House Of Gods 9 - Samantha Snow Page 0,59

to her butt. The butterflies in her stomach were waging war with each other.

Calm down, she told herself. She wasn’t sure if she was more nervous about the way Brandt would look at her or vice versa. Maybe the other guys would be sitting in the apartment alongside Brandt, ready to greet her and keep things light at first entry. She could see Jerrik doing that in order to ease her into a welcoming home before things got too intense. But honestly, she just wanted to ignore everyone and everything else aside from Brandt.

The elevator slowed to a stop, and the doors started to pull open, whether she was ready or not.

Brenna took one step inside the doors and dropped her bag onto the floor. The open common area of the apartment was empty, except for Brandt, who was sitting on a chair in the living room, staring at the elevator doors. He stood up as soon as they opened and he saw Brenna. He started to take a few quick steps toward her, and even from across the space between them, she could see his muscles immediately tense. She didn’t move. She had played this moment over and over again in her mind and had visualized herself running toward him and jumping into his arms, but for some reason now, she was frozen in place. When he saw her standing motionless, he stopped walking toward her, leaving no more than a few feet between them.

“Brenna?” he said. The pain in his voice was palpable. His face twisted with remorse, and his voice cracked as he spoke. “Brenna, I’m so sorry.”

She knew his memories had returned; Jerrik had told her, and the witch had kept her promise. But having gone through the heartache of standing before his vacant face with him not knowing who she was, had left a scar on her, and she was too afraid to get her hopes up. She had held onto the small fear that maybe he didn’t remember everything, that maybe he wouldn’t be the same man ever again and that he would never look at her the same as he once did.

But now, hearing him say her name and seeing the way his eyes looked at her with unyielding need, she knew he was the same man once more, and she finally was able to let herself breathe and drop the fear she had been holding onto. She ran to him, just as she had envisioned herself doing, and he grabbed her in a tight embrace and held her to his chest as he buried his face in her hair against the side of her cheek.

“My God, Brenna, I missed you so much.” He grasped her with such intensity that he had to push against himself to keep from crushing her with the weight of his arms. “Even when I didn’t know it was you who I was missing, I still missed you. I felt like I was going to die; I actually would have preferred death to what I went through.”

“No,” she cried as she looked up at him and tried to see through the tears filling her eyes. “No, never say that. I couldn’t live without you, Brandt. I may not know exactly how you felt or what you were going through, but I felt the pain of losing you too…and it was unbearable.”

“I did awful things,” he said sadly as he turned his gaze away from her stare. “I did things that I would never have done, things I know you know about, and I know have hurt you.”

Brenna watched as tears fell down his cheeks. She reached up and put both of her hands on his cheeks and turned his face toward her. He still kept his eyes averted from her out of shame.

“I am not upset with you,” she said gently. “Yes, it hurt to watch you with other women, to hear from Jerrik about what you were doing in your absence of memory. But he also told me that you never, not once, made love to any of them.”

“I couldn’t,” Brandt sobbed. “Brenna, I couldn’t. Even in my mental void, I loved you and needed you, and I couldn’t bring myself to enter another woman, even though I am ashamed to say that I was desperate for any sort of distraction that would relieve my suffering.”

“Look at me,” she said calmly as she still held onto his face.

He turned his eyes toward her and looked at her