His hand came to her face and his thumb slid across her cheekbone.
“Belle, talk.”
“Most of it’s boring,” she warned him.
“Belle –” Jack warned back.
She snapped her mouth shut.
Then she said, “Okay.”
Then she told her life story to criminally handsome James Bennett.
The man she loved.
The man who loved her back.
* * * * *
Jack
Jack stood in the bay window of his study, Baron and Gretl lying at his feet, his eyes trained to the view.
It was night, late, the sky midnight blue with fluffy dark grey clouds breaking the ink, the sky seamless with the dark of the sea, the muted white caps of intermittent waves fracturing the pervasive shadowy hue.
It was extraordinary, calming, beautiful in its vast simplicity and, until just over five months ago, Jack had never really noticed it in his life.
He allowed it to move through him, lightening the tightness in his chest, the heavy feeling in his gut.
But it didn’t halt the thoughts assailing his brain.
Joshua Bennett, James Bennett.
Brenna Addison, Belle Abbot.
Caleb Caldwell and Calvin f**king Cole.
Belle had been married. Married to a man that hurt her.
Again and again.
Just like Brenna.
He already understood the coincidences that bound him to Joshua and Brenna to Belle were more than coincidental. He’d heard Lewis’s disembodied voice. He understood the impossible was happening.
Now he knew it deep in his soul.
And this meant Belle was not safe.
Brenna had been tossed over a cliff.
This was not going to happen to his Belle.
I love you, Jack Bennett.
The words Belle whispered to him twenty minutes ago after he’d made love to her, while he still held her in his arms, she held him back and just before she’d drifted off to sleep sifted through his head.
And as they did, they settled into his heart.