighted. I was too encompassed by her, by the way her lips moved as she spoke the words.

“Tell me about your scars, Evelina,” I say, not thinking, just asking. Just fucking wanting anything from this woman who I’m completely enthralled by. “Those words wouldn’t resonate with someone without festering wounds. Wounds like mine,” I tell her, needing her to know I’m bleeding, too. “There are people who are lucky enough to just skate on by in life without tragedy striking, and then there are people who have to wake up every single day and choose to be stronger than their pasts. And I think we’re similar in that way.”

I want to run my palm over her small bump. I have this sudden urge to touch it, to give the growing human being inside of her some kind of comfort…if that’s even possible.

Evelina blinks, her long lashes fluttering as she scrunches her light eyebrows together, her eyes roaming over my facial features like she’s studying me, committing me to her memory the same way I have with her.

And fuck, I hope I’m right.

I hope she is.

“I don’t like to talk about him. Or her. Or those days. Those nights. I just…”

I pull her in closer to me, her side colliding with the center of my chest as we lie together.

“I want to be strong.”

I move my arm out from where it circles around her hips, and I run it up her stomach, quickly over the small bump and to her heart, resting it there as I gently move my thumb back and forth against her smooth skin.

“When did we learn that being strong meant we had to hide our pain?” I ask.

A soft smile stretches slowly across her face as tears well in her eyes, and I realize we’re so much more alike than I ever even thought.

“I feel like I’ve always equated strong to silence. And keeping things hidden. And not burdening people with the things that hurt,” she says, and it makes sense.

And I fucking hate that she’s gone through something that makes her feel the way I do. I hate it. I fucking hate it. Loathe it. How can something so beautiful be hurting so badly?

“Show me where it hurts, Evelina,” I say.

She covers my hand on her chest with her own.

And then her long fingers find the middle of her forehead as she clenches her eyes shut.

“Tell me,” I urge, knowing if she really doesn’t want to, she won’t.

She sits up, and I follow suit. After pulling on her hoodie, she untucks her hair from it and sits cross-legged in front of me. I spread open my legs and pull her toward me, running my hands up and down her still-bare thighs.

“He was our youth pastor,” she says. “And no one believed us when we said he was hurting us. That he was being inappropriate with us at the church. Everyone loved him… Even after everything, they still did.”

I open my palms, and she places her hands inside mine, our fingers interlacing. I stay still. Silent. Allowing her to tell me as much as she’s willing.

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