Prologue
Hollis
He always lovedme more than I deserved.
An all-consuming love that threatened to break us apart the moment he killed my brother.
But he didn’t know the man whose life he had taken until I told him, and I forgave him almost immediately.
I had to.
He was the only one left alive that loved me.
Bates Murphy stood as the last man that accepted me for who I truly was after that night.
He’d made his fair share of mistakes, left me from time to time, but always came back home to where his heart was.
Three years had passed since the last time he left me, and I secretly always wondered if the next time would be just around the corner.
I groaned and let out my breath in a rush as I crossed an arm to cover my eyes. I had spent most of the day in bed staring at the ceiling, counting the small cracks that I never much noticed before, wondering if my concerns were something that should be talked about or if I was doing the right thing by holding it all inside.
Everything seemed to be too easy lately—almost as if he had been purposely walking on eggshells around me to make sure that I knew he never planned on making another ‘mistake.’
I think that could be attributed to how he saw the last one play out. Rebecca had been an ex-girlfriend of his.
A whore of Christmas Past and I took care of her.
We both did.
Together.
Ever since, Bates had been the doting man he was when I first met him.
Even after he found out that I wasn’t what I seemed to be, he loved me more, not less like I expected.
Well, that was a lie.
I expected to be beaten and raped like I had been before I met him for being a ‘freak’ but instead, he told me that no man alive would ever love me more than he did—and it was the truth.
It always had been.
And after all this time, I still wasn’t sure that I deserved it.
“Hey.”
The soft, curious tone that greeted me from just outside the bedroom door made my lips curve up into a smile almost immediately.
With a happy sigh, I pushed myself up to my elbows and glanced over at Bates who watched me from the doorway with the same soft curiosity of his tone reflected in his gaze.
Maybe I didn’t deserve to be loved by him.
But he was mine.
He always had been.
And to take him from me would mean having to take my life first.