And it was so much sweeter than I ever could have imagined.
I approached, moving through the night until I was climbing onto the branch so I could sit at his side. In the same place where we’d fallen in love, even though it had taken so long to truly understand what that really meant.
Our obstacles had been so great, they should have been insurmountable.
But this love was greater than that.
We both faced forward, staring into the darkness that weaved through the woods.
The connection hummed between us.
Wrapped and soothed.
It’d been a week since everything had happened, but I’d felt him out here, every night.
I had known he was waiting. Waiting on me to make the choice.
“The number of times I’ve sat on this branch,” he finally mumbled in that low, deep voice.
It covered me in chills.
“For all those years after I’d ruined my chance with you.”
Self-deprecating laughter rolled from him, and he rubbed his hands together like he could squash the tension that strained between us. “You weren’t even living here at your mom’s any longer, and I’d still come, just because I ached to be close to you. So I could get lost in the memories of you.”
Pain lancinated through my chest. “And I couldn’t come because it hurt too bad to sit here in the amount of love I felt for you and know you didn’t love me back.”
Regret left him on a slow sigh. “I don’t know how I even forced out that lie, but hurting you that way? Seeing the evidence of what I inflicted on your face? It was the moment that fully broke me. The moment I marked on myself as a reminder of what I had lost. Standing at my door, having to break both of our hearts.”
He fisted a hand over the spot where the broken clock sat on his chest.
Its fractured hands unable to move.
I’d never asked him what the broken clock on his chest had meant, sure I’d already known its meaning.
Now, my spirit toiled with its truth.
Those hands were an affliction.
They were his chains.
They were his lost hopes.
They were me.
Grief clouded his voice. “He killed Amelia, Dakota. Killed her as a warning of what would happen to those I loved if I tried to break away from him. And I knew I couldn’t have you a part of that life. So I tried to stay away from you. Tried to put as much distance between us as I could.”
I’d known about Amelia. Ezra had told me when he’d come to check on me the next day after I’d been released from the hospital. He’d given me the barest insight, more ingredients to process into the convoluted mix.
It was sickening, knowing what that monster had done to her. What he had done to Ryder. What he had done to us.
His chuckle was hollow. “Seems I’m not so good about staying away from you, though, am I? And when I’d heard you’d had a son, I came crawling back, thinking if I could just have that small part of you, I would be satisfied. Thought it wouldn’t hurt so fucking bad if I at least had you as a small part of my life. But it was never enough, was it? I wanted more and more of you when I never should have asked for it.”
His hand shook as he roughed it over the top of his head. “I’m fucking sorry, Dakota. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m sorry for lying to you. I’m sorry for betraying your trust. For giving you that money without you knowing where it came from. For dragging you into something that wasn’t yours.”
Incredulity seeped into his laugh. “I thought I was doing something right—for the both of us, but Dare played me a fool again and again, always a step ahead of me, destroying every chance of joy that anyone around me could get.”
“Except he couldn’t destroy it, could he?”
His harsh brow pinched when he looked at me. “Did he, Dakota? Did he destroy it? Did I destroy it? I kept telling you I wasn’t a good man, and now you see the fullness of that. What I put you and Kayden through…”
A broken sound clawed from his throat, and he looked away as he scrubbed a hand over his face. “It kills me, Dakota. It kills me to know what you both went through. It will forever be the greatest regret of my life.”
He inhaled a shaky breath. “But I don’t want to live my life regretting my choices any longer. When I look at you? When I look at Kayden? I see the man I want to be. The one I should have been all along. The one I’m going to strive to be every day of my life.”
Emotion pressed at my chest, and tears blurred my eyes.
He reached out and ran his thumb over the tiny divot on my chin. “You’re the light breaking inside me, Dakota Cooper. You were the one who taught me what goodness meant. Can you forgive me? Can you look at me and see the man who wants to live for you? Because I choose you, Dakota, and I’m praying you can choose me back.”