All of Me (Inside Out #5.5)(7)

He looks at me, shadows in the depths of his green eyes. “It’s not even mine. It’s in Amber’s name. Unless there’s a will that says she left it to me, I can’t keep it. I intended to let him keep it.”

“Maybe she left it to you in a will or a note of some sort.”

He pushes off the counter and runs a hand over his jaw. “I need to see my attorney. I just want to walk the place and make sure nothing is still here.”

I give a nod and he heads out of the kitchen. I decide not to follow, giving him a minute to himself. Leaning on the counter, I scan the living area again, and this time my gaze catches on something taped to the fireplace. Frowning, I round the corner, stepping onto the marble tiled floors and halfway across the room. My hand presses to my belly as I realize it’s a picture.

Stopping in front the fireplace, my hand moves to my throat as I stare at a younger Chris with his arms around Amber, staring down at her. They look happy. His eyes look lighter, with no sign of the ever-present shadows I’ve come to know. And I know that this picture is from before the whip found him, or he found the whip. This was before Amber’s parents were murdered, leaving both him and Amber tormented by the aftermath.

I reach out and touch Chris’s face in the photo, my hand trembling and suddenly, tears burn in my eyes. This was before his need for self-induced pain helped bury the real pain, and its presence here is no accident. Only to Tristan, this photo isn’t about the Chris that once was. It’s about the Amber that once was, and, in Tristan’s eyes, what she later became because of Chris.

Chris’s footsteps sound behind me and I suck in a breath, holding it as he pauses, and I can almost feel the punch to his chest as he sees what I am looking at. Seconds tick by like hours and he doesn’t move or speak, as a whirlwind of emotions churns inside me.

His hands come down on my shoulders and he turns me to face him, but I speak before he can. “He’s being vicious, Chris. He’s using you like you did the whip, as a way to hide from reality. He could have gotten her help. He was with her every day. He was too busy hating you to see how much she needed more than his anger.”

He wraps his fingers around my neck in that familiar, possessive way he does, as if he needs to own me right now, as if he feels like I am somehow slipping away. “He wants you to question me,” he says. “Tristan wants you to doubt who I am and who we are. He knew you’d be with me when I came here, Sara. He knew you’d see the photo.”

I know Chris fears my reaction to what I’ve seen, and my hand goes to his arm. “Then he’d be right. I’m with you, Chris. Here, now, and always. I am with you, right where I’m supposed to be.” I pull the picture off the mantel and slip it into his pocket.

Torment rips through his eyes. “Sara—”

“You need that memory. I refuse to let Amber be a weapon in Tristan’s war games. And you have every right to grieve a woman who was part of your life for more than a decade. I’m not going anywhere, and we’re facing this together.”

The lines on his handsome face seem to harden, not soften, seconds ticking by before the hand around my neck drags me closer, our breath mingling, lips a sway from touching. “I won’t let you go,” he says, his tone low, guttural, emotion rushing off of him and crashing into me, and I know he’s not talking about me leaving by choice. He’s afraid of losing me the way Amber lost her family. The way he lost his mother, his father . . . Dylan. And as much as I want to remind him that living in fear of losing each other is a path to hell, I do not. Not here, in the midst of loss and grief.

Instead I reach behind me, closing my hand on his hand on my neck, my eyes meeting his. “Good. Because I’m not letting you go, either.”





      Part Three



   His





Chris and I spend the rest of the day in bed, devouring each other and a Netflix marathon of Breaking Bad. I wake the next morning on my belly with Chris’s big body draped over mine, sunshine beaming through the curtains and a smile on my lips. His life is my life and my life is his.

“You smell like me,” Chris purrs in my ear, his tone low, gravelly.

Heat rushes over me with the possessiveness in those words, and I roll toward him. We both shift, staying close, and I happily devour the sight of him, his blond hair a sexy rumpled mess, the alluring shadow on his jaw, and the bright green of his eyes flickering with amber. “I like smelling like you. That’s why I like to wear your cologne.”

He tangles my legs with his big, powerful ones, his hand going to my hip, branding me in that way he does that turns me wonderfully inside out. “Wear me, not my cologne.” He leans in to kiss me—and his phone vibrates on the nightstand. He groans and pulls back, reaching for it without letting go of me. “It’s gone off three times in the last hour.”

My brow furrows. “It has? I never even heard it.”

“Time change. You were out hard.” He leans on his elbow and glances at his phone screen, then me. “Attorney. The apartment is going to be a mess to claim as mine—f*ck, I don’t want to think about this right now.”

His phone buzzes again and his jaw clenches as he reads.

“What is it?” I prod.

He types a reply and looks at me. “He’s worried that Tristan’s silence means more trouble is on the way. Namely my full ownership of The Script, now that Amber’s . . . gone.”