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“The person you became is wonderful, Trevan. Wonderful.”

I turned my attention to her. To the beautiful belief written on her face.

“I’m terrified of changing it.” I croaked the admission. “Terrified to hope.”

Terrified to think I might be worthy of him.

I’d succumbed to the conviction that it was my punishment. That I had no right. That Wesley was so much better off without me.

But I’d thought that about Elena, too.

“Wesley.” She said his name like she’d fallen in love with him in a heartbeat. Same way as she’d done when Kai had been placed into her arms.

She traced her fingertips over the W woven in my fallen castle. Another broken brick.

“I send money every month. Ensure he’ll never go hungry or fear for anything the way I did growing up. But I don’t know if I’m worthy of being anything more than that.”

Elena pushed up higher to peer down at me. Her gaze was guttingly gentle as it washed over my face. “You are worthy, Trevan. You’re worthy of me and of so many others. And I promise you, you are worthy of him.”

“I’m terrified of it.”

Of fucking him up the way my mother had done me.

Of dragging him into a life that was wrought with peril.

Elena scratched her fingers through my stubble. “We’re always terrified of the things that mean most. But do you want it? Do you want him in your life?”

“It’s the two of you, Elena. It’s the two of you that have always been missing in me.”

Was it possible? Could I find a way to make him a part of us?

I grabbed her hand and pressed the back of it to my lips. “You make me see something different in myself.”

“All those amazing things have always been there.”

“How are you so perfect for me?” I murmured.

“I guess I was just made that way.” There was wistfulness and a tease woven into it.

“Made for me.”

“That’s right,” she said softly as she shifted and climbed up to straddle me at the hips.

I couldn’t do anything but sink my fingers into her bare thighs, grip onto her as my cock instantly hardened. Growing long and thick beneath the spot where her bare pussy pressed against it.

She gasped a little sound, like maybe she was surprised that she had this effect on me.

“You have any idea what it’s been like? Trying to pretend like you don’t do this to me?” The question ground off my tongue. “That every innocent brush of your hands didn’t have me aching?”

She huffed a sound of disbelief, a little sass tweaking the contours of her stunning face.

Black hair raining around her delicate shoulders.

Body naked and so fucking sexy I still kept thinking I had to be dreaming.

No chance that someone like me could be given someone like her.

“Those brushes weren’t so innocent, Trevan Niles. Do you think I wasn’t begging for you to touch me back? For you to look at me the same way as I was looking at you? I ached for you in a way that was beyond normal. Every night, I imagined you coming to me. Sneaking into my room and peeling me out of my clothes and having me in the dark.”