Page 170 of Pride: The Rogue
How funny. These past weeks, she’d convinced herself that just seeing Lachlan one more time would be enough to ease the hurt, only to—
A low, raspy, pant cut all the way through her anguish.
Out of breath, Lachlan, arms overflowing, angled his muscular frame back inside.
Livian’s eyes widened, and her eyebrows went shooting up.
Squatting, Lachlan set the enormous burden in his arms at Livian’s feet.
Wide-eyed, Livian’s arms went slack, and she let the useless limbs fall to her sides.
“Been carrying this,” he said when he’d straightened.
She stared at the familiar branch, large enough in size to be an entire tree.
“How…?” she whispered unable to form complete thoughts and trying to make sense of the cherished item at her feet—most importantly, why Lachlan had gone out of the way to find it and bring it to her.
Why…unless…?
Not allowing herself to hope, she wrenched her gaze from the branch and returned her focus to Lachlan. “I thought…it’d been chopped,” she said, her voice thick.
“Yea, I…may have set it aside before anyone could get to that.” He scrubbed the back of his arm across his forehead.
“W-Why?” she asked quietly when he didn’t say more than that.
Slightly panicked-looking, Lachlan turned his palms up. “I…I think…” He grimaced. “No. I don’t think,I know, even back then, even after only just meeting you, Livian,” he said hoarsely, moving his gaze over her face, “that my life was never going to be the same.” His eyes, filled with so much emotion, locked with hers. “That you were meant for me as much as I was meant for you, sweetheart.”
Her breath caught; and she touched her fingers to her mouth.
“I’ve been a bloody arse, Livian.” Lachlan stared at her with ravaged eyes. “At every step of the way, I fought it.”
Unnerved as she’d never seen him, Lachlan rocked on his heels; his gaze skittered about the foyer.
“Because men like me don’t believe in love, because we’ve never been loved, but then, there you were, sleeping in my room and fighting me like a prizefighter, and there’d never been anyone like you. There neverwillbe, love.”
Livian’s mouth trembled.
Love. How many times had she welcomed that endearment from him and wished it’d been spoken in truth?—as it was now.
He stepped around the cherished remnant, the cause of their first meeting, so that no barrier stood between them.
His steady gaze radiated warmth and something that looked very much like…
“I love you, Livian Lovelace.”
Love. Livian’s breath hitched. It looked like love, because it was.
“You…love m-e?” she whispered, her voice catching.
“Ah, sweetheart,” he said gruffly. “I fell in love with you that night on first sight, and I want to spend every goddamned minute of my life making you smile and making myself worthy of you.”
Lachlan’s cherished visage blurred under her tears.
A sob burst from her lungs.
“Aww, sweetheart,” he begged. “Please, don’t cry.” He used both thumbs to wipe the tears from her cheeks.
“But…but…” Despite his pleas, Livian couldn’t stop weeping. “The d-duchess. Y-Your club—”
