Page 35 of Vow of Vengeance
"We didn't meet in a crowded bar and feel sparks fly. We didn't find each other on a blind date and decide to go with it. This thing between us... it's unconventional, to say the least. And you'd think having a baby with your stalker would be a bad idea." She laughs again.
"Just because it isn't conventional doesn't mean it's any less real. In fact, I think it's more real because of it."
"Do you?" Soren smirks.
"Yes. Because you brought out the worst in me." She scowls, clearly not expecting that.
"I think when you love someone, you're supposed to bring out the best in them."
"Mm." I agree, deciding not to point out that she just as good as confessed to loving me. "But you turned me into someone I don't recognize. A hypocrite, for one thing. I mean, you're chained to my bed."
"You're really seducing me with this romantic tribute." She deadpans.
I laugh now. "What I mean to say is that, you've seen the darkest part of me. And I think I've seen you at the lowest you'll ever be again."
She considers it a moment. "I want to say I've been lower, but I don't know. Is it wrong that finding out my husband was a rapistisn'tthe lowest I've been?" She cringes, biting her lip in penance. "It feels wrong."
"It all hurts." I tell her. "You don't need to quantify your pain to make it valid."
Soren blinks at me. "Have you been listening in on my sessions with Georgia?"
"Georgia?"
"Dr. Farrell." She laughs. "Georgia. Have you been eavesdropping or something? Because that was a remarkably well-adjusted sentiment."
"I'm just well-adjusted on my own." I muse, swiping a strand of dark hair out of her eyes. "It doesn't matter what your greatest pain is, Ren. What matters is that I'll never let you hurt the way you've been hurt before."
It's a bold claim, given that I'm the asshole who showed her what her husband was doing behind her back in the first place.
She swallows. "How can you promise that? You can't control everything."
"No, I can't. But I can promise you that I'll take every ounce of pain that you can give me. I can promise you that I'll tear out my own heart before letting yours break ever again."
"Declan..." She whispers my name across my lips, a sigh that holds so much at once. Desire, hope, fear... "What if—?"
"I already told you, Ren. I will give you the world. But you're right..." As much as I hate to admit it, I can't live with her chained to this bed forever. It's not the life we want. And that means, I can't control every aspect of her life; It means I can't stop the world from possibly causing her pain. "There's only so much I can do. So, I'll promise you this instead."
Her eyes find mine, but I grip the nape of her neck anyway, offering her no escape from the vulnerable truth I'm about to lay out. "I promise that whatever pain I can't protect you from, I will take from you. And whatever pain I can't take from you, I will hold for you." She shakes her head, but I'm not done. I grip her tighter. "And if I can't hold your pain, I'll holdyouuntil it stops. I'll never leave you alone to deal with it yourself."
A sob breaks from her chest, but there are no tears to follow. They just shine in her eyes. "I'm scared that if we do this and something goes wrong, that I won't make it. That I'll drown in the darkness of my own mind."
"I won't let you drown." It's the only promise I can make to that specific fear. "If you start to drown, I'll wade in and pull you out."
"And if it takes you too?"
I don't bother telling her the darkness can't take me, because she's my light and I'll never let her go out.
Instead, I just tell her, "Then we'll float together."
eighteen
Soren
Ithoughttryingtolive my life after losing my husband and our child had been hard, but trying to live my life after Marissa goes missing is next to impossible. She kept me alive in my grief last year, but in my grief over losing her, Declan does his best to help me find her.
As days pass, I think I'm more worried about what it will be like finding her alive than the possibility of finding her body. I hate myself for even thinking it, but after much insistence, I finally got Declan to divulge everything to me about how he made his first fortune. It was a harrowing conversation as he told me that his software had been sold to people who do unimaginable things... people who make women disappear for their own nefarious needs. People, potentially, like my husband.
The reality is that Vin was a follower. He was also not dominant in the general sense of the word, so seeing him as a predator was a shock in more ways than one. I guess, if I’m honest, I should have seen it. We were together from a young age— an age where people certainly would have questioned our dynamic if they'd been aware. But imagining him going out tohunt women of his own accord, to bring them back to some unknown location and do the awful things he did to them... I can't conceive of it.
