Page 40 of Stolen Vows

"It’s okay," I promise her, as I cup her face in my hands, gazing into her eyes. "You’re going to be okay, Cara. You believe that, don’t you?”

She hesitates for a moment before she responds. It's just a second, but it’s enough to set off alarms in my head. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I narrow my eyes at her.

"Cara," I repeat. "If you have any doubts about this at all, you need to tell us now. You can’t go out there into the midst of all of this unless you’re?—"

"Of course, I have my doubts," she replies softly, a small smile tracing up the corners of her lips. "Of course I... I don’t know if I can do this. This is the longest I’ve ever spent away from home in the first place, and now, I’m going up against my father...?”

She trails off for a moment, the emotion cracking her voice.

"But I can’t just stand by and do nothing," she admits. "I’ve done that for too long. I looked the other way when I should have done something about it, I haven’t… I haven’t been the kind of person I want to be."

"You didn’t know."

"I knew enough," she murmurs, her head drooping down to her chest for a moment. "The moment I saw Veronica that night, I should have known something was wrong, I should have known?—"

I clasp her by the shoulders. I can’t stand to hear her talking down on herself like this, as though there’s anything more she could have done. She has been through enough as it is, and I will not let her turn on herself, not now.

"Hey," I cut her off softly. "You’re doing something now. That’s all that matters, okay? You’re going to bring an end to all of this, once and for all. You should be proud of that."

"I’ll be proud of it when I know that it’s done," she replies, sighing heavily. "But... I just can’t help but worry that he’s going to see through all of this. That he’s going to know that this is a trap..."

"Why would he know that?”

She chews her lip for a moment.

"Because I don’t think he would believe I would be able to escape," she confesses.

My heart clenches in my chest. Hearing her speak about herself in those terms, as though it’s so damn impossible for her to believe that she’s capable of doing what needs to be done, I hate it. She’s so much more than she thinks, capable of much bigger things than she will give herself credit for, and I hate that her father seems to have stamped that flame out of her.

"It doesn’t matter what he thinks," I reply hotly. "You can do this, Cara. I know you can. I believe in you, you hear me?”

She looks up at me, her eyes wide, searching for the promise that she will be able to get through all of this.

"You do?”

"Of course I do," I reply. "I wouldn’t even think about sending you out there if I thought you couldn’t handle this. Because I’m not going to lose you. I won’t."

Even as I say it, I am surprised by the intensity of my words—by how much I mean it. Even though I have only known her a few weeks, there is something about her that I know I cannot lose, because, even despite everything that she has been through at the hands of her father, even with the way he has tried to brainwash her into believing that he did nothing wrong, she hasseen through it, she has stepped out into becoming her own person.

And that person—that is a person I am falling in love with.

I press a kiss into her lips, and she lingers there, like all the time in the world for this kiss still wouldn’t be enough.

"Thank you," she breathes back. "I think... I needed that vote of confidence."

"We can go over it again, if you want," I offer to her, but she shakes her head.

"No, I think I’ve done enough of that," she replies. "I have the directions down about as well as I’m ever going to, it’s just that..."

She grips to me a little tighter, as though unwilling to let me go.

"It’s just that I’m worried I might not make it back to you. And that scares me. Because I... I feel like I have something here that I’ve never had before in my life, and I don’t want to lose it now that I know what it feels like."

I wrap my arms around her and pull her against me with a passionate protectiveness, my head against her neck, my breath on her skin. I inhale the scent of her, just as I did last night, wanting to burn it into my memory, as though I could ever forget it.

"You won’t," I promise her fiercely. "I won’t let him. I won’t let anything take you from me, you hear?"

She smiles against my neck. I can feel the movement of her mouth, a small sign of her trust in me. It seems a miracle thatI could have earned that trust at all, given the circumstances under which the two of us met.

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