Chapter 230

“I’m going to spend the rest of my life begging you to forgive me,” Hilliard said. “For not answering the phone. For letting you go through that alone. For all of it.” He held out one hand, palm up — an offering. “I don’t want to take them from you, Cailin. I want to help you protect them. From my family. From Charla. From all of it.”

Cailin looked at his hand. She looked at his face. He was crying — silent tears tracking slowly through the stubble on his jaw.

She wanted to believe him. God, she wanted to believe him.

But five years of pain didn’t dissolve with a single apology.

“Get up,” Cailin said. Her voice was cold.

Hilliard didn’t move.

“I said get up,” she snapped. “Don’t you dare kneel to me now. Not after everything.”

She pushed the covers back and stood, swaying slightly on her feet.

“You think knowing their names makes you a father?” she asked. “You think reading a piece of paper makes you a husband?”

She walked to the door.

“You’re right, Hilliard. You have a great deal of begging ahead of you. But not today.”

She opened the door and paused, looking back at him over her shoulder.

“Today,” she said, “you’re just the man who kidnapped me. Again.”

She walked out.

Hilliard stayed on his knees. He listened to her footsteps fade down the hall until there was nothing left but silence.

He hadn’t won her back. He hadn’t fixed a single thing.

But she hadn’t said never. She had said not today.

And for a man who had been living on nothing but regrets, that was enough of a lifeline to hold onto.

Cailin woke to the sensation of silk against her skin and a jackhammer pounding inside her skull.

She didn’t open her eyes immediately. For a split second, her body tricked her into believing she was back at the safe house, or perhaps in the guest room at Kegan’s estate. But the smell was wrong. It wasn’t the sterile neutrality of a hotel or the old-wood warmth of the estate. It was sandalwood, expensive leather, and a sharp, clean note of rain.

It was the smell of Hilliard Holloway.

Her eyes snapped open.

Above her: a slate-gray ceiling, aggressively minimalist. She pushed herself upright. The room tilted. She looked down at herself.

She wasn’t wearing her own clothes. She was drowning in a white dress shirt, the cuffs hanging past her fingertips, the fabric saturated with his scent.

Cold, immediate panic flooded her chest.

She remembered everything. The Obsidian Suite. Vance’s warning about the lawsuit. Hilliard carrying her. He had brought her here — to his penthouse. To the heart of the beast.

She scrambled backward until her spine met the headboard. What had she said? What had she done?

The bedroom door swung open.

Hilliard walked in looking infuriatingly composed for a man who had supposedly spent the night watching over an unconscious, injured woman. He was wearing gray sweatpants and a black t-shirt that pulled tight across his chest. He carried a tray.

“You’re awake,” he said. His voice was low, stripped of its usual arrogance. “Drink this. It’s for the hangover.”

He set the tray on the bedside table: a glass of water, two pills, and a bowl of something steaming.