"He doesn't care enough about me to try again, Ryder. It wasn't me he wanted to hurt."
Pushing down my emotions about him intentionally killing our child, I took her by the hand and walked over to the chair. More than once this past week, she and I had cried all the way to the soup kitchen about losing the baby. I didn't want to cry anymore. I didn't want to think about him or her anymore.
I pulled Selena onto my lap and wrapped my arms around her, loving just having her next to me. Something about feeling her against my body made everything else in life fade away until it was just the two of us. It had been like that ever since that first night we got together years ago, and still all it took was having her with me to make my world livable again.
To make me believe in the dream.
Lightly tracing her finger along my jaw, she looked over at the half-empty bottle of whisky on the table and asked, "Why do you drink so much?"
"To forget."
She gazed into my eyes. "Does it work? Because if it does, I want to drink too. I want to forget."
I shook my head. "No, it doesn't work. It just makes me think more."
"Then why do you do it?"
Sliding my hand through her hair, I stopped and twisted a section around my finger. "Because after I spend hours sitting here alone every night thinking of how much I'd hate myself if you were hurt and I wasn't there to protect you, the alcohol finally knocks me out and I can at least get a few hours of sleep."
Serena pressed her lips together. "I'm sorry. If only I was as strong as I want to be or even if I was like Janelle, you wouldn't have to worry all the time."
Just the thought of being with her sister made me smile, and her mood brightened immediately. "What's so funny?"
"Me with Janelle. That would never happen."
Searching my face for more of an answer, she finally said, "I told you what she thought you were brought here to be. Remember? She thought you were here to be a stud and swore to me she'd never sleep with you."
I slid my hands down Serena's arms and folded the cuffs of her sleeves. "The other night she was singing a different tune, but there wasn't going to be any way in hell I'd ever sleep with her."
When I'd finished fixing her sweater, she placed her palms against my cheeks. "But you'd sleep with me. Did you want to before I came to your room that night?"
Thinking back to those early days when I was new at the estate, I said, "I don't know. I wasn't sure what to make of you. I just knew Janelle was a bitchy little rich girl. But you seemed different."
Her eyebrows raised and she smiled. "Different, huh? Why's that?"
"Your big brown eyes always seemed to be looking at me, and I wasn't sure what you were seeing. Or what you wanted to see."
Serena ran her finger along the collar of my dress shirt and shyly admitted, "You were so foreign compared to everyone here. I wanted to know everything about you, but I didn't know how to do that. So I watched you whenever I could."
"So I was foreign? What if I had been like everyone you were used to?"
She kissed me sweetly, sliding her tongue along the seam of my mouth. "I don't think I would have cared if you were exactly like everyone here with the way you look."
Stuffing my hand into her hair, I pulled her to me and whispered against her lips, "So that's why you always seemed to be staring at me."
"I wanted you from the moment I saw you in that tub," she said with a sexy grin.
"All beaten up?" I asked, remembering how I looked all black and blue and swollen from the fight days earlier.
Serena nodded. "Yes."
We sat there together in silence as memories of that time so long ago made me smile. Finally, she said, "I needed this tonight, Ryder. To see you and see you smile. Thank you."
"You're all that makes me smile anymore."
She snuggled up to me, nestling her head in the space between my shoulder and my jaw, and I couldn't imagine feeling happier than I felt at that moment. For as much as I loved when my cock was inside her, the mere act of holding her as she sat curled up on my lap satisfied my need for her tonight.
After a few minutes more in silence of my apartment, I said, "Tell me what it's going to be like when we escape this place, Serena."
Sighing, she kissed my neck and sat up, and in the dim light I saw her eyes open wide with excitement. "It'll just be the two of us and no one else. And we'll spend every night in each other's arms and Sunday mornings we'll sleep in late. There will be nobody telling us who we have to be ever again."
"I want to believe that all can happen. I can't tell you how much I want to believe."