“The rest of our lives,” he said with a sigh. “That sounds so good to me.”

She kissed him and caressed the stubble on his jaw. “It sounds like paradise to me.”

“While I was at the beach, I tried to imagine what it would be like if this trial was happening before I had you and Holden in my life. I’d be going insane—much more so than I am now.”

“I’m glad that having us around helps you.”

“It does help me, Laura. I hear you tell people all the time about how much I do for you, but you’ve given me my first taste of normal. You can’t possibly know how much that means to me.”

“I want you to remember that over the next few weeks. I want you to focus on what you have now and not on what used to be. Those days are over, and they don’t matter anymore. You’re no longer the helpless kid who didn’t have any options or any way to protect the people he loved. You’re a big, strong man who takes care of everyone in his life with love and kindness.”

“Will you keep telling me that, too? And will you ignore me if I’m a total asshole over the next few weeks—at a time when we’re supposed to be blissfully happy and looking forward to our wedding?”

“I’ll keep telling you, and I’ll never ignore you no matter what you say or do. It’s not your fault the timing worked out this way. The trial was supposed to be long over by now, so don’t add the delays to the list of things you feel the need to be sorry about. None of this is your fault.”

He smoothed her tangled hair back from her face with the gentle caress of his big hand. “The day after Janey’s wedding, when I found you outside the hotel in the rain, looking up at the place… That was the day my real life began. Everything before that… Well, it doesn’t matter now that I have you.”

“It matters because it made you who you are, and I love who you are. But it has nothing to do with the life we’ve made together—unless we let it.”

Owen toyed with the engagement ring on her finger, spinning it around and touching it as if he needed the reminder of their connection. “I’d never let that happen.”

Though he spoke emphatically, Laura was still afraid of what the trial might do to undercut his hard-won freedom from a painful past.

Chapter 5

Chapter 5