The Promise (Darkest Lies Trilogy Book 2) by Bethany-Kris (fiction book recommendations .txt) 📕

then, drawing his gaze back to hers. “I know everything is a bit of a mess right now, and you’re worried about her, but ...”

“What?”

“I don’t think I’ve seen you like this before ... not about someone.”

Well ...

He cocked an eyebrow at his mother, unwilling to feed into her need to pry all the secrets from his mind that she possibly could. Claire laughed a playful chirp back, but didn’t once move her stare from Roman’s all the same.

She probably didn’t need him to spill his secrets, anyway. Didn’t a mother always know?

Still, she said to him, “Just go ahead and say it. At the very least, you can say it, can’t you?”

Could he?

Or better yet, did he want to?

Roman headed for the kitchen entryway the second he was able to slip from his mother’s hold, tempted to just bolt. This wasn’t a conversation he’d had before—not with anybody; not even with himself, really. He knew exactly what his mother implied, and he wasn’t ready to say the words.

Roman already had one foot out the door, and it would have been so easy to keep going, but he paused long enough to glance over his shoulder. Claire smiled at him indulgently, shaking her head like she knew what he was running from.

“It’s just me, Roman. If you can’t even tell me—your mother—how are you ever going to tell her?”

She had a point.

“I bet that’s what scares you the most, too,” his mom added. “Just saying it. Telling her.”

“Ma—”

Claire shrugged, not even giving him the chance to speak. “Remember when you were a boy, Rome, and I’d say night, my baby, I love you.” He blinked, still able to hear the soft call of his mother echoing through the crack in his bedroom door, the sliver of light illuminating Claire’s hand wrapped around the edge of the door to close it. But she waited—she always waited for him to say it, too—and the only sleepless nights he’d had as a kid were the ones that didn’t end like that. “It was easy back then ... I lived for those little I love you, toos. The sad thing is, being a mother means I can also still remember when it started to change.”

“It’s not exactly the same, is it?”

“Maybe not, but it should be just as easy. And that was my point. To say it ... to mean it. It’s one thing you shouldn’t fear. Saying it really is the easy part. It’s everything else that makes it hard.”

His next breath still came out staggered. It ached. Surprisingly, though, the words came out easy when he said, “I am in love with her, Ma.”

Claire’s smile bloomed, her palm coming to lay flat against her chest, but she said nothing. He didn’t really need her to.

• • •

Roman was waiting for Karine at the bottom of the steps to the front porch when she walked up the hill with Michelle in tow. It took her a moment to notice him, just a second when she had to look twice and those already-round eyes of hers widened even more, and then she darted for him.

All at once.

She was a breathtaking sight against the backdrop of the lake. Karine’s wavy, dark hair flew widely all around her, her lithe petite frame coming his way faster than he’d expected, and Christ ... that long, flowy yellow dress she wore did very little to hide the shape of her small breasts.

He couldn’t seem to look away from his dream-come-true. One he hadn’t even known he wanted until he had her.

Roman couldn’t help himself, he grinned.

Like a fool.

“Hey, babe.”

“Roman.”

That was all she got out before she collided with him. He had her up off the ground and spinning around in a blink. His name passed her lips breathlessly, over and over again.

Their mouths met in a slow, burning kiss that swept Roman away to another kind of paradise. This was paradise. He never wanted to leave her again, even though he knew he would have to.

Many times.

Nothing about this life was easy. If she agreed to build one with him—and he didn’t know that she would; something else that terrified him—then that was an unfortunate lesson she was going to have to learn. Fast.

But if she could trust him in loving her enough to know they would always find their way back together, then nothing else mattered.

He just had to tell her.

Ask her ...

“I missed you,” she whispered when they parted. The kiss could have lasted a lifetime, and it wouldn’t be enough.

Karine’s lips trembled from the kiss, and his own throbbed from where she’d bitten him at the very last second before pulling away. She bit him hard—and he liked it—drawing blood that she watched him lick away with a smirk to prove to herself that he belonged to her.

It was that moment when he knew—he didn’t even need her to say it.

She loved him, too.

Then, Karine lowered her lashes, her gaze skipping away from his when she asked, “Did you miss me?”

God.

Didn’t she know?

“You’re my first and last thought every day, Karine,” he admitted. “How could I not?”

• • •

Claire cooked dinner for everyone at the lodge. She wanted to celebrate Roman returning, but honestly, he could tell she was trying to keep herself distracted from the fact that her husband wasn’t there with them.

He would have asked his father to join him on the last-minute trip to Vermont, but he knew he had to slip away from New York the first chance he got. There wasn’t time for anything else, considering. If he’d tried to have a conversation with Demyan about it, no doubt, he would have tried to stop Roman from leaving.

With good reason.

Technically, it still wasn’t completely safe for him to be there. He couldn’t be certain he wasn’t being followed; that Dima and Leonid weren’t keeping an eye on him and trying to track Karine down. He’d known it, and still took the calculated risk for the sake of his own