A saint for the ultimate sinner.
I reached for her hands. I laced them both through mine and drew them above her head. My face hovered above hers as I moved my hips faster and faster. And I never looked away. I wanted her to see in my eyes exactly what she meant to me. I wanted to replace the horrors in my mind with her stunning face.
Those ice-blue eyes, the long black lashes, her flawless pale skin, her plump pink lips . . . I wanted to speak, to tell her everything I felt, but I knew I couldn’t open my mouth. My emotions were too high.
I just wished I had known her before.
I wished so badly I’d met her before I became the man I did. Before I ruined lives . . . before I helped in the murder of hundreds of souls.
Bella’s face blurred. I blinked, realizing that tears had clouded my eyes. The droplets splashed onto Bella’s flushed cheeks. Bella’s hands squeezed mine. She lifted our joined hands to my eyes and wiped away the wetness. My heart broke when I saw she was crying too.
“Bella,” I rasped, stilling.
She shook her head and her face tore with pain. “I cannot bear it, Rider.”
“What?” I asked, lying closer against her—flesh to flesh, heart to heart.
“What you are doing to yourself.” Bella sniffed back her tears. “The blame . . . the guilt that you are letting eat you alive.” She searched my eyes. “Blaming yourself for today. This was your brother. It is what he has always done to you, manipulated you. Even now, in death, he has somehow laid the catastrophe at your feet, and you accept the burden of this blame with open arms.”
“Because it’s true. I am to blame.”
Bella stared at me silently. She started rocking her hips in slow, subtle movements. I closed my eyes and let my forehead rest upon hers. Bella freed one of her hands and combed it through my hair. She brought my ear to her lips. “Then I absolve you from that guilt. If you need someone to forgive you, let me be the one to offer you forgiveness.”
Her hips worked faster, my body reacting to the relentless rhythm. But then I cried, I fucking cried as she repeated her words. “I forgive you, baby. I forgive you for what you have done.” The emotion got trapped in my throat. Bella’s breath began breaking into short, sharp gasps.
“Rider,” she whispered as her heart beat a damn symphony against my chest. “Rider.” Her hand tightened in my hair. My muscles tensed as I thrust harder, pushing the breath from my lungs. Bella froze in my arms, her breasts pressing into me as her back arched. She cried out into the crook of my neck, pulling me as close as she physically could.
The feel of her contracting around me was my undoing. Unable to hold back any longer, I pushed into her three more times and roared out my release, my voice cut and raw, weak from today. I came with her hand in my hair and her voice whispering, “I forgive you. I love you. It is time to be free.”
My head fell into the pillow. For a brief moment, there were no faces in my mind, there were no voices in my ears. There was just us.
“I love you,” Bella whispered.
“I love you too,” I said raggedly. “You have been the only good I’ve ever known. You’ve been the heaven I was searching for after all. Not the faith, or the prayers . . . just you . . . only you.”
Love filled Bella’s face, and she shifted beneath me. I moved from inside her and she curled up on the bed. She laid her head on my chest, her arm over my waist. Her warm breath drifted over my skin as I played with her damp hair.
The room was silent. Almost as if she was reading my mind, Bella said, “The men in the bar are quiet . . . they must have gone to bed too.”
“Yeah,” I said in return.
Bella’s sleepy face tipped up toward me. “Sleep, baby. Everything will be better tomorrow. Everything is always better when the sun rises again. It will bring a new day. It will lighten the burden from your soul.”
My heart squeezed at her words. Her eyes began to drop with sleep. Before they closed, I said, “Thank you, Bella. Thank you for loving me . . . for it all. You’ll never know how much you have meant to me. How much peace you have given me.”
“Thank you.” She smiled. “Thank you for saving my life.”
Bella was asleep in minutes. Her breathing deepened and I knew she was sleeping well. But my eyes stayed open. I watched as the lightning outside grew brighter, the distant storm closing in. The rain beat louder on the windows, and the thunder growled up ahead.
I looked at the clock on the table and took a deep breath. I had to go. I gently moved Bella from my body and laid her back on the mattress. I froze as she moved in her sleep, but her breathing evened out again. I looked down at the woman who had stolen my heart. I tried to drink in her every feature. Commit every part of her to memory.
I would never forget this night. In all my life, I had never truly been told I was loved. Eight letters, three simple words, that smashed into your soul with the force and devastation of a comet. “I love you,” I whispered, needing to tell her again. “Happiness is waiting for you, baby. Only good from now on. Only freedom.”
I padded over to the bathroom and picked up my leathers from the floor. I didn’t even care that they were covered in dried blood. It wouldn’t matter soon enough.
I couldn’t look at Bella as I crept out of the room. I hadn’t bothered with a shirt. My feet were bare. The bar was a ghost town as I walked through—glasses abandoned half-finished, pool games half-played.
I went out of the back exit and into the yard. The warm rain pelted down as I headed down the grass verge. My feet sank into the wet, muddy ground. My hair stuck to my back.
With every step I took, I pictured Bella in my head. And I smiled. I smiled for the life she would have. The things she would do and see . . . the person she would love. And as much as it pained me to think of her doing these things without me, loving someone else, it brought a peace to my heart that I never thought I would ever feel.
Bella free . . . safe.
It was good.
I saw the dim light up ahead as I broke through the line of trees. The door of the old barn was already open and waiting for me. I counted my steps as I approached. In twenty steps I made it to the door. I paused at the threshold. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and walked inside.
The barn was silent as I roved my eyes around the room. One by one the brothers turned to see me. I met each of their eyes as they stood, some to the left, some to the right, a man-made path leading the way to where they wanted me to pay.