Page 60 of Royally Ruined

I promised I’d save her.

Setting her free was the closest I could get.

- CHAPTER TWENTY -

SCOTCH

My heart was in my mouth, and all I could taste was sadness.

I didn’t even feel the cold anymore.

“Costello,” I whispered, reaching for him. He didn’t pull away. Not when I touched his scar, and not when I pulled him into my arms for an embrace that was meant to wrench him out of his painful memories.

When he hugged me back, I knew I had.

“There it is,” he said softly. He laughed and it was like cracking bones. “Now you know it all.”

Snowflakes had gathered on his hair. I wiped them away; all I wanted to do was help him, do any tiny little act of kindness. This man had told me a story, but he’d given me so much more.

Stroking his jaw, I said, “I couldn’t have known.”

“No. Of course not.”

“If you’d told me early on ...”

“You probably would have never brought me here.” He lifted his eyes enough to look at my mother’s house.

I followed his stare, saying, “Did you ever learn who the dirty cop was that betrayed your sister?”

Costello tightened his hold on me. He was so drained. “No. I’d never seen him, and so I had to look even more foolish when I couldn’t identify him or describe his face to my father.”

“Did Lulabelle not ... say anything about the attack?”

He grimaced. “She said some things, but after how she’d suffered, no one tried to drill her for info, especially not me. And then she was gone.”

“And the others, Romeo and his guys?”

“They probably died in the fire. If not, they might as well have.”

His implication was dark.He wants those men dead. So does his father.It was the same reason I was still running. I wondered why Romeo had been brave enough—or stupid enough—to mess with the Badds. And how had he gotten a cop to help him?

I had no answers. But I did understand Costello’s hang-ups, finally.

“Let’s go inside,” he said.

“Are you sure? We don’t have to, I mean, I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to leave.”

He leaned away so he could squint down at me. His hands were cool from the air, but when they touched my cheeks, I warmed. He could have been made of ice—and once I’d thought he was—and I’d still want him to hold me.

His kiss wasn’t soft. This was greedy, the mouth of a man who had given something special to me and now wanted to fill the hole it had left with whatever I could give. In my ear he whispered, “You really think I’d abandon you, after everything?” Weakness spread through my legs.

“No. But I’m still having trouble picturing you working with my uncle to solve this Darien problem.”

Fuck, I loved when he smiled. “It’ll be hard. So let’s go back in there before he thinks even worse things about me. Like the fact I’m hiding in the backyard with his niece.”

I enjoyed thinking about these worse things, but he was right: it was time to get out of the snow. We pushed the back door open, and as we did, Gina ran around the corner. “I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop!” she cried.

Chasing her down, I shook snow off my hair and onto her. “Uh-huh. Sure.” My laughter faded when I saw my mother and uncle at the kitchen table. My father was sitting with them, and every set of those eyes was fixed with distrust on the man standing at my side.

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