Fifty-Two
“Our love started messy; now it’s a beautiful thing. It’s not perfect, but it’s ours, and for the first time in my life, that’s enough.” Aria Boschett.
As I lie atop him, my head resting on his chest, I’m sated, wrapped in the warmth of Cyan and the steady rhythm of his heart.
It’s a sound I could listen to forever. It’s grounding, constant, and matches the fragile hope swelling inside my chest. Moonlight spills through the window, casting his rugged features in silver.
He looks almost ethereal like this, the shifting color of his eyes softened.
I want to keep this between the two of us.
This calm, this new beginning. With no more barriers, no more secrets, neither his past nor mine.
Not even Ethan. I won’t let the chaos seep into this fragile paradise.
“You know,” I whisper, not quite sure how to begin, so I don’t try to polish it. Just letting my truth spill out. “My parents were perfect. Our life was perfect. Until I fucked it all up.”
I swallow hard. “My dad had a quiet strength about him. I was his la mia piccola signora.” A small smile touches my lips before it fades. “And I killed him.” Cyan doesn’t interrupt. He just listens; his silence gives me the courage to keep going.
“When I was twelve, I begged him to go to the bookstore. He was exhausted. He’d worked a double. But I wouldn’t let it go. I stomped my foot, cried, and reminded him he’d made me a promise. Everyone else in my class would have their copy. I didn’t want to be the only one without it.”
I draw a shaky breath. “Dad got up, grabbed his keys, ‘A Boschett always keeps their promises.’” My voice cracks.
“That was the last thing he ever said to me before he walked out the door. He never came home. He was mugged and killed.” I squeeze my eyes shut as tears spill over.
“Because of me. Because I wanted—” The words fracture, breaking apart before I can finish them.
A sob tears out of my chest, ugly and uncontained, stealing my breath.
I curl inward, hands fisting in the sheets, like I can anchor myself if I just hold on hard enough.
I can’t say it. I can’t give the guilt a name out loud.
Cyan doesn’t rush me. He shifts beneath me, and one arm comes around my back, solid and warm.
His other hand slides into my hair, not forcing my head up, just cradling it there, like he knows this moment needs space to hurt.
I shake against him, my face pressed to his chest, his heartbeat loud beneath my ear.
Ever steady, ever unwavering, Cyan holds me, telling me without words he’s not going anywhere, that he’ll stay right here no matter how ugly the truth gets.
My tears soak into his skin. His thumb moves in small, grounding strokes along my spine.
Once, twice, again and again. The quiet patience undoes me more than words ever could.
“My mom’s laugh used to light up an entire room,” I continue, quieter now.
“After my dad died, it was like something inside her shattered. She tried to hold everything together, but I think she couldn’t look at me without seeing him.
” My breath catches. I press my forehead harder into his chest, like I can hide there.
“Every time she looked at me, I think she saw the promise I made him keep. The night he didn’t come home.
” Another sob tears out of me before I can stop it, but I don’t stop.
I push forward. “I wasn’t just her daughter anymore…
I was the reminder; the reason she lost the love of her life.
” I drag in a breath that trembles. “One day, she dropped me off at my grandmother’s and said it was only temporary.
She never came back. Someone found her car abandoned.
No trace of her. She just vanished.” My chest tightens as the words I’ve carried for years finally surface.
“And even Nonna. She needed me, and I wasn’t there.
It’s always me. Dad, Mom, and my grandmother.
.. every time something bad happens to the people I love, I’m right there at the center of it. ”
The words I’ve lived with for years slip out before I can stop them. “I’m the constant. I’m the curse.”
Cyan’s hand slides gently through my curls, anchoring me as my body shakes. He holds me like he’s built to weather storms, and me being a sobbing mess doesn’t scare him away. “What if–” I pause. “What if something happens through me… to you?”
His response is immediate. “You’re not a curse, Dove. You’re not responsible for the actions of others.” His thumb strokes my scalp, grounding me. “What that man did to your dad, that’s on him. Not you and your mom… not knowing what happened to her? That kind of loss eats at a person. I’m sorry.”
I nod, my chest tight with longing. “Sometimes I wonder if she’s still out there. Waiting for me to find her.”
“I knew about your parents,” he admits. “I looked into your mother’s case, found nothing… It’s like she disappeared without a trace. Her case is cold buried in Chicago PD files.”
“I figured you knew, but I needed to tell you myself. I want no more secrets between us.”
“Neither do I, tell me, how does your grandmother’s condition fall on your shoulders?”
A bitter laugh escapes me, dissolving into sobs.
I’ve become a running faucet of tears. He might judge me for this.
I wasn’t a child when I failed her. “I was in college. Finals week. We always decorated the Christmas tree together, but a guy I liked asked me out. I delayed my trip just one day—that’s all.
When I finally got there—” I gulp, “she was unconscious at the bottom of the stairs. She’d tried to carry the tree up from the basement herself.
She fell, hit her head. The trauma accelerated her Alzheimer’s. If I hadn’t.” I can’t finish.
His silence gnaws at me, and shame floods in. I try to pull away. I know how much he values loyalty, family, and duty, and I failed the woman who raised me. Cyan’s arms tighten instantly, holding me close.
“Actions and reactions,” he murmurs.
I pull back, enough to look at him. “What?”
“We all have moments we wish we could undo. But we live with the consequences.” His voice stays steady, but I feel the storm beneath it.
“The night my family was killed, I lost my soul. If it weren’t for Collin, and pure luck, we’d be dead too.
Because of my photographic memory, it never leaves me.
Ciara, my older sister, was the first. With one sound, they shot her.
She was the best of us.” His jaw tightens.
“Then they dragged my Ma away and made us listen. I froze, did nothing, stood there, trapped in fear.”
My chest aches as he continues. “But Collin didn’t freeze; he took action and stabbed one of them.” A breath in. Out. “That was the moment my Da and I realized it was fight or die. I grabbed the bleeding man’s gun and pulled the trigger.”
I don’t speak. I just listen as his pain spills out.
A red haze clouds my vision, each word fueling a quiet, righteous fury on his behalf.
His mother’s last moments and the promise he made that still haunt him.
By the end of that night, he and Collin were no longer boys.
Their childhood was burned away with the house.
“I helped my uncle Calum burn it down. My family’s bodies were inside.
He said it was the only way we’d live.” His mouth hardens.
“But I made my own promise that night. Lorenzo Rizzotto will pay… one day I’ll crush him beneath my boot.
” By the time he finishes, my eyes are full, but his aren’t.
To break a man to where his own sorrow can’t shed tears.
Rosa was right—Cyan never had a choice. The world forged him in fire.
“I’m so sorry,” I lift my hand to cradle his face. “That you had to witness all of that.”
He shifts beneath me. “That night taught me something, Aria. The world teaches you to become a wolf or be devoured” His body tenses as emotion surges through him, barely contained.
The bitterness leaks anyway in the tremor of his hands, the tightness of his hold.
In that moment, I feel it clearly: the need to soothe him, to anchor him.
Cyan MacBrady became a monster because he had to, and somehow, I am the harp meant to calm him.
The weight of our shared pain settles between us.
It binds us tighter than any kiss or promise ever could.
“Cyan,” I lean in until my lips brush his ear.
“I know the weight of our family rests on your shoulders, and your past can feel like chains.” I draw back just enough to meet his eyes.
“But you don’t have to face it alone.” I move up his chest to press my forehead to his, our breaths mingling.
“I see the man you are now… not just the scars that tried to break you. When anger threatens to consume you, come back to us. To me.” My hand settles over his heart.
“Let our love be your sanctuary, and if that’s not enough…
” I kiss him. “Then give the darkness to me. I’ll carry it with you. ”
Pulling away, our gazes meet, and I see all that he is–raw and unguarded, flickering there for me to see. “I’m your light, Cyan, walking in this dark world with you, hand in hand. I love you.”
I kiss his lips, his cheeks, his crooked nose, loving him soft, slow, and unhurried.
Our kiss becomes a thread, stitching us closer, binding something deeper than desire. When words are no longer enough, our bodies answer–not with hunger, but with reverence. Two broken pasts meeting, finding wholeness not through passion, but through trust.