Chapter 66 #2
He takes a deep breath. “I’m responsible for Etienne’s death. It was my idea, that day. To go down that slope. I didn’t even let him get a word in. I just took off, and he had no choice but to follow me.”
My heart breaks for him. “Rafe…”
“He was older. Off-piste, he was in charge. But I wanted to tease him… and he paid the price.”
“Rafe, you were thirteen.”
“That’s no excuse. There will never be an excuse,” he mutters against my chest. “Sometimes it feels like I’m going to drown in all of it.
I’m living his life. I got everything he didn’t, and it’s my fault.
I can’t handle it if I fail you too.” He leans back, and the eyes that meet mine are terrifyingly blank.
“You’ve called me perfect sometimes, as an insult.
But you’re the one who’s so painfully perfect, and I’m never going to deserve you. ”
“That’s not true. None of this is true. Have you spoken to anyone about this before?”
He shakes his head a single time.
The gravity of it crashes down on me, and suddenly everything feels so very real.
Him. Me. Us. This house, our bedroom, the ring on my finger, the warmth of his kisses and how he’s held me through every panic attack.
It’s real and it should feel like a cage closing in around me. The emotional weight of it all.
But it doesn’t.
Because he’s him and I’m me, and somehow we’ve muddled our way through everything so far.
“It wasn’t your fault.” I put my hands on his face, pushing it back so I can look into his eyes. “You were a child. Of everyone responsible for that day, you were the least.”
He doesn’t believe me. I can see it in his bleak gaze. But that one is going to take time, and probably therapy, and God knows we could both use it. We’re both carrying things we shouldn’t.
“And my uncle? You’re absolutely not responsible for any of it.
You’ve helped me. You’ve… been the best thing that ever happened to me.
” My eyes turn glossy again. “Please don’t fight again.
We can handle the feelings together, like you do with my panic attacks.
Okay? Don’t shut me out and hurt yourself. ”
He reaches up with a hand that’s unusually shaky and brushes something wet from my cheek. “Don’t cry for me.”
“I’ll cry for you if I want to.”
That sends a flash of amusement through his eyes, gone as fast as it came. “I love you,” he says.
My breath hitches.
“I love you so much it’s tearing me apart. I loved you long before I admitted it to myself.” His eyes search mine. “Let me divorce you.”
I have to blink a few times. “What?”
“It’ll give you all the shares. All of them. You’ll control Mather & Wilde entirely, and you’ll be free to do whatever you want with them.”
“You don’t want to stay married to me?”
“Darling,” he says, and there’s a guttural sound to his voice, “I want nothing more. I want to play tennis with you and count points over every mundane little thing. I want to hold you when you cry and tell you to breathe and wake up in bed with you in my arms. I want to learn all the ways to make you come and keep you safe and kiss that pretty tattoo on your ribs. I want to teach you to drive stick and have you show me around your hometown and I want… I want… I want you so fucking much that it’s killing me, too.
I want very much to stay married to you. ”
A future.
Our future.
I lock my hands behind his neck. The towel I used drops into the bathtub behind him, forgotten. “Don’t divorce me,” I say.
“I want to ask you to marry me. Properly. I want you to say yes because you want to.” His eyes search mine, jaw working. “I want you to want to be my wife.”
The tears that have been trickling down my face turn into a small sob, and his face turns horrified. I bury my face against his neck, and he catches me, still seated on the bathtub’s edge.
We slide down and end up on the floor.
He’s holding me and I’m holding him, and I’m trying to tell him through tears that that’s what I want, too, but the words come out garbled. He just holds me tight.
When I finally catch my breath, I put a hand to his cheek. “I love you, too,” I tell him.
His eyes search mine, like he has to make sure it’s real. That I mean it.
“I do. I love you.” My hand brushes over his warm skin. “You infuriating, stubborn, smart, funny, polylingual, contradictory man. I love you, and I want to be your wife.”
He’s breathing hard. “Polylingual?”
“I had to throw it in there.”
“Good to know,” he says, and there’s a tone in his voice that I recognize, a hint of joy amidst the turmoil, “that dual citizenship and some childhood language lessons helped me get the love of my life.”
I laugh. Love of my life. That’s what it said, in the will.
And I found it.
“I expect you to teach me all of them, you know,” I say.
“I will.” He brushes hair off my face, and then he tells me the same phrase in French, Italian, and German.
I love you.
When he’s done, I brush my fingers over his top lip. “I want to kiss you. But it looks like it might hurt.”
“I don’t care,” he says. “I could be dying and I’d still want your lips.” There’s a light in his eyes that looks almost feverish, and it matches the pounding of my own pulse. “But we’re on the bathroom floor and I need a shower. Come. I’ve made a mess of you.”
We end up beneath the warm spray of water together, and when we finally make it to bed, we have sex again. Carefully. Because he has bruised ribs and a cut lip, and the newfound honesty between us feels raw and real and like a dream I don’t want to fade.
We go slow this time, too, and I find that I don’t mind at all.