CAMERON

After the attack, I struggled a lot with guilt. I’d pushed for us to go to that café. I’d gone to the bar to order just because I hadn’t wanted to listen to the repetitive details of our wedding décor. Bella and I were meant to be together. Die together.

Sitting by Everly’s side in the hospital bed, I expected that familiar sense of responsibility to come. If she hadn’t met me, she never would have met Giselle. If I hadn’t gone to Sydney, she never would have wound up babysitting.

It didn’t come.

Instead, overwhelming sadness charged through me with the brute force of a summer storm. I sat by her side, one hand linked with hers, as she slept for what felt like hours and hours on end.

She’d been rushed to hospital as soon as the paramedics arrived. Apparently, she’d woken and given them a bleary account of what had happened. They were keeping her for observation—her injuries were as simple and as brutal as six stitches to the side of her head, four fractured ribs, and a concussion. As non-life-threatening and as deadly as that.

She looked so pale in this bed—completely different to the woman normally larger than life, so full of expression and emotion and colour. I squeezed her hand, hoping to transfer some of what I felt. Hoping to transfer something.

Piper mumbled, and I shifted her weight as she snuggled deeper into my chest. The nurse had opened her mouth, shaking her head when she’d seen us enter the ward, but one look from me had seen her jaw snap shut. I didn’t know if children were supposed to be in here, but I had nowhere else to go. I had to be here, and at the same time, there was no way I would have left Piper at home, not even when Mack drove up a few minutes after the police arrived. Giselle was in jail, I had no idea where Wayne was, but there was so much other evil in the world I had to keep this little girl safe from. I would never let her out of my sight again.

Wheels squeaked and a trolley rattled along the corridor, pausing in the door to our room. The scent of garlic wafted over to me.

“Ah, now there’s a sight for sore eyes. What a beautiful family,” an orderly with a thick Irish accent said as the meals cart was rolled into the room and over to Everly’s bed. I stiffened. She better not wake my girls. Both of them needed their rest.

The lady with thick, fiery red hair pulled out the table from the other side of Everly’s bed, reached under her trolley, and brought out a tray to rest on top of it.

“Does she want anything?” The woman nodded to Piper, a broad smile on her cherry lips.

“No. She’s fine,” I said in a quiet voice. It was seven, and she’d be awake soon. We’d have to go to the café downstairs, get some food for her and let her have a little crawl around away from the machines and the pain and the death.

“And you? Do you want anything?” the orderly pressed.

I want Everly to wake up and not feel an ounce of pain. I want Giselle to have never put her through this hell, because she’s too perfect to have to go through shit like this.

“I’m fine. Thank you.” I gave a wan smile.

The trolley was wheeled out of the room, leaving us alone once more.

“You have to eat.”

I whipped my head to Everly.

Blue eyes—so blue against the white of the sheets, the white of her skin—blinked, and squinted in the harsh hospital light.

“Everly.” I squeezed her hand. She squeezed mine back, and it was the most amazing thing I’d felt in my life. She was okay. She was going to be okay.

“How do you feel?” Another squeeze. Another surge of love from my body to hers.

“Like I need about eight years’ worth of sleep and—oh.” She winced as she shifted in her bed, her hand going to her ribs.

“Don’t move.” I reached over to the small table beside me and picked up the cup of water. “Drink?”

She nodded, taking the cup from my hands and sucking water through the straw until it was drained dry.

Placing it back down, she looked at her chest, then back up at me, frowning as if the memory was just coming back to her. “Fractured, right?”

I nodded and gestured toward her chest. “Four fractured ribs.” I pointed to her head. “Six stitches.” I gestured up and down my body. “One boyfriend who feels like shit.”

“Cam, it’s not—”

“It’s my fault. If she ever so much as breathes near you again …” Anger fired through my veins. I was going to protect what was mine. My women would never be hurt again.

Everly looked away, shaking her head. “Has she been caught?”

“She has. The police came not long after you passed out.”

We sat there in silence for a few moments.

“How is she?” She nodded toward Piper.

“She’s okay. Tired. Hasn’t opened her eyes since we got here.” I pressed a soft kiss to the little girl’s head. “Do you remember much of what happened?”

“I think so.” She sank back into the pillows. “I went to see Giselle in prison. Only, she wasn’t there. She’d been released early.”

“What?”

“We were idiots to ever trust her, Cam.”

“I was an idiot.” Why did I take her words at face value?

“We weren’t to know. Sure, she lied about Piper’s father, but we didn’t know the lengths she’d go to, to get her back.” Everly closed her eyes, then blinked them open. A glossy sheen of tears swelled like the unbroken surface of the ocean. “Mack and I were worried she’d found you at her house. We thought maybe Wayne had—”

“I did see Wayne, but it turned out, he wasn’t that much of a threat.” I shook my head. “I wonder if Giselle planned on taking him with her when she and Piper skipped town.”

“I don’t think she did.” A single tear tracked over Everly’s alabaster cheek. “When she came to the door with a gun, I …”

“Hey.” I reached forward, wiping that tear away. My heart heaved knowing I couldn’t take away her heartache in a similar fashion. “We all knew Giselle loved Piper, but none of us realised she’d kill for her.”

I’d never realised she’d been prepared to spend her whole life on the run, just so she could have Piper to herself.

“She was wrong. So, so wrong. The thing is …” I took a deep breath. Things had changed between us, and I needed Everly to know. “We don’t have a finite amount of love to give. Sometimes, we think we can only love one person, but then someone else comes into our lives and we realise we love them in a completely different way. In a way that somehow completes you when you never thought you’d be complete.” I reach out and take Everly’s hand again.

“We’re not talking about Giselle anymore, are we?” Everly’s voice was quiet.

“No.” I never wanted to talk about Giselle again. “Everly, I love you. And that means being there for you when you want to talk about anything—the good things, the bad things, and the past things that hurt, that remind me of the things I did wrong. I should have been there for you when you wanted to talk about Bella. And I want to be there for you whenever you want to talk in the future.” I shook my head. “I never want you to feel as if you have to contemplate—contemplate—”

The image of her on the edge of a cliff, wind whipping her hair, wild and free, sprang into my mind. I never wanted her to decide that she wasn’t worth living. “You are more than enough. You are everything, and—”

“Hey, hey, shh.” She gave a half-smile. “I told you, I’m fine now.”

I nodded. Did I believe her? Could I believe her?

I knew my own darkness hid inside me, waited until I was at my lowest to strike. I knew my own self-doubt, the kind that crippled me, the kind loaded with guilt and hate and anger that only attacked when I was already weak, already vulnerable.

Right now, things with us were good. Right now, Everly and I were two people in love.

But there would come a time when things got hard again, and I’d make sure I was there for her. I’d make sure I did everything I possibly could to keep her safe.

Slowly, I stood, pulling the little girl in my arms close to my chest in an effort not to wake her. I moved closer to the bed until I was near Everly’s face.

I leaned forward, and brushed my lips over hers. Sweet, so sweet—kissing her was divinity.

She gently traced a pattern on my arm, setting my synapses on fire. Her tongue ran along the seam of my lips and I gratefully opened my mouth, granting her entrance. God, I loved kissing her. This. I wanted this. I never wanted us to stop.

Despite the threat that had come for us, the lies that had haunted us, the secrets that had lingered and forced us apart, we’d come through it all. I knew without question—she was it for me. She was everything.

Our fiery kiss subsided to sweet nothings, like a wave receding from the shore. We broke apart, our breath still mingled, hers so sweet, so light against the weight of my own.

“Cam,” she whispered, her eyes flashing dark.

I tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Everly.” A soft smile crossed my lips. “I love you so damn much.”

“Honest love?” Blue eyes sparkled up at me, and I laughed.

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Honest love.”