Page 211 of The Heart You Kept

For what we could have been, for the future we could have had. And I can’t imagine feeling the way I do about him with anyone else.

He well and truly broke me.

My phone beeps with a text and I know it’s Helene checking on me for the fifteenth time tonight. I roll over and read it:

Mr. Doe

I’m at your front door.

I sit up, huh? I concentrate and read it again, am I seeing things? I get up and turn the light on, walk downstairs and open the front door.

“Hi, Doe,” Edward says softly as his eyes search mine. “Can I come in?” He walks past me into the house and I close the door behind him.

“What are you doing here?” I cross my arms as I try to shield myself from his hurt.

“I love you.” His eyes search mine. “More than anything…I love you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

ALORA

I stare at him, shocked to my core, unsure and confused.

“You said you loved me?” He frowns. “Today in the car….”

“I do.”

He takes me into his arms and kisses me softly, his lips linger over mine.

A thousand emotions run through me all at the same time, disbelief, betrayal….

Fear.

“Why….” I frown as I step back from him. “What made you realize this now?”

“There’s no point to anything. To having everything.” He holds my face in his hands as he stares down at me. “If I don’t have you it…all means nothing. I have to try.”

My eyes search his, that doesn’t sound very convincing. “Try?”

“I can’t do this without you, nor would I want to.”

“Since when?”

“Since Switzerland,” he whispers against my lips. “And I can’t fight myself over loving you any longer.”

Oh….

Intimacy runs between us as we kiss, and holding him in my arms makes everything instantly better.

“You’ve had me since the day we met, you took my heart with you and never let me go,” he murmurs against my lips.

“It was you who kept mine.” I smile though tears as he holds me close, and I feel the tectonic plates slowly shift into place.

After the worst month in history, we can finally kiss and make up.

I take his hand and lead him up the stairs, he’s somber and quiet and I don’t know what he’s been through but he doesn’t seem to be himself.

As if finally opening up to me has broken him on some level.