She was still out there.
She. Was. Still. Fucking. Out. There.
By now she probably knew that Gabriella was awake and getting better. Was she planning on coming back to finish the job? Was my girl still in danger? Could she be waiting to strike again?
Would that crazy bitch try to take Gabriella away from me again?
Oh, fuck. I couldn’t breathe.
I was going insane with all the possibilities. I wouldn’t let anything happen to her, I assured myself. That bitch would have to go through me to get to my girl. She was safe now. I wasn’t going anywhere and it was easier to get into Fort Knox than this hospital because of Seller’s men.
It was with that thought that I was able to draw in a deep breath. Frustrated, I jerked to my feet and turned to glare at the two men standing on either side of Gabriella’s bed. “That’s enough,” I growled at them. “She’s answered your questions. Can’t you see she’s in pain and exhausted?”
“We’re aware of that, Mr. Bryant, and we apologize. But we have to know everything,” the skinny local cop tried to be explain.
“And she’s told you everything she remembers.” I crossed the room and opened the door for them. “If you have any other questions, relay them through Annabelle Cassidy or Emmie Armstrong. She’s done.”
The two men pressed their lips together in a firm line but didn’t argue with me. Putting away their notebooks and the little recorder the Fed had been using, they left. I watched until they had reached the elevator before turning my gaze to the two guards standing outside the door.
“No more visitors. I don’t care who it is. She’s going to sleep and doesn’t need to be disturbed.”
They both nodded but didn’t speak so I closed the door and moved toward Gabriella’s bed.
Her eyes were full of wary amusement as I approached. “Thanks for saving me. I was starting to feel like I’d done something wrong with the way they kept pressing me for more details.”
“You look tired. Try to go to sleep. Do you need anything for pain?” I pushed a few strands of freshly washed hair away from her face.
She’d pleaded and pleaded with the staff to wash her hair all day. They had told her they could give her some dry shampoo but she threw a fit over that. She’d wanted clean hair, she’d yelled. It was hard for her to sleep with dirty hair; that’s the way it had always been.
The nurses hadn’t relented, however, so I’d called Annabelle who had shown up with Alexis, Marissa and two local stylists who had given Gabriella’s hair a thorough washing as well as a head, shoulder, and face massage. She had been so relaxed that she had fallen asleep. During the whole thing, I’d stood at the door with Seller’s guards and dared the nurses to interrupt.
Sure, I knew that they had only been doing their job and following protocol, but if my girl wanted something, I was going to make sure that she got it. What the hell could washing her hair hurt?
“I still have a little while before I need the pain meds.” She lifted her hands, a sleepy look in her eyes. “Come lie with me.”
I looked down at her in that narrow hospital bed. I would have given anything to be able to lie down beside her and hold her. Every fiber inside of me was screaming to do it, but I didn’t want to hurt her. That bed wasn’t big enough for me and her and all the tubes that were still connected to her. She still had a chest tube in to keep fluid out of her left lung. The IV was still connected, although they had to move it the day before because the vein had perforated. She continued to wear her oxygen but the doctor had reduced the flow so she wasn’t getting nearly as much as she had been.
“I can’t, baby. I don’t want to hurt you.” I stroked a finger down her cheek, trying to ignore the way she glared up at me.
“Oh, please. You aren’t going to hurt me. I’m not made of glass.” I shook my head and her glare turned into a pout. “Please? I’ll sleep better if you’re beside me.”
“You mean you’ll sleep better because you’ll have a punching bag to kick in your sleep,” I teased her.
“I won’t, I swear.” She reached for my hand and gave it a little tug. “Please, Liam. I need you.”
Everything inside of me froze and I closed my eyes as I savored her words. Ah, fuck. I couldn’t turn that down. I wasn’t strong enough to deny her now. Muttering a curse, I opened my eyes. “Okay, baby. Okay.”
She grinned sleepily up at me and scooted over before turning onto her right side to give me room. I was a lot bigger now than I’d been when we’d been together before. I wasn’t the skinny drug addict I’d once been. With Linc Spencer’s help, I’d gained thirty pounds of muscle, so I took up a hell of a lot more room than she did.
I toed-off my shoes and carefully dropped down onto the bed next to her. When I remained on my side, she pouted at me again and gave my shoulder a shove. Sighing, I rolled onto my back, trying not to jostle her too much. As soon as I was comfortable, she pounced on me. Her head landed on my chest, her arm going across my waist and her leg wrapped over both of mine.
The feel of having her in my arms once more, of holding her like that, was pure nirvana. It was almost overwhelming. Something in my chest clenched and my eyes began to sting. A lump filled my throat, so big that I couldn’t have spoken even if my life had depended on it.
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and pressed my lips to the top of her head, closing my eyes as I breathed in her clean scent. Fuck, this felt good. It was better than anything I’d ever felt before—ten times more powerful than any drug I’d ever done.
She yawned and cuddled against my chest even more. We lay like that for a long while, neither of us speaking. I didn’t want this little slice of paradise to end.
Soon, the hell of a week I’d had started to catch up to me and my eyes began to drift closed, sleep slowly taking me as its prisoner. I was almost under when I heard Gabriella speak.
“Maybe I did dream that you told me you loved me,” she murmured, as if she were talking to herself.
My eyes snapped open and I lifted my head so I could see her face better. Her eyes were no longer sleepy, but full of sadness. “What did you say?”
She grimaced. “You haven’t said it again, so I’m pretty sure I was dreaming the part where you said you loved me.”
My stomach dropped. Fuck, I was such an idiot.
I hadn’t realized I had not told her I loved her since she’d first woken up. I rarely said it to anyone, even my sister, who was the only other person in the world I loved as much as Gabriella. I wasn’t the type of guy to just blurt out how I felt. I bottled it up, kept it hidden.
During our relationship, I hadn’t told her how I felt about her, not once. That didn’t mean I hadn’t loved her then. I had probably fallen for her the first time we had literally bumped into each other. I’d been such a pussy back then, hiding my love from her like a coward.
Even though I hadn’t said the words, that didn’t mean I hadn’t shown her how I felt, especially in the last few days. I was trying to prove to her that she was my everything. To build up her trust in me and earn her love back. I realized right then that she needed the words more than anything else I could have offered her.
With my free hand, I grasped hold of her chin, lifting her head so that I could see her eyes. She looked so damned sad, so fucking lost. I couldn’t stand that. She should never have that look on her beautiful face. Never. “You didn’t dream it,” I told her and brushed a kiss over each of her eyes. “I love you, little Brie. More than anything or anyone in the world. You are my everything. I know I haven’t proved that, especially in the last few years, but I swear to you on all that I have that I will change it.”
“Liam.” She breathed my name, her chin trembling.
I lowered my head and kissed her lips tenderly. My body instantly reacted but I reined in my desire. She was hurt; there was no way in hell I was going to try and seduce her then and there. My dick didn’t like that, though, and pressed painfully against the zipper of my jeans
.
“I love you too, Liam.”
The pain below my waist was quickly forgotten as those five small, yet incredibly powerful, words washed over me. I sucked in a deep breath, felt my eyes and throat stinging tears and quickly closed my eyes, savoring those words and this feeling of wonder.
How could she still love me after everything I’d put her through? After all that fucked-up shit that I’d thrown her way time after time? Her strength and love knew no limits if she was capable of loving me, especially after how I’d treated her when I’d waken up from my accident. I had so many regrets. So many damn regrets and no way to correct them.
“Ah, baby.” I pressed my forehead against hers. “I don’t know how you’re able to love me after everything I’ve put you through, but I’m so fucking glad you do.”
I felt her fingers stroking through my hair, holding me against her. “I’ve loved you from day one, Liam. Even when you didn’t want my love, when you didn’t want me, I loved you.”
“I’ve always wanted you, Brie. Always.”
A small sigh left her. “It didn’t seem like it.”
“I know and I’m sorry. You scared the living hell out of me, baby. Not much in this world scares me, but you did. So I ran in the opposite direction, yet you still seemed to like me despite that and I started pushing you away instead.” I shook my head, remembering my stupidity. “When you hooked up with Axton, I nearly lost my mind.”
Her brown eyes darkened with regret. “Axton and I never should have gotten together. All he wanted was a shield from his feelings for Emmie and I just wanted to forget about you. It didn’t help. Even when I was with him, all I could think about was you. You were like a cancer eating away at my sanity. I hated it, and you, almost as much as I loved you.”
There were those three magical words again. ‘I love you.’ It was scary how much three little words put together like that was so fucking powerful. They were able to ease the tightness in my chest, yet make my throat dry and choked all at the same time. I wanted to hear those damn words a thousand times a day.
“When you and Ax broke up, I tried to clean up my act and went after you. I seriously fucked that up that first time, though. I was high and stupid, and I figured if you had really wanted to be with me for more than just a hookup, you would have stuck around even after Ax interrupted us.”
Gabriella’s eyes narrowed. “It didn’t feel like you wanted me to stick around. If anything, it seemed like you were kicking me out. After seeing you go through women like you did drugs, I thought that once was all you wanted.” She bit into her bottom lip for a long moment before grimacing. “It’s crazy, Liam. All that time we were together we never really talked about how we felt.” I grimaced, knowing that she was right. Sure we had talked, but never actually about how we felt. At least I hadn’t. “I loved you and I always thought that you loved me back, but that was about it. When we were over, I figured I’d just imagined your love. And then you had the accident. You woke up and made me leave. I thought for sure that you hated me.”
I jerked as if she’d stabbed me. “No.” It came out louder than I expected. “God, no. Brie, I loved you—love you. I will always love you. No one, not one fucking person, touches my heart like you do.”
“I believe you,” she whispered.
Relief surged through me. “Thank you.”
We slipped back into quietness that was kind of peaceful. I held her as close as I dared, not wanting to hurt her. Her breathing was starting to even out and mine was trying to mimic hers. Sleep was ready to drag me under again when I felt her nails dig into my back and she lifted her head.
“Liam, will you tell me about that night?”
I lifted my lids, frowning down at her. “What night, baby?”
“That New Year’s Eve. Before the accident.” I started to shake my head, not wanting to remember that fucked-up night but her eyes turned pleading. “I know you went to my grandfather’s house. He told me what he said to you.”
Everything inside of me turned cold. I started to pull away, that old bastard’s words echoing in my ears. Gabriella tightened her arm around my waist. “Please don’t go. If you don’t want to tell me, then that’s fine. I just wanted to hear your side.”
“Fuck, Brie.” I closed my eyes. “Did he tell you the truth, or just his version of it?” I wouldn’t have put it past the old man to have continued to try and keep us apart even from the grave.
She let out a shaky breath. “I think he told me the truth. It was weighing pretty heavily on him and he knew he wasn’t going to live through another night. What he told me… It was why I was at the festival in the first place. I needed to see you. I wanted to confront you about it and see if we still stood a chance.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say, then.” I lifted my lids and focused on the wall behind her, not sure I was strong enough to meet her gaze yet.
“I wanted to hear it come from you. But if you don’t want to…”
I pressed a finger to her lips, efficiently shutting her up. Swallowing hard, I finally locked gazes with her, letting her see all the emotions roiling inside of me. She let out a small gasp and I started telling her the story she obviously was desperate to hear…
***
NINETEEN MONTHS EARLIER
New York in December was a nice sight. With the snow falling, the lights were making each snowflake almost glisten. Connecticut was even better. Not that I would ever want to live there, but still, it was pretty. I wondered if next December I would get to share this with Marissa and Gabriella.
Fuck, I hoped so.
It had taken me two days to get up the nerve, two days since my release from rehab, but here I was. Driving my Ferrari up the long-ass driveway that belonged to the Moreitti family. I’d made a wild guess and figured that Gabriella was here with the old man rather than at the New York apartment or even back in California with Alexis. I knew she loved her grandfather and tried to spend holidays with him as often as possible.
Swallowing the nervous nausea trying to climb its way out of my throat, I turned off my car and looked up at Gabriella’s childhood home. Unlike me, she had grown up in a privileged household. Her grandfather and aunt ran a multimillion-dollar company, representing some of Italy’s most important fashion designers. I’d grown up on a farm for the most part, and even though it had been profitable at times, more often than not it hadn’t been. Not until OtherWorld had hit it big and Wroth had put his money into making it one of Tennessee’s biggest working farms.
Muttering a vicious curse, I climbed out of my Ferrari and took the steps to the front door two at a time. My hand was sweaty as I lifted it to ring the doorbell. The wind was starting to pick up and I pulled my winter coat around me a little tighter as I waited for someone to open the door.
Two minutes passed with no answer so I rang the doorbell again. No answer. “Ah, come on, Brie,” I muttered to myself and pressed the doorbell twice more before lifting my fist to knock. “Don’t be like this.”
From inside the house, I finally heard someone yelling out for me to hold my horses. Seconds later the door was pulled open and an angry-eyed Luciano Moreitti stood there glaring daggers at me. From the first time Gabriella had introduced us, Luciano had made it very clear that he didn’t think I was good enough for his favorite granddaughter. We’d been in agreement on that, but I was selfish enough not to give a fuck. I might not be good enough, probably never would be, but I wanted to be a part of her life for as long as she was willing to let me.
“What do you want?” Luciano snarled, tying his robe around him a little more firmly.
Had I woke him up? It wasn’t even seven o’clock on New Year’s Eve. Disappointment flooded through me as I realized that Gabriella probably wasn’t there after all. “I’m looking for Gabriella.” Her full name sounded unnatural on my tongue, but I knew her grandfather hated it when I called her Brie.
“She’s out,” he informed me with a pleased smirk on his face. “An ol
d boyfriend took her off hours ago for a party of some sort. She told me not to wait up for her.”
My disappointed turned to jealousy mixed with regret and self-hate. So, she had moved on. What the fuck had I been thinking that she would actually wait for me to clean my shit up? I’d lost her…
“She’s been seeing William for weeks now,” Luciano continued, looking so pleased with himself. I wanted to punch the bastard in the face, make him swallow a few teeth. “I think they reconnected almost as soon as she came back from California in October.”
A new pain sliced through me. She’d kicked me out in October and I’d gone straight into rehab, hoping to find the real me without the drugs. I had with the help of my doctor, nurses, and Dallas. But I’d also realized that I wasn’t me without Gabriella. I wanted her back, needed that girl more than anything else in the world. Without her I was nothing—less than nothing, really.
And she hadn’t even missed me. She had been hooking up with her ex while I’d been detoxing, fighting the hell that was cravings and excruciating pain of going without drugs completely cold turkey for the first time in over a decade. Had she even thought about me? Or was she over me and glad to be through with our relationship?
“William asked me yesterday if he could marry her,” the old man was saying now and I tuned in as everything inside of me went cold. “I suspect he will be asking her tonight at that party he’s taking her to.”
What? No. No, no, no. God, I couldn’t handle that. My fiery little Italian goddess married to someone else? It would destroy me. She couldn’t marry someone else, give herself to him completely like that, maybe even have kids with him.
I stumbled back, my knees threatening to buckle as the force of that reality robbed me of my strength. “No,” I choked out. “She wouldn’t.”
The smug look on Luciano’s face turned from smug to steel. “Si, she will. And you can’t do a damned thing about it. She deserves the kind of life that William can and will give her. What kind of life would she have with you, rocker-boy? One full of wondering if you will slip up again and perhaps overdose on those drugs you love more than her?”