Waking to an empty bed and tangled sheets wasn’t an unusual occurrence. It was something I’d grown used to in the three months I’d been a married woman—time flew when you were having fun, right?—I couldn’t believe the amount my life had changed in such a short time. I couldn’t believe how much I’d changed either.

If the surf report was good, Sam would get up with Kris and Abbot, then come back a couple of hours later in a fabulous mood, smelling like saltwater and seaweed. I never thought that would be a smell I adored, but it was.

Untangling myself from the messy bed, I stretched languidly, then headed into the bathroom to do the things one needed to do first thing in the morning.

The Cartwright brothers did almost everything together: they worked—not only had they performed a group job, but they also helped maintain many small businesses they used to launder the profits they took—and with the exception of Nate, they played together too. Although, from what Kris had been telling me during our surfing lessons, Nate used to always be with them, only changing his behaviour since Holland arrived on scene.

Holland. We met the year we both turned eight. Her parents had passed away, and she went to live with her aunt who was my next-door neighbour. I always thought we’d be best friends forever because from that moment, we’d gone through everything together. But then, we hadn’t—I had gone through everything with her. And her behaviour since our combined wedding had shown me how quick she was to leave me behind.

She hated Jasmine with a passion, called her the she-devil when she wasn’t in the room and always thought I was being manipulated. When the brothers went on jobs together, Nate brought her around to spend time with us so she wouldn’t be alone. Or maybe he doesn’t trust her to be alone. Jasmine tried to make it a great bonding experience by having the three of us hang out in the kitchen cooking a massive family meal for when everyone was home. Holland had spent the entire time with her lips in a pout and her mouth firmly shut, save for a few words here and there that were absolutely necessary. It seemed that she disliked being around the family so much that she was willing to let our friendship go too. It was the cherry on top of my massive realisation pie—Holland only cared about Holland and, like, one other person. There wasn’t space for more in her life, and now that Nate was occupying that slot, she didn’t seem to need me.

Being cast aside by my friend irked me as I twisted my hair into a messy bun and washed my face. We had never fought, never said a hurtful word to the other during our entire friendship. It seemed so wrong that it should just end and nothing more would happen. But that seemed to be exactly how it worked—she went her way, I went mine, and we simply became two people who used to know each other.

With no contact with my biological family since I left with Sam that day, the Cartwrights had become my family. I was alone, yet surrounded by acceptance and admiration, which was contrary to when I was with my family. I’d always felt alone there too, even when I was around my brother. Trevor was the best part of my family, and I missed him and his kids most of all, but our relationship as siblings was combined with feeling disconnected and disapproved of. He succeeded in an environment where I failed, so I was lonely even when he was around.

Here with the Cartwrights, I was accepted, encouraged, challenged. I was alone in that I was apart from them as an outsider, but I wasn’t lonely. I could actually feel myself beginning to hope again, hope that maybe, when our relationships were eventually tested as all relationships were, the Cartwrights wouldn’t turn away like my biological family did, like my best friend did too. I hoped above all that Sam would stand beside me, and that he’d do it because he wanted to, not because he had to.

As I pinched my cheeks, I let out a sigh, telling myself that there was no sense in dwelling on something I didn’t have the power to change or affect. Things were just different now. I was different, just as my life was different.

The smell of bacon cooking tickled my nose. My stomach growled in anticipation, and I allowed my thoughts to file themselves away while I threw on a pair of shorts and a crop singlet before skipping down the stairs. I fucking loved bacon.

Male voices stopped me before I made it to the kitchen. “So, Jasmine forces you into this marriage and you’re suddenly all in love?” Toby. He had a note of disbelief in his voice.

“That’s not what I said,” Sam replied. I think he had a bowl and a whisk, based on the tapping and scrapping sounds that went with his words.

“You skipped a morning surf to make her breakfast in bed, you walk around with a permanent smile on your face, and I can hear the constant banging you two are doing through the walls half the night.”

“We like each other,” Sam said. He sounded like he was smiling. I was too, quite liking this conversation.

“Jesus, look at you. You’re so whipped.”

“Man, I don’t know what to tell you. Married life agrees with me.”

“Maybe Jasmine should be one of the matchmakers on that Married at First Sight show.”

“Maybe you should get her to find a wife for you.” I thought that was a great idea. Toby seemed lonely to me, something about his eyes that I recognised from seeing it my own for so long.

“Find? Don’t you mean kidnap?”

Way to put a damper on a fun conversation, Toby. I’ve been trying to ignore that fact.

“I don’t think Leesh sees it that way.” Sam’s tone changed as the pan hissed and sizzled. He was right, I didn’t see it so much a kidnapping as a limited choice. And I didn’t hate this choice. I actually quite liked it.

“Have you asked her?”

“I don’t have to.” Something to add to Sam’s list of qualities—arrogance. He was obviously also a mind reader.

“Why not?”

“Because I met her family. They’re arseholes.” I could see why he thought that after meeting my father and being told about my mother. Then there was our discussion about Holland…. “She’s better off here where people care about her. We can start our own family, and she won’t even need to think about that bigot of a father anymore, or any other fucked-up relative who couldn’t be bothered with her. I’ll take care of her.”

“Back up a sec. Start your own family? As in you want to have kids?” Holy shit. Kids?

“Uh, yeah. We’re not getting any younger, Tobes. Don’t you want kids some day?”

“I guess, but I’m pushing forty. You’re only thirty-five.”

“And Alesha’s thirty-two already. We don’t have a lot of time. Women can’t have babies forever.”

“I’m familiar with the semantics of it all.” Toby paused for a moment, and my heart thumped in my ears. Oh God. He wants kids. “What’s she got to say about this?”

“We haven’t exactly spoken about it, but we aren’t being careful. She’s an adult and knows what that means.”

“What if she’s on birth control?”

“She’s not.”

“How do you know.”

“Because I know, all right?” Of course he did. There wasn’t much of a reason for a virgin with no romantic partner to protect herself from unwanted pregnancies.

“All right. So what, she could be pregnant already?”

“I guess.” There was another pause, and I felt like I could hear Toby staring at Sam with an assessing gaze. “Actually, she might be. We haven’t taken a monthly break yet, if you catch my drift.”

“Wow. And you’re cool with that?” Toby continued. “Having a kid with someone you’re not fully in love with? Having a kid when a relationship is so new? She won’t be all about you once a baby comes along.”

“What’s with you and all this love crap? What the fuck is love, Toby? It’s just a feeling that comes and goes. It’s want, it’s attraction, it’s something that can grow over time. If she has my kid, if she stands by me and this family, if she keeps being even a quarter of the woman she is right now, then I can handle anything with her.”

“You are so whipped.” Toby laughed. “And you’re going to be a dad. You’re too whipped to be a dad.”

Sam’s laugh seemed to lift from the pits of his belly, a joyful sound that hurt my heart to hear.

If I have his kid.

I closed my eyes, placing my head against the wall, my heart swelling and weeping at the same time. He was saying everything I needed to hear, and better still, he had backed up those words with the way he behaved around me. I knew he cared for me, just as I knew I cared for him. But we couldn’t call it love, and there were still problems. I couldn’t ignore them and get swept away with my attraction towards him. Not when there was so much we didn’t know. Hell, we hadn’t even discussed the L-word yet. Just like we hadn’t even discussed kids. Oh fuck. Kids!

“It’s rude to eavesdrop on other people’s conversations,” Jasmine said, scaring the crap out of me. I turned around and found her a couple of steps above me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “It just… it just happened.”

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” she said with a wink. Then she tilted her head to the side and dropped her eyes to my stomach. “Do you think you could be pregnant?” There was a tinge of hopefulness in her words, proving she had also been listening for longer than she should have been.

A surge of emotion charged up my throat and hit the back of my eyes. I shook my head. “No,” I whispered.

“Are you on something to prevent it?”

“No.” I looked down at my hands. It was time to come clean. “I just…I, um, I can’t get pregnant.”

“Excuse me?” she gasped, slightly shocked, slightly curious, slightly annoyed.

“I… um… I don’t bleed.”

Her eyes seemed to grow. “You don’t get a period?”

I shook my head, pressing my lips together and hoping she wasn’t going to toss me out on the street for being defective, or worse.

“Why?”

“My mother. She, um, was a user. Heroine. Maybe other stuff. We thought she didn’t have a problem until she went off the rails and left us. But it turned out she was self-medicating while pregnant with me.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “It caused a d— a deformity.” It was called amenorrhea—the absence of menstrual bleeding. When I hit sixteen and still hadn’t gotten my period, I went to the doctor. After extensive testing, it was discovered that my fallopian tubes hadn’t formed correctly and therefore couldn’t allow passage of an egg. There was no way I’d ever have children naturally, and even then they didn’t know if my uterus could carry to term.

“You can’t have children at all?”

“I….” I bent my finger back until the knuckle clicked. “I don’t know. Maybe. But definitely not without help.”

“Like IVF?”

I nodded.

She took a step back. “I see.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

Jasmine held up her hand, her head down as if she was trying to regain her control. I held my breath, bracing for the worst. This was the moment I’d been dreading, because at some point in my life, if I married, I’d feared having to tell my future husband that I couldn’t conceive a child. Obviously, in this situation, it hadn’t come up. I shouldn’t have said sorry to Jasmine though. I had done nothing wrong, but still, I felt guilty. I felt I was letting her down, when I really shouldn’t feel that way. Learned behaviour. It was then that Sam decided to appear at the base of the stairs, a wooden tray in his hands laid out with plates of bacon, scrambled eggs and toast. There was even fruit juice and a plunger of coffee, topped off with a flower from the garden. It brought a tear to my eye. Here we go, the moment I knew would come. Will he keep me or send me away? Everything between us felt so fragile in that moment.

“What’s going on?” he asked cautiously.

I looked at Jasmine, silently begging her not to tell him. But she didn’t even look at me. She turned her head to Sam and deadpanned, “She can’t get pregnant.”

“What?” The crockery on the tray rattled as he looked at me.

“I can’t get pregnant naturally,” I confirmed, my voice squeaking a little. “I’m not made right.”

“I don’t understand.” Sam took a step backwards as he looked between us.

“What’s to understand?” Jasmine blurted. “You’re wasting your time, fucking her for no reason.” She lifted her hands in the air and stormed down the stairs, slamming the front door behind her as she left.

My entire being cracked. So fragile was my sense of belonging, my sense of worth that it took seconds for her biting words to break me apart, reminding me that I was less. Always less. Tears streaked down my cheeks. I looked at Sam, needing some sort of reassurance. Moments before, he’d said I belonged, that he’d care for me, look after me. If I gave him kids.

As our gaze caught, my heart lodged inside my throat. There was an emotion in his I couldn’t place—betrayal? Anger? Did he think I was a waste of time now too?

Please don’t turn me away.

“Is that true?” Sam asked, setting the tray on the step closest to him. My entire body shook. “You can’t have kids?”

With a quivering hand, I wiped at my cheeks and sniffed. “Honestly? I don’t know.” It wasn’t my fault, but I felt like an absolute failure. Insufficient. Again.

He looked around, anywhere but at me. The man who was always so sure of himself was completely lost for something to say.

“I need to surf.” Each word felt like a stomp, the dismissive heel of a boot grinding all the pieces of me into the ground, telling me I was unimportant and not worth fighting with or for. He turned on his heel and followed Jasmine’s cue.

If she has my kid, if she stands by me and this family . . . then I can handle anything with her.

But I can’t have his kid.

So he has no reason to stand by me.

It’s always been easy to leave me so why should I be disappointed—devastated—by this?

Everyone I loved left me.

Eventually.

I gasped, the air leaving my lungs in a punch of emotion. I knew this day would come. Kris's words had just been fanciful. "Once you become a part of the family, you’re a part of it for life. We always take care of our own.” I was sure he believed it, but it’d never truly been tested. They took care of their own because they were all they had. No one had encroached on their precious family fortress before me.

I would never be enough. Not for my mother. Not for my father, my friend. And now, not for my husband or his family either.

No one wants you.

Sliding down the wall, I tucked my knees against my chest and cried. I’d been so strong up until that moment, but I just couldn’t anymore. What’s going to happen to me?

“Hey.” I flinched when Toby sat down next to me. “It’s going to be OK.”

I shook my head, placing my hand on my forehead. “No it won’t. I can’t give them what they want.”

Releasing a heavy breath, he slid his arm around my shoulders and pulled me in a little too tight. The contact and the kindness behind it had me crying even more. But he wasn’t the man I needed acceptance from. “Life isn’t about getting what you want, Leesh. It’s about learning to live with the things you have and making the best of it.”

“What do you live without, Toby? Seems to me you all have exactly what you want.”

He pressed his lips into a sad-looking smile. “Appearances are often deceiving. In this house, family comes first, our individual dreams a distant second.”

“What are your dreams?” I asked, wiping my nose with the back of my hand.

He shifted, taking his arm back before he clasped his hands, forearms resting on his knees. “They’re just dreams, fanciful thoughts about being free and unencumbered. I’m no different to anyone else. We all want things we can’t have, and we all have to learn to find happiness in what we do have instead.”

That was the thing. I had been happy with what I had. I’d accepted everything about my life and what it was lacking. I never expected to end up married at all, let alone to a man who seemed desperate to have children. He hadn’t even consulted me. And I had naively never considered that the reason he wasn’t using protection was because he wanted me to bear his children. How blind can one girl be. Of course that’s what he wanted—that’s how babies were made, after all.

Wait. Was that what Jasmine had wanted too? I remembered another moment when I was caught listening on the stairs by Toby. Sam had been telling Jasmine to let him do things his way or she’d never get what she wanted from me. Was that about children too? Was I brought into the family as some sort of breeding stock? It would explain Jasmine’s reaction.

Fuck. Now I was questioning everything.

“Am I only here because Jasmine wants grandkids?” I blurted out, the question burning in my gut as tiny pieces of conversations began to fit together.

Toby’s light eyes met mine and I immediately knew the truth. “My God, it’s true, isn’t it?”

“It may have been a selling point.”

I was so fucking stupid. Of course they wanted something huge from me. It wasn’t just about keeping us quiet and letting Nate have Holland. It was about furthering the Cartwright lineage, producing tiny thieves. And now that I’d been found defective, would I be put out to pasture, sent to the proverbial farm?

“My God, I’m an incubator. A broken incubator.”

Toby took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “That’s not how we see you, Alesha. We all think of you like family.”

“But I’m not your blood, Toby. Sam doesn’t love me, you heard him say that yourself. There’s no reason for him to keep me if it turns out I can’t give him kids.”

“Sam isn’t that guy.”

“Then why did he walk away?”

“Because he had a picture in his mind, and going for a surf will give him some time to change it.”

“So he’s just going to come back and magically be OK with this?”

He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. It was the first time I’d ever seen Toby dishevelled. “You need to understand the life we’ve led. It’s not one that ever allowed space for relationships.”

“Are you trying to say none of you have ever had girlfriends?”

“No,” he said, giving me a look that told me if I’d shut up and listen, he’d make his point. “We’ve all had girlfriends of a sort, but never anything serious because every relationship was based on a lie about who we were. We all live with our feet straddling different lives—our respectable public life and our behind-the-scenes reality. We couldn’t risk falling for a girl and telling her the truth about our family only to have that relationship end badly and her going to the cops out of spite. We learned not to trust in anything that felt vaguely like love, because those kinds of feelings put the family at risk, and the family always comes first.”

I had to wonder if something like that had happened in the past to make them think like that.

“So none of you believe in love. I get it. But why risk bringing me and Holland into the family? You didn’t know us, couldn’t trust us. What if we produced these children, then decided to run to save them from becoming criminals too?”

He raked through his hair again. “It’s ridiculously complicated. But it mostly has to do with Nate. He’s always been the wildcard of the family, playing his own games and making up his own rules. What he was doing with Holland was reckless. Had you two gone to the cops instead of snooping around here, his actions could’ve brought the entire family to our knees. We needed to give him what he wanted to keep him happy, and I pointed out that you both could produce grandchildren to keep Jasmine on side. Then you were threatened with your lives and the lives of your loved ones to keep you both compliant.”

“You knew we’d stay out of self-preservation.” It was starting to make sense now.

He nodded. “It’s a stronger emotion than love.”

I placed my hands on my face and sighed. “This is so fucked up.”

“Initially, yeah, it was. But you and Sam are great together. He’s legitimately into you. If you heard him saying he wasn’t in love before, you also heard him saying how happy you made him and how important he thought you were. He wants you, Alesha, and I’m positive that when he gets over the shock and whatever other shit is going through his head right now, he’s going to come back here and tell you he’ll take you any way you come.”

I shook my head, his words so hard for me to believe in that moment.

“And what about Jasmine? Is she going to be fine with me if I can’t give her grandkids?”

“Yes.” The voice wasn’t Toby’s, it was Jasmine’s. She was standing at the bottom of the stairs.

Shit. How long has she been standing there?

“I thought you left.” I sniffed.

“I did. But then I came back.”

“I’ll give you two the chance to talk,” Toby said, giving my shoulder a squeeze before he got up and took the tray of food with him. Jasmine climbed the stairs and occupied the space Toby vacated.

“I reacted poorly,” she said. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you or about you like that.”

My natural instinct was to want to wear the blame, to suggest that it was all my fault that I hadn’t shared something so deeply personal to me.

Cartwrights don’t apologise. If Toby was to be believed, that’s still who I was. I just hoped he was right and I’d still be one at the end of the day.

“Do you think I should’ve told you from the beginning?” I sniffled, wiping my hand across my face.

“That wouldn’t have been the best idea,” she said, smiling a little.

“Oh yeah, the whole death thing.” How could I possibly forget?

“It’s not on the table anymore. You should know that. You’ve earned your place in this family.”

“I have?” It was crazy that that comment made me happy, but it did. I literally felt lighter, less weighed down.

She nodded. “In the short time you’ve been here, you’ve become the daughter I never had. You didn’t even hesitate when you helped Kristian get his car back. You’ve really embraced us. The least we can do is embrace you, whichever way you come.”

“Oh God.” I couldn’t contain the tears. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me—even if it had started with a reminder about the threat of marriage or death. “I don’t know what to say.” There were tears and snot. I was a blubbering mess.

“Come here,” Jasmine said, putting her arm around me and giving me a hug that I so greatly needed. I’d existed so long without much affection that each kind touch felt like the unshackling of chains. “Has Sam told you much about me and where I came from?”

I shook my head, then used the bottom of my shirt to wipe my eyes and nose. I needed a tissue. “Not much. Only that you learned everything from their father, and that he’s in prison now.”

“That’s some of it. Although, I started into this life all on my own. You see, you and I, we have a lot in common.”

“We do?”

She nodded. “My mother was an addict too. Heroin was also her drug of choice. She didn’t hide it as well as your mother must have and preferred a hit over feeding her child. Which is why I learned to steal to survive. And I got really good at it. So good that it became my business. It might seem like a strange choice of vocation to someone like you, but we all have our place in this world. This is mine, and I won’t ever apologise for it.”

“Cartwrights don’t apologise.” I stated, repeating Sam’s most ingrained lesson.

She tucked my hair back from my face. “That’s right. But we understand and support each other. And I understand better than anyone what it’s like to be the last choice in the eyes of the one person who is supposed to put you first. I want you to know that you aren’t the last choice in mine. You are one of us now, and we all want you here. Do you understand that? We want you here.”

I sniffed, the tears coming hard and fast. I had no chance in stopping them; she was saying all the things my heart needed to hear and it was bleeding freely. Jasmine was a hard woman. Just by the way she carried herself, I could tell that she had fought for everything she had in this world. But her love for her family was fierce, and I knew she’d do anything for those she loved. Now she was telling me that she counted me as one of them, that I belonged. I had never belonged anywhere in my life.

“Thank you,” I forced out through my sobs. “You have no idea what that means to me.”

She put her arms around me and held me tight. “I think I have a fair idea.”

I nodded and held her back. Of course she understood. She probably understood the feeling of not being enough better than anyone. There was something intrinsically damaging about a mother’s rejection, something only another rejected soul could possibly understand.

“What do we do about Sam wanting kids?” I asked when we pulled apart. I loved that Jasmine wanted me in the family no matter how damaged my insides were, but what about Sam? He didn’t come back. How would he feel towards me knowing I wasn’t entirely complete?

“When you and Sam are both ready, we’ll find you the best doctor money can buy. And if it doesn’t work, well, we’ll just steal a kid for you.”

I lifted my head, gasping in shock.

She laughed. “That was a joke. Get it? Because we’re thieves.”

“I’m sorry, but that was not even a little bit funny,” I told her, completely serious.

Pushing my hair behind my shoulder, she smiled, still amused by her crappy joke and my reaction to it. “I think it’s time we got you a phone and a car. I don’t want you feeling like a prisoner anymore. I want you to feel trusted.”

“I already have a phone and a car,” I responded. “You could just give them back, you know.”

“Oh, baby.” She chuckled. “No you don’t. They’re long gone.”

“Oh.” Of course they were.

“It’s OK. We’ll get you better ones. The best of everything for my kids. You just relax, let your family take care of you.”

* * *

Sam returned a little before the sun went down. I’d barely eaten all day, barely done anything more than close myself in our room and cry and wait. No one could shake me out of my funk, not even the twins and their comical stories about their landscaping business—Abbot had mowed over a garden gnome, and then Kris had glued its head on backwards. Jasmine had been sure to keep me hydrated, but I couldn’t stop worrying about Sam. He’d been gone for so long.

Maybe everyone’s wrong. Maybe he doesn’t want me anymore.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, breaking the cardinal Cartwright rule the moment he walked through our bedroom door. I didn’t care, I needed him to know that I really was sorry for not telling him about my condition. Despite Toby’s and Jasmine’s reassurances, I wouldn’t be OK until I knew Sam still wanted me. I’d rather die than feel worthless around him. I didn’t want to live in this house and be married to a man who had no desire for me. I just couldn’t.

“Don’t,” he said, his teeth clenched. My chest fell along with my plummeting stomach.

“Oh.” I sat up and slid off the bed. “I’ll… I’ll stay in the guest room tonight, then. We can work out what to do next in the morning.” Every word came out as a slight hiccup and a fight against more tears. I stood and looked around, then decided I’d get my things some other time. “I really am so sorry, Sam.”

“Stop,” he growled, moving in front of me. “Quit apologising, for fuck’s sake. You’re a Cartwright.”

“What?” Why the hell is he saying that to me now?

There was no response, only action. His hand spearing into my hair, fisting the strands and clashing our mouths together, his tongue forcing entry as his hands tore at my clothes. I responded in kind, the longing inside me manifesting into a white-hot need that sent my skin burning and my insides yearning to connect with him.

I didn’t know what this meant. It could be a communication of need or it could be goodbye. It could be the simple taking of what he thought he was owed. The only thing I had any real idea of was my own mind, and I wanted to brand him on my heart and body forever. I pulled him in closer.

Desperation governed our actions, our teeth clashing, fingers scraping. We got his shirt off, then removed my shorts along with my panties. He pushed his board shorts down just enough to release his cock, and then he was inside me. I cried out from the speed of his intrusion, my mouth dropping open as my head fell back and I let out a long moan.

If this was the end, if it was goodbye, I knew I’d never know this type of fucking again. My heart was breaking even though my body felt so alive. So full. So… God, I want him to want me. Tears filled my eyes.

“Fuck. I need you,” he growled, his hips thrusting, slamming against me. “I fucking need you.” Each pump produced a noise from me that was more animal than human. I could barely breathe, barely think, the only movement available to me the rising of my hips as I met his thrusts.

“Fuck,” I cried as he adjusted his position, tucking his knees and pulling my leg over his shoulder, hitting me deeper. He lifted his hand to his mouth and sucked his thumb before reaching between us and pressing it to my clit. “Oh God.” The word was slow and low as he pummelled and teased, my entire abdomen tensing, ready to detonate.

“Come, peaches. Fucking come. Squeeze my cock as hard as that sweet little cunt can.”

“Sam!” My body lifted then shook, the uncontrollable waves pulsing through me, a howling noise climbing up my throat.

Sam reached forwards and grabbed the bottom of my singlet, tearing it open with one swift movement. Then he pulled out of me, his big dick landing against my stomach just in time to spurt hot cum all over me.

“Holy shit,” I gasped, watching the creamy liquid leave his body and coat mine. I wasn’t exactly sure how to react. Was he doing this because coming inside me was pointless? But then he placed his hand on my stomach and spread his seed all over my skin, up to my breasts, all over my ribs. It seemed like a weird thing for someone to do and I was confused by the action, but oh my Lord, it was hot. Carnal.

“Mine,” he said, meeting my eyes. “Do you understand?”

I nodded, my chest heaving. I was pretty sure he’d just claimed me, marked his territory and all that. He’d given me his answer. He wanted me. This man, this big and beautiful beast of a man wanted me. Still. I wanted to cry, wanted to climb inside him and live there, because you know what? I believed it. I fucked believed.

I settled for tucking my head into his chest while he held me and placed soft kisses everywhere he could. I breathed in his ocean-kissed skin, a scent that had become so comforting to me. It was on the tip of my tongue to proclaim a deeper feeling for him, but I kept it locked down, knowing that wasn’t where we were yet. He may not understand what love was, but he understood comfort, understood empathy. Nevertheless, there was something he wanted from me, something I might be incapable of giving, and that felt like a boulder in my heart.

“You want kids,” I whispered, tracing erratic shapes on the skin over his heart.

“I do. But I was a dick for assuming instead of asking how you felt about it too. I sometimes forget that you aren’t here because you want to be but because we forced you. You probably don’t think you can tell me things.”

He was right. I’d been careful with my behaviour and the topics I asked about. I never snapped, and I tried to be as agreeable as possible. Still…

“I do want to be here, Sam. I just need to be sure that you’ll want me if it turns out I can’t give you children at all.” Emotion prickled at the corner of my eyes.

He leaned forward, his forehead dropping to meet mine. “Yes, Alesha. Do you really think I’m going to give up my unicorn just because her horn’s a little bent?”

“Thank God.” A laugh burst through my tears and I placed my hands on either side of his face, my relief making my heart feel set to burst. “But promise me one thing?”

“Anything.”

“Please don’t ever become a writer. You come up with the worst analogies,” I whispered, my entire body singing from the joy of his return. He wanted me. He knew I was broken and he still wanted me.

I thought back to an early conversation I’d had with Holland. Maybe I really have struck the forced marriage lottery.

“If I can’t be a writer, guess I’ll just have to continue being a thief. You think you can handle that?”

I curled my fingers, my nails scraping against the overgrown stubble on his cheeks. “As long as I have you, I think I can handle anything. You make me feel… right.”

He chuckled. “Right. I’ll take it,” he said. “I’ll take you too.” He grabbed my hips and rolled until I was on top of him, pulling my face towards his in a long, soulful kiss.

While we still had a hell of a lot to deal with in our relationship, one thing had become abundantly clear: we both wanted it, wanted each other. At that point, it was more than enough for me, because we’d managed to jump an enormous hurdle together and he didn’t turn me away.