“I love you,” she whispers. “You’re going to be the best father.”
I take a trembling breath.
This entire moment feels like something lifted from someone else’s dreams.
I’d never have known how to dream of this.
I braced for every fear; every darkness. I shattered my own heart as a hedge against emotional destruction, hoping that, in the end, it would prove harder to break what was already broken. I was ready to be destroyed.
I never prepared myself for joy.
Kenji has been a brother to me for at least as long as my own blood brothers; I’d take a bullet for him without stopping to consider the consequences.
It’s irritating.
“Aaron?” Ella says softly.
“Yes, love?”
“What do you think of naming her after my sister? Do you think it’d feel strange to call her Emmaline?”
I look up, surprised. “No,” I whisper. “I think it’s perfect.”
Her heart is my power source.
I never dared to hope for more of her.
I look down at the little bundle in my arms, the soft brows and slight slope of a small nose.
The ache in my chest only seems to multiply as I drink her in. It feels as if my heart is ripping itself apart and rebuilding, forging a new chamber, and the resulting pain is both tender and terrifying.
My daughter.
“I thought you could love me for me,” he says. “I thought you would be the one person in this godforsaken world who would accept me as I am! I thought you, of all people, would understand.”
She’s attracted to me, and the revelation makes me happy. I don’t know why. It’s not new. I learned, long ago, that lots of people find me attractive. Men. Women. Especially older women, a phenomenon I still don’t understand.
“I want so many things,” he whispers. “I want your mind. Your strength. I want to be worth your time.” His fingers graze the hem of my top and he says “I want this up.” He tugs on the waist of my pants and says “I want these down.”
“You’re so lovely when you’re blushing,” Warner says to me. “But I really wish you wouldn’t waste your affections on someone who has to beg for your love.” He cocks his head at Adam. “How sad for you,” he says. “This must be terribly embarrassing.”
Killing my father has instilled in me an extraordinary serenity. It’s a perverse, horrible thing to celebrate, but to murder my father was to vanquish my greatest fear. With him dead, anything seems possible.
I feel free.
A betrayal that somehow seemed impossible. That she would leave me for a robotic, unfeeling idiot like Kent. His thoughts are so empty, so mindless; it’s like conversing with a desk lamp.
“I want to be the friend you fall hopelessly in love with. The one you take into your arms and into your bed and into the private world you keep trapped in your head. I want to be that kind of friend,” he says.
