Chapter 23 #2
He stops right before we reach a random set of curved stairs off the main room and stares intently down at me.
“Raven, at some point you’re going to have to believe me.
Trust that the words I’m telling you are true.
I’ve never brought a woman here before. I haven’t slept with anyone.
Since you, there has been no one. They call me Dr. Playboy, but I am not the playboy the world thinks I am.
I don’t fall in love every week. I’m not breaking the heart of some model or actress or socialite.
I play a role and I go to events and there are women who are photographed with me.
It’s all a lie. In four years, my heart hasn’t beat once for any other woman because it only beats for you. ”
That’s when mine starts to hiccup.
He kisses my knuckles and then directs me up the stairs.
They wind and twist and then he’s unlocking a bolt attached to a glass door and suddenly we’re on the rooftop of the building.
But it’s unlike any rooftop I’ve ever been on before.
For one, it’s entirely enclosed in glass.
For another, it’s a lounge with couches and a pool table and a freaking bar and televisions—yes, that’s plural because there are three over the bar—and a foosball table and a pool.
And that pool is big. We’re not talking Olympic size, but we are talking lap size and it’s on a freaking roof!
“Luca…”
That’s all I’ve got.
“If it weren’t freezing outside right now, I’d press this button”—he points to a button on the wall—“and retract the glass.”
“The roof opens?”
He laughs at my incredulous gasp. “As do the walls.”
All I can do is shake my head. “Was any of this here when you bought the place?”
“The pool was and there was lounge space. I added the rest. This rooftop is actually why I bought the building two years before I moved back here, and the renovations took just as long.”
Staring out at the Boston skyline, The Common and the Garden, I can’t stop my astonished grin. “It’s incredible.” I spin back to face him. “But what if you hadn’t gotten an attending position here?”
He gives me a look that says, don’t you know who I am? “I’m an Abbot-Fritz, baby. For better or worse. I was promised two hospital positions before I even came close to finishing my residency.”
“I’m proud of you. Not for any of this”—I pan my hands around the space—“but for all that you’ve accomplished. All you worked your way back from.”
His face lights up like Times Square at midnight.
And before I can brace myself for it, he launches himself at me, picking me up off the hardscape and jumping us straight into the pool.
Our bodies go tumbling into the water with a hard splash , water flying every which way as we sink down to the bottom.
He kisses me briefly under the water before he grips my hips tighter and pushes up with his feet from the pool floor.
We emerge with a sputter and a gasp, all breathless laughter.
His mouth claims mine once more, grinning against my lips as I spit some water into his that he tries to spit right back into mine. I shove him away before he can, treading water and kicking my feet up, swimming away from him.
“You could have at least given me the chance to take my sneakers off.” I hold one up, out of the water. They’re absolutely ruined. Heavy as hell and soggy against my feet. And my socks. Ewwww.
“I’ll buy you another pair.”
I splash water at his face. “No, thanks.”
“But I want to.”
“I have my own money, Luca. I don’t need yours.”
I rip off my ruined sneakers, one by one, tossing them over to the stone hardscape. Then my shirt, leaving me in just my sports bra and running shorts.
I spin in the water, swimming away from him toward the edge of the pool, staring out the glass as dawn crests above the Boston skyscrapers, painting the eastern sky with pinks and purples. Luca comes in behind me, his hands on the wall on either side of mine, locking me in, his chest to my back.
“Your pool is heated.”
“So is the hot tub.”
“No kidding. I never would have guessed that.”
His teeth nip at my shoulder, and I spin around in his arms, wrapping mine around his neck. “You’re still wearing your shirt.”
His eyes hold mine, but something flickers in them. Something I’m not sure I’ve ever seen on this man before. He rips his shirt over his head and tosses it away. His sneakers are next and now he’s just in his shorts and—
“Luca…”
I gasp, my hand covering my lips. I can feel his nervous gaze on me, but I can’t remove mine from the left side of his chest as it hovers above the water.
Tremulous fingers glide through it until I’m touching his warm, wet flesh. Right over black ink. “A bird that you set free may be caught again, but a word that escapes your lips will not return,” I read.
“It’s a Jewish proverb.”
I know it is. My mother told it to me once when I was just a child.
It was a warning to watch what I said because I had told a lie about eating a second cookie.
So simple and so benign and yet now it’s imprinted on him.
For me. For us. I glide up along the script to the small black raven, hovering on a perch right above the quote.
Right over his heart.
A tear hits my cheek and I force my gaze up to his. “When did you get this?”
“On your birthday two years ago. When you were out at a club, dancing with my sister and Grace and being hit on by every man who saw you. I was there. I flew in for it, knowing you were coming home. I watched you smile and laugh and dance your heart out. I watched you dance with other men and… I was happy you were happy. But I was so miserable in my own skin I couldn’t stand it. I needed you with me, so I did this.”
I shake my head. He was here on my birthday? I never saw him. Had no clue he was even in town. My fingers tickle along the bird and he shivers against me, his eyes laser focused on me.
“You were never temporary. You were always permanent. I’m sorry if I had you believing otherwise. I chose you. I swear I did. And my heart stayed yours. Forever.”
I swallow. So many things exploding in my head, but now I’m onto something else. His scar. It’s all healed up, no longer pink, but white and rippled and slightly indented. So different from how I saw it the last time.
“Does it still hurt?”
“Every now and then I get a twinge in it. I had another surgery on it about a year after to clean up some of the scar tissue inside.”
God, all this man has endured and look at him.
A successful surgeon. Just as he always wanted to be.
And I’m successful too. A first chair cellist for one of the best symphony orchestras in the nation, slotted for two solos in the holiday Pops performance.
But even though we have all this success, something has always been missing from it.
It’s been incomplete.
And with that thought, a familiar pain twists inside me.
He cups my face, forcing my eyes back up to his, so intense, my breath catches.
“You think I abandoned you. Betrayed you. And maybe I did to some extent. But all I knew at the time was that I was saving you. I gave you a life. I saved you from yourself. The woman who was willing to sacrifice her life for mine. I couldn’t let you do it. I could. Not. Let. You. Do. It.”
Our foreheads meet and I bite my lip, holding in my sob. Water drips down my face from his hair as he holds me up, and right now, it feels like we’re in our own world, high above the city, encased in glass, bathed in warm water.
“Do you not understand how much that shows my love? I let you fly away from me, knowing other men would be diving right in to take my place the second they could. Knowing I might never win you back after the words I said to you that night. The things I did. I did them because I could not let you squander a once-in-a-hundred-years talent. Because your passion and love made me a better man and I had to be better for you.”
“I would have given up that world for you.”
“No, baby. You couldn’t have. Think of where you are now.
All you’ve accomplished. You were young and we were in love, but I was old enough to know better than to let you do that.
I’m so sorry I hurt you, including traveling to watch you play and sending you flowers.
I didn’t know that made things worse. Everything I did was to catch you again, my Little Bird. ”
“Luca… It’s been so long since we’ve been anything. And even back then, it was so brief.”
“Does that make it any less real?”
No. It doesn’t. I can try and fool myself by saying it does, but what’s the point?
“The last four years apart were not because I questioned if you were the one. They were because I knew you were. Now I just have to get you to believe it too.”