Page 121 of Forever Fighting
He shifts, switching hands with the gauze and the images so he can look at it clearer. “This was taken this morning.”
And now I’m going to be sick. “I know.”
“No, you don’t know. Who was following me to take this, and where did you get it?”
“Jesus, Roman!” I spin around, my arms flying everywhere. “You’re kissing a woman, and that’s your response?”
“Braelyn, I wasn’t kissing her. A woman came up to me in the coffee shop, literally blindsided me with a hug before she kissed me out of fucking nowhere. What you’re seeing is my hands on her shoulders, pushing her back. She was acting like some deranged fan, and I told her to back off. So again, where did you get this?”
He’s telling the truth. It’s written all over him.
“Corporate Barbie, who turned into Super Psycho Stalker Barbie. She’s been having us all, including Adam, followed. But it all started with a vendetta against me. All of it. Her husband was my patient, and he coded and died, but she heard me tell one of the doctors that I knew he was going to code before it happened. Since then, she’s believed I had something to do with his death somehow.”
He blinks at me. Well, with one eye. But he’s staring at me and blinking. “That’s… seriously fucking scary. Are you okay? Did you have her arrested?”
“No. Adam showed up and blackmailed her to stay away from me. She said she was done with me anyway now that she took you from me.” I jut my chin toward the pictures.
“But you came here tonight anyway.”
“I was angry and hurt, but I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“I knew deep down that you’d never hurt me like that.”
“Never. Not ever.” He sets the pictures down on the table he’s sitting on and grabs my waist. “I finally won you after all these years. Do you honestly think I’d ever throw that away? Braelyn, there is no other woman on this planet for me but you. And there never will be. It’s you and me, kid. That’s how our story goes.” He flips his hand over and shows me the infinity symbol tattoo. “This is us.”
I sigh and sink into him. He’s right. Ours is the sort of story that never ends. It’s forever.
A second later, the door opens and in walk Hayes and Forest. I hadn’t thought much about the fact that they weren’t in here with us until now.
“It’s done,” Forest announces.
“What’s done?” I question.
“Adam,” he replies.
EPILOGUE
ROMAN
Sometimes it’s good to be a Fritz. But most of the time, in this town, it’s good to never have fucked over Seamus O’Brien or have ever tried. That’s not to say I was cool with his plan. I wasn’t. Not necessarily, and mostly because I knew how it would affect Braelyn.
“I don’t trust yer wife’s twat of an ex,” Seamus said bluntly as we sat in the car in the back of the warehouse.
“I don’t either,” I agreed. “And that started before he ever tried to get me hurt and then arrested.”
“You’re gonna have to lose. Or at least make it look like ye are. And yer gonna have to look roughed up before that.”
I sat there, my gaze out the window, but I heard him. “So Adam bets and bets hard, thinking you’re in on his scheme,” I surmised.
“We’ll bet hard on ye while quietly spreading the word around the room that you’re not in peak form after yer public scandal with your wife. We’ll whisper around that you’re hurt.”
“Adam needs to hear it.”
“He will.”
I nodded. “I’m not losing. I won’t fucking go down, and I won’t give him thesatisfaction of it.”
