Page 201 of Carnal Wagers

There had always been this tenseness to her features shaped over her cheekbones and around her eyes that seemed to have melted away in the last two years since the trial. When she smiled, it was soft and tentative, almost eager, with no sign of skepticism. We stared at each other from across the room, our feet planted in place. The drive to go to her pulled me forward, while the stress that it might damage her progress tugged me back. Yet the moment she took the first step toward me, my legs burst into action.

We crossed the room in seconds. Without thinking about it, I wrapped my arms around her and clasped her into a hug. For an instant, her arms hesitated to envelop me, and then like magic, they crushed me in a tight grip that sent a rush of warm flurries up my spine.

The nurse who had led me inside the room cleared her throat and tapped her pen against a tablet. “Respect appropriate distancing, please.”

We separated but clasped our hands together, amid wet chuckles.

Maeve grinned through watery eyes. “I thought you’d see me differently.”

“Sisters, remember?” My vision swam, and I pinched my lips in a wide smile. Despite all our calls, I always wondered if she still felt betrayed but never had the guts to ask. Now, seeing her like this, that worry vanished. I twisted my hand through the bottom of her curls. “I love this hairstyle on you. You look gorgeous, ma belle.”

“Right back at you, babe.” She sobbed through a shaky inhale. “I’ve missed you.”

From then on, I visited regularly. Within another three months, her psychologist requested my bi-monthly voluntary attendance to Maeve’s patient therapy sessions. Six months after that, those occasionally included Brody and Liam. It wasn’t until a year later, midway through my second pregnancy, that she accepted to talk to Cillian over the phone. He’d been chasing after Vianne as she hobbled around our penthouse, cackling up a storm, when Maeve asked that we pass him the phone. With our daughter perched on his hip, they spoke for the first time since her attack on him three and a half years before. There was this look on his face as he held the phone to his ear, one of apprehensive determination, that finally loosened the last knot around my heart.

Maeve was going to make it all the way through this. I was certain of it now. It was only a matter of time.

When my dearest husband hung up, he grasped me close and buried his face into my neck. His heavy breaths warmed my skin as our daughter patted him on the back, asking him sweetly if daddy was okay. His emotions wetted the collar of my dress, every one of his repressed feelings about LK and Maeve’s rebuffs coming out at once.

“Daddy’s fine, ma p’tite puce,” I reassured her. My little bug. “He’s just happy.”

“My wife always understands me best,” he muttered, drawing me deeper into his possessive hold around our unborn son and Vianne.

Within two more years, Maeve managed to handle a sit-down conversation with him. Three additional years later, a judge signed off on her first overnight stay with Cillian and me, while Vianne and her brother, Adan, slept over at their uncles’ places. Finally, after one last year, the courts approved her release, and she came home to the family she always should have had.