Page 85 of The Vow

And then the doors unlocked.

I searched out Pat with a questioning gaze. “What are you doing?”

“I’m giving you a choice.”

“To leave?” My brows banged into my forehead.

“If that’s what you still want.”

I reached for the handle, running my fingers along the smooth metal. “And if that’s not what Damon wants.”

“Damon can go pound sand. Or bury me in it,” he added, knowing what he risked. “But I’m not taking you back to the house if you can’t…if you’re unwilling to see any other side.”

I’d looked at his phone. I’d listened to his explanation of what just happened at the event. Shouldn’t that imply Iwaswilling to listen to alternatives?Maybe. Or maybe Pat was a smart man and wanted to hear me say the words or get out of the car. Then there would be no mistaking my choice—no gray area I could look back and convince myself meant something that it didn’t.

My grip closed, feeling the resistance of the door’s latch the same way I felt the resistance in my heart, begging my mind not to push through it.

“And what other side is that, Pat?” I asked softly, sure that while he’d told me about tonight, he wasn’t going to open up about my and Damon’s past.

“The side of a man who became a monster to protect the woman he loves.”

The words fired like a bullet right to my chest, stopping my heart and dropping my hand to my side.

Maybe Damon did enjoy pain now…but he wasn’t the only one.

“Take me home,” I said softly, wondering when I’d gone from hating my estranged husband with every breath to willingly subjecting myself to further emotional destruction at his very capable hands in the chance he might just put me back together when it was all over.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Damon

“Everything all right?” Pat’s question caught me as soon as I opened the car door.

“Yeah.” I slid into the back seat and firmly shut it behind me. “Just had to take care of some loose ends.”

Closing my eyes, I pinched the bridge of my nose and let out a slow breath, the pound in my head pulsing without a missed beat. It was bad enough walking into that event with a migraine, but that camera flash was like a white-hot knife…driven right through my skull by my furious wife.

Dammit, Robber.

As soon as the spots cleared from my vision, I’d grabbed the green man’s camera and checked the image. It was blurry and could be dealt with later. My wife, on the other hand, who’d fled from the room like Cinderella after watching her prince turn into a pumpkin, needed to be stopped.Needed to understand.

Instead, my cheek still stung from the scornof her palm.

Monster.

“And the meeting?”

I stretched my neck side to side, the pounding in my head intensifying. “He’ll send the coordinates tomorrow morning if you could call Charlie and tell him to have the helicopter ready.”

I didn’t know where Belmont’s private lair was, but I had a feeling it would require a flight.

“Will do,” Pat grumbled and pulled away from the convention center for the second time tonight.

Monster.

Fuck.Grabbing the tail of my bow tie, I tugged and freed it from around my neck.

There was no reasoning with her when she was this angry, and who the hell knew? Maybe after what I’d done, I had no right to. So, I bundled her into the car knowing Pat would get her home safe and went back inside in search of that camera.

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