Oh, no. Heather’s ghost is about to enter the room. Sophia sat up abruptly, moving away from his body, her eyes wide, her lips parted in surprise, nausea making her stomach roll.

Alistair scrutinized her face. “You don’t want to know?” His question was almost a statement, such was the wariness he saw on her face.

Sophia bit her lower lip and twisted a lock of her long hair around her index finger in doubt. “I’ll be right back.”

She jumped from the bed and picked up her long wrap, walking to the bathroom. She leaned her hands on the sink. Do I want to know? She blinked slowly. Deep inside she knew that all the dark shadows she had glimpsed on Alistair’s face were going to surface. Nothing can be that bad.

* * *

When she returned to the bedroom moments later, her face was perfectly composed. She had erected an emotional shield, but fear still lingered in the depths her eyes. She stopped at the end of the bed and hesitated. A sudden desire to flee from the room made her lightheaded. She gripped her cold hands to hide their trembling.

“Come here,” Alistair whispered the order, stretching out his hand.

Sophia took his hand and sat on the edge of the bed, facing him. “Tell me your story.”

“As I was saying, I met Heather for the first time at the bank Christmas party I was twenty-five and she was twenty-nine. I was stupid and young and in awe of her. She was…even more beautiful than Emma.” If there is any beauty in them.

“In April 2001, I was promoted to financial director and moved to her department. My status then changed. I wasn’t a minor partner anymore. A week later, I found an envelope on my desk with my name on it. Inside was a photo of her with an explicit invitation, an address, and a key. You know…”

“No, I don’t.”

“She asked me to fuck her.”

The air left Sophia’s lungs. “Really?”

“She was never coy. She stated directly what she wanted although we barely knew each other.

Sophia was mortified. “God. You must have found my resistance ridiculous.”

“Would you believe me if I said it was refreshing? You are special, mo chridhe.” He hugged her and kissed her hair, lost in his bad memories. If you’d asked me for another month, I would have waited.

“Then?” she coached, quietly.

“Everyone at the bank wanted Heather. Her invitation went to my head, as you can imagine. They pursued her incessantly and she invited me—me—to her apartment. Well, to be brief—”

A morbid fascination possessed her. “Ah-ah! Now, I want details.” Sophia’s voice was deceptively soft, but she was restless. She had to understand the full story.

“Sophia, it was a kind of drug addiction. It’s not a pretty story. Are you sure?”

“Yes, introduce me to Mr. Hyde and his bed-partner. Let me be the judge.”

Counselor, your opinion about me is going to change if I tell you everything. “Heather was…insatiable. She wore me out every night and every morning, and on weekends, we spent the whole day fucking. I didn’t realize it at the time, but she was…sick. I didn’t even make the first move. I didn’t have to suggest things. Nothing was too much. Nothing was enough. It was a hell of a relationship. She aimed to please and to be pleased. She moved in with me at the end of the third month. I lived in a permanent state of arousal. I didn’t know if she would corner me in my office or in the men’s toilet for a quickie or what was going to happen at night. She usually went home earlier than me and prepared.”

“Alistair. It seems my…sexual education—or my imagination—is lacking.” Sophia’s strained her voice to mask her curiosity. “Please, explain.”

“Suffice it to say that she liked things rough.” He noticed Sophia’s eyes growing gradually huge.

“But…I…”

He shook his head interrupting her thoughts. “Not the kind that you like. Violent, degrading things.”

“And you?” she whispered.

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Did you like those things?”

Alistair gazed at Sophia for a moment. “Some of these things I had already tried and liked.” Her S&M style was a bit harsh but I grew used to it.

She was stunned. “Do you miss the things you did with her?”

“Nae, listen to me. I’m quite satisfied with my sexual life with you.” This time, white teeth flashed in a crooked smile. “I won’t lie and say that I don’t have a few fantasies that I want to try with you.”

“Alistair Connor. I never did anything…violent. I don’t like pain.” She twisted her hair around her fingers. “I have never been to a sex shop. I don’t even have the creativity to imagine the pleasure a person gets from that kind of violence.” She was disturbed. “My sexual life is…too normal, too bland? Am I missing something here?”

“No, Beauty.” He studied her face. “Would you like to try something…different?”

Sophia looked away.

Alistair could touch the sudden tension in the room, but waited quietly for her answer.

“I—Alistair, I’ve—Tonight, for example, the French maid costume…it was a different thing. Yeah, I could try a few different things, however…I—” She frowned. We were talking about you and Heather, not about me and you. “What happened then?”

Sophia’s question wasn’t prompted by curiosity. It was a need to shed some light on the painful shadows she glimpsed in his eyes. She wanted to first hear his version of the facts. Perhaps, then, she could let Alice or Tavish talk. Not before.

“In hindsight, what I had with Heather was all just one big bad experience. There were so many wrong aspects in our relationship that I’m still astounded—disgusted, even—by my own behavior.”

Alistair looked into her eyes. His face was grave and the pain in his eyes so fierce that it scared her. “I was her sex toy—or she was my sex slave—I don’t really know. And don’t ask me why, but I liked it. I didn’t see what was coming until it was too late.” He looked at his hands and whispered, “And then she got pregnant. I was careless…and after a few broken condoms, I decided to go on without them. She had told me she was clean and on birth control.”

How dare you, Alistair Connor! But even though she was angered by this revelation, she knew it was not time to talk about how it was an absolute requirement that she be checked before going without condoms.

“When she told me, I was ecstatic. I’d always loved children. It was to be my first child,” he muttered.

Oh, God. “Nathalie?”

He looked up at Sophia and gave her a sad smile. “Nae. I went to Craigdale with her and told my parents that I was in love and was going to marry her.”

“Were you?” she asked.

He raised his ink-black brows, questioning.

“In love? Were you in love with her?”

“I thought I was.” He crossed his arms over his chest, in a defensive position. “My parents saw what I couldn’t. Heather was a greedy whore, without morals or feelings for me. She didn’t love me.” He looked down and his arms opened, his hands falling heavily on his thighs. “But then, how could she?”

“How could she not?” Sophia edged closer, grabbed his hand, and putting it against her cheek, she murmured, “You are so easy to love.”

“Am I?” His lids lifted; there was no light in his forest-green eyes.

“Yes. So lovable,” she reaffirmed, soothing him, and pulled his hand on her lap, between hers, caressing his knuckles. “What did your parents do when you told them you wanted to marry her?”

“Well, they refused to acknowledge her as my fiancée and we got married at a Registry Office. Just the two of us. Not even Alice or Tavish Uilleam went. They also disapproved of her, by the way,” he huffed. “I had no more friends. I spent my days working and my nights and weekends having wild, depraved sex.” He laughed, disgusted. “Heather wanted money, status, a handsome face and an insane, dark lover with stamina to handle her. I wonder…” A lock of his raven hair fell over his eyes and he let it remain there. “She had never wanted me, Alistair Connor. I was just another step she used to get her way. But then, what did I really have to offer her?”

“Oh, Alistair Connor. Your—” She couldn’t bear to say wife, nor was she going to soil her lips with her name. “You are…breathtaking. Not your beauty, not your money or your status. You. Your heart. But she has damaged you too much for you to believe in what I am saying, hasn’t she?” Sophia began to feel an incredible anger for that execrable woman.

The room quieted as Sophia protectively hugged the fierce and broken man who made her heart beat faster. She traced his jaw, asking, “When did you get married?”

“On her birthday. March the fifth, two-thousand-four. She was two months pregnant.” His mouth contorted and his eyes darkened. “A month after the wedding, she had an abortion.”

Sophia gasped, indignant. “She…she…killed your baby? Her own baby? How could she?”

He shrugged. He didn’t have an answer, since he didn’t understand such a barbaric act himself.

“And what did you do? It was one of the main reasons you married her, wasn’t it? The baby?”

“She told me the baby had spina bifida. It’s a—”

“I know what that is,” she interrupted him. “And?”

“I found out afterward it was a lie. Another lie. At the time, I was too devastated to investigate further. I didn’t see the web she was spinning around me. Three months later, life returned to normal. If you can call debauchery normal. Day after day, she introduced more perversions into our lives. Until—” She asked me to have a threesome with another man. He paused for a second. “We had our first fight. She moved into Emma’s apartment, but a month later she was back. We agreed on some ground rules. At least, I thought we had. I had fulfilled my fantasies. I’d reached my limit.”

“But…you told me you liked it.”

“Sophia, I believe in equal rights. If she fulfilled my fantasies, she should have the right to fulfill her perversions.”

“Perversions,” she repeated, baffled. What kind of perversions?

He sighed and nodded, “Aye. She needed them like the air she breathed, but I thought I could prevent them, that I could supply her with other sensations. She was too damaged though, too sick. It was an addiction. The more she did, the more she wanted.” He waved his hand in the air. “Fool that I was, it never crossed my mind that she would look elsewhere to fulfill her desires.”

Sophia cupped his face in her hands. “She cheated on you? I don’t believe it.”

“Why not?” he rasped.

“I thought you had cheated on her.”

His laughter was bitter. “She did it time and time again. I was working too much to notice it. I bought more shares of the bank in August, 2005. We started to work on different floors and it was easier for her to lure others into our house. She did it all, sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll,” he mocked.

Horror crept over her face and she didn’t try to disguise it.

“Drugs? You too?” She breathed, relieved when he shook his head. “Why didn’t you divorce her?”

“I didn’t find out immediately. She was always eagerly waiting for me. She did it all and still had the energy to fuck me.” And fuck me, she did. His lips thinned to a line. “She got pregnant again. She was so engrossed in her immoral self-indulgence that she didn’t pay attention to her own body. One night, when she was almost five months, I felt the baby kicking my hand. Nathalie.” He breathed the name of his daughter with so much love, like it was a blessing.

“Five months? Impossible. I don’t believe it.” She shook her head.

“She was very, very lean; thinner than you, even. She’d never had regular periods. And she was always on a diet. She was crazy about fitness.”

“But almost five months…didn’t it show?”

“A little, round belly, but that was all. She was sleeping when the baby moved. I didn’t recognize it at first, but I had remembered Alice’s first pregnancy, so when I felt the next kick I knew it had to be a baby. I panicked. The very next morning I took her, kicking and screaming, to Craigdale and locked her under my mother’s supervision. I threatened her with exposure, if she didn’t stay put and take care of herself until the end of the pregnancy. One month after Nathalie was born, I brought her back to London, and she returned to her perverted life.” He closed his eyes tight, the skin around them crinkling. “But I was too busy to see.” I didn’t want to see that I was a failure as a man, as a husband, as a lover.

“And?”

“I only discovered Heather’s betrayal because a very dear friend of mine insisted I hire a detective. I tried to make things right with her when I discovered it. She promised she would behave, but it was in vain. I was enraged with myself for not seeing Heather’s true colors from the beginning, for not heeding my parents’ advice. Feeling guilty of everything that was wrong in my life and Nathalie’s, I sank deeper into the mud. I don’t know what happened to me. I took off my wedding ring and each night, I fucked a different woman. I mean the word, Sophia. I didn’t make love—or have sex with these women. I punished them for Heather’s and for their own existence and I punished myself for being so stupid. I was ruthless. Vicious. I wanted to make them suffer.” His body was so stiff, that if not for his mouth moving she’d have thought he’d turned into a statue. “And do you know what made me even madder? They kept returning and asking for more.”

Sophia didn’t want to hear any more, but something kept pushing her. “And?”

“After a few months living in hell, I filed for a divorce…” He put both hands on his face, and his words came out muffled. “I did every fucking thing wrong. Every. Fucking. Thing. Wrong.”

A heavy silence suffocated them.

He pulled her into his arms and started talking again, “I thought…I asked Leonard to help me…we devised a plan. To pull it off, I needed proof of her drug addiction and of her unstable and perverted sexual behavior. I wanted to get full custody of Nathalie. It was not easy. First it took too much time to obtain the proof and to convince the judge. Well, the day Leonard guaranteed it, I informed her about the divorce.” He squeezed his eyes tightly shut again. “She tried to make amends, she pleaded with me, but I’d made up my mind. It is beyond my capacity to understand why she did what she did, because she never loved Nathalie. I could only imagine that she would use her as leverage…unfortunately.” His hands clenched on her back and breathed deeply, “In my selfishness…in my selfishness, Nathalie paid for my sins.”

Oh, God. Sophia wanted to say it was not true, but only hugged him tighter.

“Nathalie…she was an angel, Sophia. So beautiful, so calm, always smiling. I woke up early to stay with her a few hours in the mornings and in the evenings when I arrived home I spent all the time I could with her. She was a blessing. I…I moved out and put the apartment on the market two months after she died. Every time I walked in, I expected her to come running, just like she always did, a big smile on her face, to throw herself in my arms.” His voice broke and he blinked to stop the tears from falling. “When I arrived home, I would spend hours in her little bed, smelling her baby scent. I didn’t let my mother give away her clothes. I slept with her stuffed elephant, one of her favorite toys. I heard her gentle voice calling me. I was going crazy.” Alistair’s face crumbled and he spoke with a deadened tone, “It was my fault, Sophia. Heather told me she was at Alice’s and I didn’t check. Heather put her asleep in the Porsche with no seatbelt. She crossed a red light. A bus ran into them. Heather died instantly, Nathalie, at the hospital. My mother got so depressed, she died three months later.” His green eyes were dark, all the light gone from them. There was only despair in his voice. “You see, your instincts were wrong when you absolved me.”

“Oh, Alistair. They weren’t.” His grief was so tangible, she knew he was far from overcoming it.

He had created a fortress of guilt around him, holding himself hostage rather than giving sanctuary.

His suffering ate her up inside as if it were her own, and drained her like nothing else had since Gabriel’s death.

“I killed my daughter and my mother. That’s the truth.” His voice was so hoarse and his accent so thick that Sophia had difficulty understanding what he was saying.

“For God’s sake, Alistair Connor! You weren’t responsible. A mother is supposed to protect her children. With her life, if needed. That woman you married was not a mother. She was not a woman. She was a sick, insane monster.”

“I was—” He sighed profoundly, “I’m a monster, too. I’m guilty, mo chridhe. I have to suffer, to pay for my sins. I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve to be loved.”

Sophia looked at his bared soul and didn’t find the man she knew. No. A very different man is drowning the Alistair Connor I know in a cesspool of undeserved guilt.

She felt a deep need to ease his misery. She straddled Alistair and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Do you think I will allow you to continue harming yourself? Well, I won’t. You have to stop this self-punishment. What you haven’t understood until now is that I consider you mine, and no one, no one harms what is mine.” She fisted his hair and pulled his head up to look at her. “Not even you are allowed to harm yourself. Do you understand?”

He jerked his head back to look at her.

“Do you?” she insisted.

A pained look appeared on his face.

“Sophia, I need you,” he murmured, burying his head in her hair and inhaling her sweet smell. “I need you.”

“Take me. I’m yours.” She pulled his head to kiss him as if she could remove from within him all that darkness which poisoned his heart and soul.

“You don’t understand,” he said, his hands stealing under her wrap to palm her breast, plucking and pinching the nipples. “I can’t be gentle. I can’t take you right now. I can’t. I’d—” Hurt you.

This is it, my chance to show him he can escape from all his violence and pain. His guilt and punishment. I can’t allow him to say no. “Please.” She spread her legs and pressed down on him. “Make love to me.”

“That’s what you deserve. A man who’ll give you love.” He raised his head, his eyes searching hers. “But right now, what I want is to take. To take you hard and fast enough to make me forget.”

Sophia gasped, astonished by this side of him she didn’t know, but didn’t block his advances. “You don’t need to hurt. You need to love.”

Alistair hated the darkness that surrounded him every time he thought about Heather. He was wary of hurting Sophia, but only she could help take away the painful memories. She was his light, his sun, the one who could drag him back from the cold hell he had been living in.

He bent his head and cupped a breast with a greedy hand, sucking a nipple hard, biting it.

“Slow down,” she breathed.

He groaned and shoved her backward onto the bed. His fingers trailed toward her sex. He teased her clit with rapid strokes. She moaned low and her hand tangled in his hair. With no finesse, he plunged two fingers into her.

Sophia gave a small gasp of pain and fisted his hair, pulling his head back. “I’m okay with rough sex, but not with pain and punishment. I don’t like it and you don’t need this anymore.”

He breathed deep and nodded. “Sorry.”

“Don’t bring Heather into our relationship.” Sophia looked at him and whispered, “I want you to love me. Hard and fast.” She kissed him deep and completed, “When we make love, we’re celebrating life.” And redemption. “We are worshiping love.”

He closed his eyes for an instant while his hands wandered on her torso as if learning her contours all over again.

“Alistair Connor?” Sophia wanted to be reassured that he had understood her message. She gripped one of his hands and pressed it to her left breast. “I care for you. So much. Let me show you.”

He slowly opened his eyes, mesmerized by the promise her voice held, the unsaid words. Her clear eyes, which held so much love, reached deep inside him, easing the vise around his heart, lessening the guilt that darkened his soul.

“Love me,” she said.

He sat on bent legs pulling her up, with her back to him. He propped her on his thighs, spreading her legs with his from behind and, slowly and gently, started to fondle her.

“Yes,” she moaned and her head fell on his shoulder. She parted her lips, inviting him to kiss her.

He complied and bent his head, plundering her mouth as he thrust one finger into her, in and out, and pinched her nipple lightly.

“On all fours,” he ordered raspily, as he lowered her on her elbows and knees, her hair spilling all around her, her buttocks up in the air. He almost came then and there. He opened her legs wider and started to position himself inside her, grunting loudly as he did. Holding her hips, his other hand went for her clit. He fought again for some control.

“Give me,” she asked and tried to adjust her position, backing onto him.

“Sophia, don’t,” he inhaled loudly, “I’ll lose control.”

“Lose it, dammit!” she exclaimed.

That did it for him. He plunged all the way in; her tightness enveloping him as they gasped with pleasure.

“You with me?” he whispered.

Sophia nodded and he bent down over her, supporting his weight on his hand as he pounded in her.

Alistair was lost, completely lost to lust and bewildered by how Sophia, again, acquitted him.

His mouth burned a trail down her spine as he teased her, sliding in and out, nudging her pleasure higher.

She felt he was reaching as deeply as he could go. Still, she wanted more. “Please, I need—”

“Not yet.” He slowly withdrew and then pushed forward in a maddeningly slow pace.

Their moans filled the room.

He forced her shoulders down on the mattress, pinning her under him. He kissed her nape while his hand fondled a breast, squeezing a nipple firmly between his fingers.

He had to forget the memories and prove to himself that he could be another man. He had to show her he could be the man that she wanted.

Sophia let out a groan of pleasure when he fisted her hair. He raised a knee beside her hip, going even deeper. He increased his pace, mindlessly thrusting, filling her with all his might, fingers rubbing and pressing her in time with his shoving hips.

“Who do you need?” he asked in a whisper as he kindled her lust, promising a spiraling drop over the edge.

“You. Only you,” she sang, and he swept a finger lightly over her.

“Say my name,” he growled, as he shoved harder and faster into her.

“Alistair Connor!”

Her every sense flooded with pleasure as his deft fingers and body played her like a fine instrument. She cried out incoherently in Portuguese and came tightly around him.

He threw his head back, with a loud grunt, as wave after wave of pleasure hit him and spasmed violently, collapsing onto his side hugging her close with one arm, shuddering with release as his delight exploded into a thousand iridescent stars and he whispered her name as he poured all his passion into her.

As always Alistair recovered first.

Sophia was lying on her side, barely breathing.

“Sophia, mo gràdh, are you okay?” He brushed her hair away, spreading kisses over her face.

She flicked a dismissive hand at him, eyes still closed, curling into a ball.

She was spent and sated, but unsettled. Sophia’s mind was fuzzy, her hearing distorted. She didn’t think she had ever been so confused. She was stunned by his story and her feelings shocked her.

A stifled hiccup shook her body.

Alistair Connor, you’re an asshole. You hurt her. He scooped her in his arms and the tender gesture made her lose it. Tears started to fall and sobs racked her as she cried wholeheartedly in his arms.

“I’m sorry,” they said in unison.

He halted, surprised. Why is she sorry?

“How I wish I could spare you this pain. I’m so sorry, so very sorry,” she said in a sorrowful voice muffled by his neck. Her arms went around him and she splayed her hands over his shoulder and lower back, soothing and protecting him. “You have to let this guilt go. You have to bury this anger you have against Heather and yourself. Swear to me.”

He was awestruck. Her silent acceptance of the darkness he carried within told him that, after all those years in the most barren wasteland, he was finally home.

“I will,” he whispered in her hair, solemnly, “I swear to you.”

Alistair pulled the covers over them as she calmed down and the sobs subsided. I have to recover from the horror of what happened, it shouldn’t consume me so badly anymore. Tenderness filled his heart at her acceptance of him as he was. She is so giving, so beautiful. Inside and out.

He realized in that moment that he was profoundly in love with her.

The sort of love that makes a man marry a woman.

He brushed her hair away from her face and she softly smiled at him, her eyes still closed.

She was the kind of woman that made men turn their heads and lust for her. But he knew she was more than that for him. She was goodness; fierce to her principles; a strong woman. She was the air he breathed.

I love you. “Tha gràdh agam dhut,” he whispered in her ear, completely relaxed and satisfied. Would you marry me, Sophia? Oh, fuck! I haven’t told her everything yet. “Mo chridhe?”

“Hmm?” She opened her yellow-diamond eyes to stare at him and demanded, “Kiss me.”

He did, surrounding her with all the love he had to give.

“Alistair…” her fingers brushed his long bangs off his forehead. “Why are you so afraid of people really seeing you for who you are? A good man, a person capable of love? Are you afraid of another betrayal? She was sick. Not everyone is like her. People won’t betray you like she did.”

“Sophia, you have no idea what betrayal can do to a man. It hurts deep, very deep. I thought I had given her all I could. My name, status, love, sex, money, but nothing was enough. It broke me apart. I first felt diminished, less than a man. Then I became enraged. I wanted to kill her. I couldn’t, of course. Besides, she was Nathalie’s mother. So I punished her instead. The more I did, the more I was poisoned by the whole situation. I didn’t know how to deal with it and I didn’t have anyone to talk to. Tavish Uilleam was away. I wasn’t on good terms with him or with my father. They’d never liked Heather. And I was too ashamed to tell my friends about it. What would they think?”

“You never thought about seeing a therapist?” It was more a statement than a question. From her experience as a lawyer in Brazil and at her foundation, she knew that, in cases like Alistair’s, therapy was the best option. Some men needed psychiatric supervision, but she would bet that in his case therapy would do the trick.

He shook his head, “I didn’t have the courage.” 

“You need to work out these feelings. Maybe now you could talk to Tavish Uilleam or Leonard.”

He gave a brisk, bitter laugh, “Do you know their nickname for me? The mighty Alistair Connor. I can’t tell them that the wife of the mighty Alistair Connor was cheating on him. They would lose all respect they still have for me.”

“Lose respect? Why? It wasn’t your fault,” she was astonished by his line of thought.

“It must have been…” he whispered, painfully. “I must have done something very wrong.”

“The only thing you did wrong was to enter into a relationship with her,” she affirmed. “That’s why you only had one-night stands, isn’t it? You were afraid to let anyone in.”

He nodded.

“Why is it so hard for you to see yourself as I see you? You hide everything that is good and worthy about you, because you are afraid. She was a monster. She was sick. She gave you nothing and took everything. You’re magnificent.”

A small hopeful light appeared in the forest-green eyes. “Magnificent?”

Caught by the vulnerability he showed no one else, she’d whispered her answer in a kiss. “Utterly.” Sophia’s heart was bleeding for the younger Alistair and the present one. She touched his chest, “Inside here, Alistair Connor. She couldn’t see it, but you are.”

He sighed and after a few minutes in silence, he said, “Maybe, mo gràdh.”

“Mmm. I have absolutely no idea what you are calling me in this delicious language of yours.” She grinned. “I’m going to speak with you only in Portuguese from now on.”

He smiled back. “Leonard can always translate for me.”

“I doubt he would get everything. I could ask the same from Alice, but I want you to tell me.” Her nails caressed the wide expanse of his chest. “To start with, what does tha grudh gan thut mean?”

He laughed at her pronunciation. “I have no idea, but tha gradh agam dhut means I love you.”

Sophia was silent for a long time. Then she raised her head to study his face with hooded eyes, an inscrutable emotion shimmering on her face.

“What?” He cocked his head to the side, studying her features.

What? You can’t even start to imagine… She asked then, her heart beating so fiercely that she was sure he could hear it, gaining a few seconds more to be sure of her next words, “And mo gràdh?”

“My love,” he explained, combing her hair with his fingers.

I lo— Don’t, Sophia. Too soon. You have to work out all your issues and problems before you declare yourself. If you can… Sophia shook her head at herself inward. It was not time to think about those horrible things. “I won’t let you be hurt again, Alistair Connor. I promise you.”

“I love you, Sophia.”

Just as Alistair’s eyes closed in sleep, he remembered he hadn’t told her everything. Tomorrow. I will tell her tomorrow…