Page 157 of Wicked Deception
I am that rock for her now, and the plants are mostly decorative. She still talks to them, but I don’t think they talk back. Even if they did, so what?
“Are you happy?” Fallon asks, her voice breaking me from my thoughts.
I lift her up. “I’m shaking with it, love.”
Her eyes shine. “Now you really can never let me go. Letusgo.”
My laugh is more like the scratchy growl of a lion. “Even without the children you give me, I never would letyougo.”
That ADHD medication she’d been prescribed for years had been poisoning her body and her mind. That’s why, without taking it, Fallon was free to just be herself.
The woman I fell madly in love with.
Patrick wobbles away from my dad and his brother with a cookie. “Mummy! Cookie!”
I pull Patrick in, crushing them both against me. Patrick lets out a startled giggle from my strength.
“I love you, wife,” I whisper into her hair. “You, and your chaos. I’ll take a hundred of you if it means I get this.”
She looks up, smiling through tears. “Even the manic days?”
“Especially those.” I brush her cheek with my thumb. “They’re what make you, you.”
After Fallon gets her check from the bookstore, which she hands to me without even looking at the amount, we head back to our flat, which is now a combination of both places. We put Patrick to bed, who had already passed out from all the excitement.
We need to pack, but right now, I just want to hold the woman I love. The woman who saved me. She gave me everything. A son who carries the Quinlan name, and a new baby on the way. I hope this one is a little girl who will inherit her mother’s red hair.
And her wild heart.
And as I lie here and hold her, I’m surrounded by a peace I never thought I’d earn because of what I do for a living.
One thing is clear…
This is now my Quinlan Empire, and I couldn’t have built it without Fallon Nova.
