Her small white teeth bit down on the corner of her lower lip. “Can’t we just let it go, Elie? Please?”
“You make my heart ache, Brielle. I can’t let this go because you matter to me. Anything that hurts you, and this does, needs to be addressed. I’m asking you to let me in.”
“It just makes me ashamed. She’s everything I’m not. It was there, in those photographs for the years you spent here with this family. She’s a gorgeous woman. Over and over, in the articles or sometimes the headlines, it would say ‘one of the most beautiful women in the world.’ You can imagine how that made me feel in comparison. I already knew your opinion of me.”
“I lied, Brielle,” he reiterated softly. Firmly. “I wish I could go back and unsay those untrue words. That’s not how I ever saw you.”
“Still, that reinforced how I felt about myself. Then there was her family. They clearly doted on her, just as you did. I was a throwaway. My family detested me. No matter how hard I worked for them, I meant nothing to them. She’s a shadow rider and, by all accounts, a good one. No one tells her not to go into the shadows. If they did, she’d tell them to go to hell and you’d admire her for that reaction. You do admire her, Elie, for all the things you say you don’t want me to do. She doesn’t have a pain addiction. She’s probably not addicted to anything. I’m nothing like her, and yet, she’s your best friend. I can’t compete with someone like her. I hate coming across as a jealous wife, and I’m not going to make a big deal out of your friendship with her. I won’t. That’s a promise. I already made the promise to myself and I can make it to you.”
She looked so miserable, Elie wanted to put his arms around her to comfort her. Instead, he continued to stand firmly in front of her, his thumb sliding back and forth over her ring, reviewing carefully every word she’d said. Emmanuelle was beautiful, that was true. She did have a doting family. She was an excellent shadow rider and she’d tell anyone to go to hell if they tried to stop her from doing what she wanted to do. No, she didn’t have a pain addiction. She didn’t need a man like Elie in the bedroom. His best friend? She had been for a long while. When he wanted to share something, he had always thought to call Emme. Was it that way now? No. He could say with all honesty, his friendship with Brielle had superseded what he’d had with Emme.
Very slowly, he shook his head. “I don’t see you as a jealous wife, Brielle. After the way you were raised, you have insecurities. That’s natural. After the way I was raised, I’m going to have them, too. Neither of us were wanted in our homes or by the people who were supposed to love us. We’re building our own family and sorting out what a relationship is. But, bébé, it’s our relationship. Not Val and Emme’s. It’s ours. Emmanuelle would never suit me. She didn’t when I first met her and she doesn’t now. Do I think she’s a beautiful woman? Yes. She is. Do I look at you and think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen? Yes. Absolutely I do.”
She shook her head. “Don’t, Elie. That’s not even close to being true.”
“It is, Brielle. I’ve seen you in the morning when you first wake up, looking so vulnerable with those freckles scattered across your nose like angels have been kissing you. I’ve seen you desperate for me, looking at me with such trust it makes me feel like no one has ever made me feel. I’ve seen you a thousand ways, ways no one else has ever seen you, all of them gorgeous. You aren’t made up for the paparazzi. You’re mine. Here in our home. Laughing. Whispering with me on our pillow or in the bathtub. You’re eating pizza. Or cooking me some amazing dinner with a little apron tied around a pair of jeans. You’re so fucking beautiful, sometimes my heart can’t take it.”
Her vivid green gaze hadn’t left his face the entire time he was talking. “You really do think so, don’t you?”
He helped her slide off the bed. “Yeah, I do.”
She walked gingerly to the clothes closet with him. He kept talking because he never wanted her to feel less around any woman. “As for her family, they do dote on her. She’s the only girl and her brothers adore her. Her mother, however, despised her. It didn’t affect her the same way our childhoods affected us though, because Emme has always had the benefit of older brothers and cousins who love her so much. You didn’t have that, Brielle, and neither did I. I’m fully aware of what it means to be alone, what it feels like. I know you do, too. And I don’t want that for you, ever again. I don’t want that for me, either. Brielle Couture Archambault, you’re my family. You’re the center of my entire world. Hopefully, I’m the center of yours. The Ferraros have opened their hearts to us and taken us in. I’m all for that, but ultimately, it’s going to be us, you and me, with our own family to join with theirs. That’s the way I feel about that.”