Chapter 6 Ruslan #2
His face tilts up to mine, mine probably giving away more than I want because the look in his eyes changes. Softens. Not by much; Salvatore doesn’t soften by much for anyone, but enough.
Then I take his face in both hands and kiss him.
It’s not graceful; nothing with us ever is.
It’s relief and disbelief and need and the kind of hunger that starts in panic before it settles into anything recognizable.
He kisses me back instantly, hard enough to bruise, and every horrible thing about tonight gets washed out of me under the heat and the taste of him.
I back him into the tile, water sliding between us, and he makes a sound against my mouth that goes straight to my spine.
When I finally pull back enough to breathe, my forehead drops to his.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I ask.
He laughs once, breathless and bitter. “Lovely to see you too.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
His hands flatten against my ribs, then climb slowly up my sides as if he’s checking I’m real too. Maybe he is.
I pull back enough to look at him properly. “Salvatore.”
His jaw tightens. “My father knows.”
Everything in me goes still, and all I can do is stare at him.
Knows. Not suspects, or even watches. Knows.
“What?” I say quietly.
He looks away for half a beat, the first crack I’ve seen in him tonight. “He had photographs of us.”
Cold spreads through me so fast it’s almost clean. My hands fall from his face to his shoulders, gripping without meaning to.
“How much?”
“Enough.”
His tone kills any remaining hope that this is manageable in the ordinary ways.
“Did he touch you?” I ask, and my voice comes out lower than I intend. The question surprises him; I can tell.
His expression changes, some flash of surprise or maybe disbelief breaking through the strain for a second. “What?”
“Your father.” I say, my hand already moving to his side before he can stop me, fingers grazing the bruise at his ribs. He hisses softly. “Did he do this?”
He catches my wrist, more reflex than refusal. “No.”
“Then who?”
“Ruslan—”
“Who?”
He lets out a sharp breath through his nose and closes his eyes for a beat, head tipping back into the tile. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Bullshit.”
“It doesn’t matter tonight.”
I stare at him, then I understand something that makes my chest go tight in a whole new way.
He isn’t refusing because it’s unimportant.
He’s refusing because he didn’t come here to talk about the pain someone else puts on him.
He came here because whatever happened left him with one place he still thinks he can go.
Me.
That should feel like victory. It feels like terror.
I slide my hand from his wrist to his jaw and make him look at me properly. “You walk into my apartment after midnight, tell me your father knows, and expect me not to ask?”
His mouth flattens. “I expect you to know I came anyway.”
Steam beads on his lashes. Water slides down the line of his neck, over his chest, along the hard plane of his stomach.
He’s beautiful, yes, but that’s never the worst part.
The worst part is the look on his face right now.
Not pleading or fragile. Just stripped. A man who’s been cornered by legacy and still chooses to step into the jaws of something else because at least here he understands the risk.
Why the fuck would he do that if he wasn’t already half gone for me, too?
I stare at him, every ugly, defensive answer dying before it reaches my mouth. Because that’s the thing about him, really. He can cut cleaner than almost anyone I’ve ever known, but when he decides to tell the truth, he does it in a way that leaves no room to hide behind your own bullshit.
“You’re fucking reckless.”
He meets my stare without blinking. “Only with you.”
Christ.
I kiss him again because if I don’t, I’m going to say something too honest too fast. His fingers knot in my wet hair. The kiss turns slower almost immediately, less shock, more recognition.
His mouth opens under mine with that same furious softness only I get, and I taste whatever remains of his restraint going under. When I break away, I press my brow to his and stay there.
“You should’ve stayed away,” I murmur.
“I know.”
“You should hate me for not making it easier.”
He’s quiet for a beat. “I do, a little.”
That almost gets a laugh out of me. “I try not to. I try not to think about you the way I do. I try not to want you every time I leave a room. I try not to—” My jaw tightens. “I try not to make this bigger than I can survive.”
His eyes close for one second, and when they open again, there’s so much in them I have to look away first or drown in it.
“Ruslan.”
There are a hundred ways he could say my name. Insult. Warning. Prayer. Need.
This is the worst one. This one sounds like love before either of us has the courage to name it when we’re vulnerable.
I drag him into me and hold him there, both arms wrapped around his back, his chest against mine, my face buried briefly at his neck. He holds me back just as hard.
“I don’t know how to protect you from this,” I admit into his skin.
He shudders once. “I’m not asking you to.”
We stay like that for a while, water pounding over both of us, the room gone white and hot around the glass. My breathing slows first. I can feel his heartbeat under my palm—fast and alive. Mine’s no better.
When he finally leans back enough to see my face, he cups it with both hands and looks at me with the kind of terrible calm I know means he’s already decided something.
“I love you,” he says.
The words are quiet, but everything in me stops.
For one suspended second, all I hear is the shower… then the world slams back in.
I stare at him, but he doesn’t look away. Of course, he doesn’t. He’s Salvatore fucking Vieri. Half his power is the way he stands in the blast radius of his own honesty and makes other people decide whether to run.
“I know I shouldn’t,” he says, voice unsteady now in a way I’ve almost never heard from him. “And maybe that makes me weak or stupid or exactly what my father thinks I am, I don’t know anymore. But I’m done pretending this is something smaller just because smaller would be easier to survive.”
Christ.
I close my eyes for half a beat and almost tell him not to do this. Almost tell him he has no idea what he’s asking. Almost tell him that saying those words to me is like striking a match in a room full of gas.
But he’s already lit it.
So I cover his hands with mine and answer his love with my own.
“I love you too, lyubimiy.”
There it is. No taking it back, no softening it, and no cleverness to hide behind.
The look on his face is going to ruin me long after tonight ends. Relief, yes, but not simple relief. There’s sadness in his brown eyes, as if hearing it gives him exactly what he wants and confirms at the same time that neither of us is getting out of this clean.
He kisses me with tears in his eyes that he’d deny under torture, and because I know him, because I love him, because I’m exactly as weak for him as he is for me, I pretend not to notice and kiss him back like I can hold the whole fucking world outside the glass a little longer.
When we break apart, he rests his forehead against mine and whispers, “Say it again.”
“Greedy bastard.”
“Indulge me.”
I exhale shakily and close my eyes. “I love you.”
His fingers curl into the back of my neck. “Again.”
I laugh against his mouth this time, helpless and wrecked. “I love you, Salvatore.”
“Cuore mio,” he murmurs, and then he’s kissing me again, and I’m done for in every way that matters.
Maybe I always am.
When the water’s gone lukewarm, the steam has thinned, and the city beyond the curtains keeps moving toward whatever disaster waits for us next, I’ll remember this as one of the only honest nights of my life.
Two sons standing in the wreckage of what their fathers made them and admitting they love each other anyway.
It doesn’t save us.
It makes everything worse.
But tonight I walked into my bathroom thinking I’ll scrub another woman off my skin, only to find the one person who’s ever made me forget I’m already owned, standing in my shower choosing me anyway.
So I let myself have this.
His love. Mine said back. The sound of it in the steam.
The ruin of it.
And for the length of one impossible night, with the hot water pouring over both of us and his mouth against mine again, I make the worst decision of my life and call it everything I’ve ever wanted.