Page 73 of Love, Hate, Love

“You know.”

“Fine. Maybe I do, but I can’t seem to help it. I want you.”

I’d craved those words for so long. I’d wished on stars, blown out candles, and tossed coins into wells. Now, when my world was on its ear and the cost could be the small amount of freedom I had left, he’d said them. It was the definition of bittersweet.

“We can’t do this. We both signed contracts saying we wouldn’t.” In spite of my words, I hadn’t made so much as the simplest attempt to get out of his arms. Why now? Why did he have to do thisnow?

“We could be discreet,” he said.

“I’m a thief, remember?” I said, trying to get the dick in him to wake up again.

“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. I want you and I don’t think I can shut it off.”

“But I’m a thief and spoiled and a princess,” I said, reminding him of all the things I’d been called lately, some of which he’d cosigned.

“Spoiledandprincessare redundant. That’s really just one, not two.” He smirked. “If we tallied it up, I think you dislike more things about me than I dislike about you, and yet I don’t care about any of them.”

“If someone finds out, they’ll send me to prison.”

“No, they won’t. No one is taking you off this ranch and throwing you in prison. No one.” His arms tightened around me, as if he were fighting off some invisible threat already.

“We both know there’s a risk.”

He held me in silence for another moment before his arms loosened. I slid down his body, fighting my own urge to wrap myself around him.

He took a step back, as if giving us both the buffer we needed tonottake this to the next step.

“We should head back to the main house,” he said.

I took a few steps, waiting for him to come. He was standing there, watching me.

“Aren’t you coming?”

“I’ll follow in a few,” he said.

I nodded, leaving him in the barn and walking back alone, letting my mind once again wonder what things might’ve been like if I’d never left this place.

Chapter33

Leah

“Where is she?”I heard my mother calling from all the way in my bedroom.

I walked into the living room, prepared to see my mother, somehow imaging she’d be alone, only to find Edwin as well, standing beside Kade.

“I hope you’re doing the right thing,” Edwin said.

“Don’t I always?” I replied, daring him to say differently. My mother didn’t chime in, as she took her lead from Edwin, always. If he didn’t make a thing of it, she didn’t. If he did, I’d hear about it for days. As much as I loved her, I never wanted to be like her.

Kade was watching Edwin like an eagle who’d spotted a rat in a field.

“Edwin, let’s give them time to go get ready. There’s lots to be done still. Where’s your dress before we leave? Where’s your room? Let me see it.”

She followed me out and into the bedroom that had become mine.

“This is quite cute,” she said, looking around.

Thankfully, she hadn’t come when I was still living the shed life. I might never have heard the end of it.

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