Page 157 of Beautiful Obsessions
We were all beautifully ruined.Every one of us.But still here.Still choosing each other.
Archie glanced at me, catching whatever was on my face.
“What?”
I shook my head.
Nothing.Everything.
The wind moved through the olive trees.
The sky burned gold as the sun dipped low over the hills.
And for the first time in a long time, peace didn’t feel temporary.
It felt like forever.
There would always be enemies and shadows beyond the gates.Men with grudges.Blood debts.Old wars waiting for the right moment to wake again.
That was the nature of loving men like ours.The nature of being one of them.
And still—love had taken root here anyway.
Wild as ivy.Stubborn and impossible to kill.
Marigold yawned against Archie’s chest, her tiny fingers stretching toward me, heavy with sleep.I took her hand.Archie took mine.
And sitting there, between the man I loved and the child we had made from all the broken, jagged pieces of ourselves, something settled inside me.A truth, quiet and sharp.
My whole life, I had fought for control like it was survival.Like if I held on tight enough, I could outrun fate.But fate had found me anyway.
Not in the ruin.But in Archie.In Marigold.In everything we were.
Messy.Violent.Imperfect.
Ours.
Laughter carried through the house behind us as night folded itself over Tuscany, warm and endless, wrapping around the life we had built from our impossible devotion.
And looking at it, I understood that some loves do not save you.
They unmake you first.Strip you down to nothing.And if they are true, if they survive the fire and the wreckage and the ugly things people do to each other, they build something in the ashes so beautiful that you almost forget what it cost to get there.
ThinkI tied up every loose end?Think every secret has been buried, every debt paid, every monster dragged into the light?
Not quite.
Because there’s still one question I haven’t answered.
Whatever happened to the Cavalho black sheep, DeMarco Cavalho?
If you think I’m finished dragging you into dangerous rooms with beautiful, brutal men, you clearly haven’t learned your lesson yet.
A brand-new series is waiting, filled with new faces, old sins, and men who will go to war for their women.
Come meet the next family.
They’ve been expecting you.
