Chapter 69
Edmundo
Marcus and I made it into the house, but it was a shaky go on the final steps to the front door.
He pointed toward the dining room.
“I’m gonna go sleep this off,” he said, and wandered away before I could tell him that wasn’t the way to his room.
I laughed, wondering what the staff would think in the morning if they found him passed out on the table.
It was a slow climb up the stairs, and I regretted having such a tall house by the time I reached the top. I faced my room but didn’t move.
“Don’t do it, it’s a bad decision,” I mumbled to the empty hall.
No.
Ana and I needed to talk. Drunk me was not listening to the sensible side of myself.
Determination, mixed with emotions and alcohol, kept my feet moving. I stopped in front of Ana’s door and knocked. It was more like my fist was pounding on the wood and didn’t stop until she opened it.
“What is…” Ana started, then stopped.
We just stood there staring at one another. I’d never seen Ana look more beautiful. Her blonde hair was down, looking like spun gold, while her blue eyes shone brightly. Her silky, silver robe was not quite done up, showing off a narrow gap of her skin like a tantalizing morsel.
It was Ethan’s words and the alcohol’s fault that my inhibitions and walls had crashed down around me, leaving me nothing but raw nerves.
“Eddie…what’s going on?”
I took a step, and she moved back deeper into her room. I shut the door behind me and turned the lock, the sound of it sealing my fate.
“How could you do this to me,” I asked, facing her and peeling off my long coat. I tossed it to the side. “How could you hurt me like this? I’ve done nothing but love you. I get that you were angry and felt like you needed to be…the hero in your own story, but this is me. Me.”
“I know.” Ana shook her head. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I never wanted to do that.”
I moved closer, but this time she didn’t back away.
“My heart stopped when I got the call. I was a shell that kept one foot stepping in front of the other because of a promise I made to you. I just…the ache in my chest…it hurts me even now. Even when you’re standing right before my eyes.”
One at a time, I unbuttoned my shirt until it hung open. Ana’s eyes flashed with a hunger I’d craved to see again.
“Eddie, I should’ve said this before. It’s what I should’ve said first. It killed me to do this to you and Ren.
I thought of you always. I was tempted to call you so many times.
When my eyes closed, I dreamed that we were once more a happy family.
It was the only thing that got me through,” she said, stepping closer, her eyes pleading with me to understand.
“I did a lot of good while I was gone, but none of it is worth it if I have lost you and Ren. That is why I did all of this. To protect her, us. To finally be free. Losing you now…” Her bottom lip trembled. “Would be unbearable.”
“I want to call you a bitch. I want to throw you out of this house and tell you never to come back, because my heart cannot take any more of this. But to never see you again. Never hear your voice.”
I cupped her cheek and ran my thumb over skin that had been locked into my memory years ago, and yet the softness still surprised and warmed me.
“To never touch you…it would be like tearing my heart out and tossing it away, and I can’t do that either. I’m trapped by my limitless love for you, and I hate you for it.”
Ana was so close that I felt the brush of silk on my chest, sending shocks racing through my body. Her hand was cool as it slipped under the opening of my shirt and covered my heart.
“I deserve your hate. The pain my love has caused by not casting you away years ago is criminal. I was selfish in my love for you. I couldn’t let you go.
I had to have you then. I have to have you now.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything that has happened.
And call me whatever names you want because I am all of it.
I’m all of it and more because I’d do it again if it meant that I got to love you.
If it meant that we got to have our incredible daughter.
I’d do it, I’d endure it all again and again.
You are worth every longing night, every bit of pain, every hardship. You’ve always been it for me.”
Tears trickled down her cheeks. Pain and yearning were written on her face. Love burned in her eyes as her body trembled under my touch.
“I can’t stop loving you,” I whispered.
“I never want to stop loving you and couldn’t even if I tried. There has never been anyone else since the day we met all those years ago. Not for a single second,” Ana said.
“It feels like another lifetime,” I said.
“It was. We were children. We thought we could do anything, survive anything. We have, but not without consequences that have scarred us, and our daughter, and…” Ana gulped in a breath of air.
“For the first time, I’m at a complete loss as to what to do next.
Please say you can find it in your heart to forgive me one last time.
I know I have no right to ask, but I am.
Because when it comes to you, I’ll always be selfish. ”
Suffering and love swirled together in my chest. She was right, and I would choose it all over again as well. We both needed our heads examined, but my life was not complete without her.
“You have to promise me that you’ll never leave again.
You have to promise me that, from now on, we decide everything together.
No more running away, no more hiding, no more going rogue.
I can’t live my life like this anymore. Too much time has been lost. We have all suffered, and I just can’t.
If I say yes, and you break that trust—Ana, never darken my door again.
I mean it, and if you truly love me, then you will do as I ask. ”
“You have my word. You and Ren…this is all I’ve ever wanted, everything I’ve ever done was to make this a reality. I’m not going anywhere, even if you do kick me out right now. I’ll sleep outside the gate until you let me back in.”
My lips hovered over hers. I’d dreamed of her kiss for so many nights that some days it felt easier to stay asleep than to wake up and remember that it was all in my head.
“You swear to this,” I asked, my body shaking and my heart pounding for the first time in years.
“I will swear it tonight and every night for the rest of our lives,” Ana said. Her hand moved up my chest until her fingers rested over the jumping pulse in my neck. “I love you.”
“I love you more,” I whispered, my voice ragged.
“Impossible,” Ana said.
The moment our lips touched, the world stopped spinning, and it was just the two of us. Everything that was between us seemed insignificant as Ethan’s words once more played over in my head. I knew how broken he felt, and Ana and I had another chance to get it right.
That knowledge broke me. I couldn’t let it slip away. I just couldn’t.
The kiss was slow at first, like a prayer I’d waited years to say. Then it deepened. My hands slid to familiar places. Her body responded exactly how I remembered, as if no time had passed at all.
We kissed like we were making up for lost years. Like our love had somehow survived the wreckage of thousands of nights apart and demanded to be felt. I moved my hand down her back, pulling her closer until there was no space left between us. Ana’s fingers traced the lines of my shoulders.
We were living proof that life had been unkind and downright cruel, but it had not been victorious in trying to break us. We stood tall among the rubble.
“I dreamed of this,” I confessed against her mouth.
“So did I,” Ana breathed. “Dear god, I have missed you more than I have missed air to breathe.”
I poured every ounce of emotion I felt into our connection. Our lips parted only long enough for me to kiss a line along her jaw, her throat, every place I’d memorized long ago.
Ana moaned, her fingers gripping my shirt as she arched into me.
I gave the knot at her waist a tug, and the silk parted.
My breath shuddered as my hands touched her skin.
My body told me she was here, but my mind was convinced that I was stuck in some sort of torturous loop that would never end.
Sliding my hands down to grip her hips, I needed to know that she wasn’t a mirage that would disappear come morning.
“God, how I’ve yearned for you,” I said. “This doesn’t feel real.”
“I’m here, and I’m never going anywhere.” Ana wrapped her arms around my neck, her fingers running through my hair, exactly like she’d always done, and the last piece of my restraint was snapped.
Picking Ana up, her lips claimed mine as I walked across the room and laid her down on the bed. Hovering over her body, I stared into her eyes.
“You have always been my forever, Ana.”
“And you’ve always been mine, Eddie.”
Every scar, year of anguish, and lie told still couldn’t outweigh the truth that mattered most. I would choose her again, even knowing how much it would cost me, and how much it would hurt.
No matter how many reasons I had to walk away, my heart and soul had made the decision long before I ever understood what that meant.
Yuliana Mikhailov was mine.
Yuliana
Time had no meaning. We’d earned the right to ignore it for a little while. When we finally slowed, it wasn’t because the fire had dimmed. It was because we were holding something fragile.
Panting hard, Eddie rolled onto his back and threw his arm over his eyes. I cuddled into his side with my head on his heart, clinging to him for dear life.
“We are not the same people we once were,” I whispered, fingers tracing my name tattooed on his chest as I’d done so many years ago.
“No, we are not,” Eddie agreed. “But we’re still us. Different, a little broken, but still us.”
I snuggled closer, but it still wasn’t enough. His touch was firm and grounding, as if he were afraid the world might try to take me again.
“I don’t know what this means for tomorrow. We have a lot to figure out,” he said, kissing the top of my head.
I closed my eyes, letting myself exist in this moment.
“Neither do I. But for now, until we leave this room…can we simply know that love survived.”
“That is easy because it did. We did, despite everything, we are still here and still breathing,” Eddie said.
I turned my head, laying my chin on my hands as I studied his face.
“I do need to ask you one thing, before anything else happens.”
His lip twitched.
“You want to know why your father was here, why he is still breathing, and why I’d even contemplate breaking bread with him,” he said, smiling.
“You still know me. Yes. I do.”
Eddie sighed and rubbed his eyes.
“Simple answer. Vadin did what he always does. He manipulated his way into the situation, and I let him get to me rather than thinking rationally.”
“Yes, well, I get that. My father has that effect on me, too. Just seeing him sitting at that table pushed me over the edge, and I almost did something that I couldn’t come back from.”
Eddie sat up, taking me with him. We faced each other, bodies still touching, my fingers linked with his.
“You don’t want him to die?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s not what I meant.
I want him to die. But our daughter was right, that was not the time or the place, and doing such a thing in front of a child…
” I bit my lip to keep it from trembling.
“I was lost in the moment. I’d finally found him, and all of the anger inside of me boiled over.
I lost myself. I can’t believe Ren had to be the one to talk me down.
I just…” I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
“I feel like I’m stepping out of a fog, like I’ve been living a life that wasn’t my own for the last two years.
I hardly recognize who I became, and I’m terrified to slip back into that person. ”
“Trauma will do that to you,” Eddie said.
Turning my head, I glanced at the word Lawrence had carved into my skin. I could only see the top of it, but felt it always pressing into me, reminding me of what I’d suffered at the hands of not just Lawrence but this fucked up world we inhabited.
“And let’s be honest, you’ve had a lot and pushed it down. It was bound to come back and haunt you,” he said.
“Maybe. But, Eddie, don’t let me off the hook so easily. Trauma or not, I still made choices, and I have to deal with the consequences.”
Eddie nodded as he cupped my face.
“You do, and you will. But one of those is not going to be me ending us.”
My eyes welled and immediately spilled over as relief washed through me.
“Really?”
“Ana…my love is absolute. It always has been, and there is nothing you could do that would ever change that.”
“Except leaving again,” I corrected.
He smirked. “Yes…other than that.”
Covering my mouth, I let the emotion break wide open. It was like my chest had finally cracked and all the things I’d suppressed clawed their way out at the same time.
I didn’t know how to rebuild what I’d shattered or whether forgiveness would ever fully find me. I only knew that even after everything—the lie, the graves, the time apart—Eddie’s heart still recognized mine.
Love hadn’t saved us from pain. But it had survived it. And that felt like a miracle I didn’t deserve but would protect for the rest of my life, no matter how long that was.