Epilogue
Valentino
Six weeks later…
I sat on the shabby, purple-puke lounge with a grunt, aware of my body’s limitations even as adrenaline surged through me and momentarily took away any further pain as I waited in the semi-darkness for Chantilly to return home.
Home. I glanced around at the one bedroom, beach house rental with a critical eye, noting the dull and peeling yellow laminate kitchen cupboards and faded floral wallpaper, the papery lemon curtains and barely legible beach prints. I had no doubt it’d come furnished this way since the seventies.
I grimaced. How many generations had sat their asses on this lounge and walked across the dirty shagpile carpet? The kitchen itself looked like a grease pit ready to suck some unsuspecting tenant into its filth.
It was more than obvious Chantilly hadn’t cashed in her jewelry. She’d probably barely touched the cash I’d given her. I tipped my head back. All I’d wanted was to look after her, but I hadn’t counted on her stubbornness, her independence.
Not that I blamed her for the latter. Independence and freedom hadn’t come easily to her thanks to men like Sean.
Men like me.
I refocused on the crumbling place she called home. What concerned me the most was its lack of security. There were no cameras, no fancy alarms. A burglar—or worse, someone like me—could as easily push through the thin exterior wall into the interior, let alone shove open one of the shoddy windows like I had.
Clank.
The big metal key inserted into the front door alerted me to Tilly even before it scraped open and she stepped inside. Shutting and locking the door behind her, she didn’t even bother flicking on the bulb that would have lit up the tiny kitchen and dining-lounge area. She was completely unaware she was no longer alone.
I frowned, vacillating between joy and sorrow that on this day, of all days, she was spending it alone. But joy won out. I’d pulled out all stops to be here.
“Hi, Tilly,” I said, my voice coming out hoarse from so little use.
She shrieked, then stepped back, twisting around then to flick on the nearest light switch. Her eyes looked wild, tormented in her bloodless face, her long white dress matching her skin color.
She shook her head. “No, you’re not real,” she whispered. “You were a vegetable when I left you.”
I cocked a brow, wanting to reassure her but aware she’d go flying out the door like a jackrabbit if I even moved a muscle. “Yet I heard every word you said to me.”
She gaped, her face flushed now. “You did?”
I nodded. “I knew I wasn’t dreaming, and yet I couldn’t wake up, it was like being stuck inside a cube with no way out.”
Her face seemed to drain of even more color. “I-I felt that too, like I was boxed in. It took everything I had not to panic and not to believe it was real.”
Had she visited the same plane of existence I’d been stuck in? Somehow I believed she had. Love transcended all logic, all rational thinking.
“You visiting me was the only reason I managed to wake,” I said. “You said you loved me, that you didn’t want to leave me.” I stayed calm, neutral, when all I wanted was to go and claim her and never let her go again.
A pity I was as frighteningly weak as an invalid.
“I-I did,” she admitted.
“You also said you wanted to feel every inch of my cock pounding inside you.”
She nodded, her face flushing just a little before she asked, “Was that before or after I said you were right about us never going to work?”
I pushed to my feet, my whole body protesting and breaking out in a cold sweat. My physician had warned me to stay in bed for at least another week and to not stress my body and overdo things. “Well I was wrong,” I said in a neutral voice, though I was seriously overexerting myself.
“What do you mean?”
She was going to make me spell it out for her, and though I couldn’t blame her, I was rapidly declining. I’d need to find a bed to collapse onto very soon.
But first things first.
I stepped toward the kitchen, my knuckles white as I gripped the island counter’s chipped edge, my whole body sagging. “I mean…nearly dying opened my eyes and widened my tunnel vision. I rejected the one woman I should have accepted into my life.”
She gasped, her entire body trembling. At this rate we’d both be collapsing onto a bed. A pity I didn’t yet have the stamina to pound inside her like we both wanted.
I leaned harder on the counter, exhaustion threatening. “You were the one woman who understood me on every level. The one woman I yearned to be with even while I was too damn proud to admit that your wellbeing was just an excuse to send you away.” I sighed heavily. “I’d move heaven and earth to keep you safe.”
She bit her bottom lip, though the wariness in her stare was fading slowly. “What does Carlo have to say about that?”
“He no longer gets a say when it comes to my heart.” My smile was hard. “He knows better now than to interfere.” Carlo had grasped the fact I’d woken only thanks to Chantilly.
She sighed softly, apparently still not fully convinced. “Men like you don’t know how to love.”
“Don’t we?” I held her gaze. “Did you not see Ethan and Sabrina? Salvatore and Isabella?”
She didn’t need to answer, her silence confirmed everything.
I swallowed hard, my pulse flailing. “After I forced you to leave, I lost all control. I didn’t want to live anymore…not without you. Since I’d already gotten rid of Sean, I went after the fishermen who’d left you to drown. I was mindless, merciless, I didn’t care about killing…or dying.”
She pressed a shaky hand to her forehead.
Did she despise me now? Was love too much to hope for?
I cleared my throat. “I just need to know one thing?” At her nod I asked, “Has time shown you’re better off without me?”
Her sudden laugh edged toward hysteria. “Not at all. I missed you more with every passing day.”
Relief almost folded me in half. I managed to stay upright. “I don’t want to lose you, Tilly. I want to be with you.”
She crossed her arms and tilted her head to one side, her long dark hair falling over one shoulder. “Do you really? Because I can’t go through this all again—“
“I love you,” I growled, wishing I had the strength to show her physically as much as emotionally.
“Y-you do?”
I managed a smile, though I wondered if it showcased the whiteness around my lips. “With every cell in my body.”
Her eyes turned watery then, and I released the counter and stepped toward her before I drew her into my arms, absorbing her warmth, her radiance as she sobbed happy tears.
I kissed the top of her head, then stepped back, though it took everything I had not to keep her in my arms. I withdrew a lighter and nodded at the tiny round table in the corner of the room. “Happy birthday, my little Tilly.”
She gasped at the cake I’d placed there earlier in its opened box. She followed me as I stepped toward it, then lit the candle I’d stuck in the middle of the pink icing with its border of strawberries.
She turned to me then, the flickering candlelight reflecting in her eyes when she said, “I love you too, Valentino.”
I knew then, with every last ounce of strength in my body, she was forever mine and I was forever hers. And we’d spend a lifetime proving our love to one another.