Chapter 60
Evie rolled over in the bed, letting her hand trail over Lucas’s chest. She traced the edges of the knife scar cutting across his stomach, before placing her palm over his heart. She couldn’t tear her eyes off his face, or stop her hands from tracing every inch of him.
He was the same with her, his gaze hungry, his hands more so, yet so full of tenderness at the same time that she ached to lie with him all night and through into the next day and the next. She didn’t ever want to sleep again just in case he disappeared. She couldn’t quite believe he was still there, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
‘I love you,’ she murmured, her lips pressed to his scar.
‘I love you too.’
His hands traced the livid purple bruise on her rib cage where Victor had kicked her. A small frown line creased between his eyes.
She cleared her throat. She’d been waiting for the right time. The memory of Cyrus – of both the kiss she’d shared with him and the expression on his face when he’d seen her with Lucas a few hours ago – had been nudging at her. The guilt she was feeling for him – about him – was sliding like a knife under the surface of her happiness, threatening to puncture it. Cyrus she would need to confront eventually face to face, but Lucas she had to deal with right now. She had to come clean.
She took a deep breath. ‘Lucas,’ she said, ‘I need to tell you something.’
He paused, his hand on her stomach. ‘No. It’s OK,’ he said softly, shaking his head. ‘You don’t need to tell me. I know.’ And then, after a beat, ‘I understand.’
She tensed. He knew? He’d seen? Of course he had, that’s why he’d been so cold with her at first, so distant.
‘I missed you so much,’ she began, her voice faltering as the excuses started tumbling desperately from her lips. ‘I thought that I would never be the same again. I lost a part of myself the day you died. Or the day I thought you’d died.’
‘You have me back,’ he said, taking her face in his hands, holding her there until she raised her eyes to meet his. ‘I’m yours now for ever,’ he said. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Unless my mum kills you,’ Evie said, swiping at a tear. ‘She thinks you abandoned me in New Mexico. And now she thinks I’m a drug addict. A pregnant one. And that you’re to blame.’
‘Well, maybe one day I’ll be to blame for the last part.’
Evie felt her cheeks blazing red.
‘Don’t worry,’ Lucas said, smoothing a strand of hair out of her eyes. ‘Enough people have tried to kill me. And I’m still here. I’ll take my chances with your mum. I’m not leaving your side ever again.’
She kissed him and then, laughing, fell back against the pillow.
He leant up on one elbow to look at her. ‘What? What is it?’ he asked.
‘Just that you were right.’
‘About what?’
‘You said once that life takes us down a path, that it leads us places that sometimes we don’t want to go.’
He smiled, his fingers stroking along her cheekbone. ‘But it always, always brings us to exactly the point where we’re supposed to be,’ he murmured, leaning down and kissing her.