Chapter 8 #3
I took the chair opposite hers. We had been avoiding the space between us all evening, moving through it carefully, as though one wrong step would turn the room into something neither of us could escape.
“Marco D’Angelo approached you,” I said.
“Directly. He gave me advice about symbols.”
My hands tightened on the table.
“He will not approach you again.”
Elena’s expression cooled. “And how exactly are you planning to guarantee that?”
“That is not something you need to know.”
Her mug clicked against the saucer when she set it down.
“No,” she said. “Try again.”
I looked at her.
She waited.
The old response sat ready in my throat: I would handle it. I would make arrangements. I would keep the details away from her because details were only another kind of danger.
But she had told me not to decide the truth was less dangerous than her reaction.
“I will increase the security around your studio,” I said. “I will have Adrian find out why Marco was at the Calder. And I will ask Nico not to do anything that creates a problem you have to clean up.”
“A problem I have to clean up?”
“People notice when D’Angelo men stop appearing in public.”
Elena studied my face. “That was almost an honest answer.”
“It was an honest answer.”
“Almost.”
I should have been annoyed. Instead, something in my chest eased. She was not afraid of the parts of me that were ugly. She was afraid of the parts that were hidden.
“Why did you agree to marry me?” I asked.
Her eyebrows rose. “That is an inconvenient question to ask while I am wearing your shirt.”
“It is still a question.”
She looked toward the window. Darkness pressed against the glass. “At first? Because I thought it would keep my father alive.”
“And now?”
“I do not know.”
The answer was more honest than any promise would have been.
“I thought you had a reason,” I said.
“I have reasons. They just change every day.” She traced her thumb around the rim of the mug.
“I thought you were the kind of man who used people and then acted surprised when they hated him. Sometimes I still think that. But then you let me bring Mia into your library and stood in a doorway while I worked like I was doing something important. You came to my apartment and did not open my notebooks. You are trying to tell the truth, badly. It is confusing.”
I watched her lips form the last word.
“Confusing is not usually a recommendation,” I said.
“No. But it is not nothing.”
The cottage seemed suddenly too small.
I stood and crossed to the fireplace, needing movement. The old stone mantel held no photographs, no trophies, none of the objects that turned a place into evidence. Just a clock that had stopped years ago at 2:17.
“Elena,” I said, still facing the fire. “There was a man named Rafe.”
Behind me, the chair creaked. She did not interrupt.
“He was my friend before he became family business. We grew up together. He was better than I was at most things. Better at reading people. Better at making a room feel lighter. He trusted someone I did not trust.”
I had never said it aloud to anyone outside my brothers.
“She gave information to the D’Angelos. I suspected something. I waited because I wanted proof. Rafe died before I found it.”
The words did not become easier after they existed in the room.
Elena was quiet for so long I thought perhaps I had asked too much of her. Then she said, “How old were you?”
“Twenty-one.”
“That is too young to think you were responsible for every choice another person made.”
“It was old enough to know better.”
“No,” she said softly. “It was old enough to be blamed.”
I turned around.
She had not moved. Her eyes were on me, open and tired and too kind for the story I had given her.
“You do not know what happened,” I said.
“No. But I know what it is like to build a whole personality around the one moment you think you failed someone.”
The rain went on. The fire settled lower.
I wanted to ask her about her mother. About the way she had looked at the cedar box. I did not. There was a limit to the pain a person could borrow from another in one night.
Instead I sat beside her on the bench seat. Close enough to feel her warmth. Not close enough to touch.
“You should not be here,” I said.
Her mouth curved without humor. “That is exactly what you said at the warehouse.”
“I know.”
“You keep being wrong in very consistent ways.”
I looked down at my hands. “Probably.”
She shifted beside me. Our knees touched. Neither of us moved away.
“Damian,” she said. “Do you regret asking?”
There were a hundred answers that would have protected me. I chose none of them.
“Yes,” I said.
Her face changed.
“Not because I do not want you here,” I added. “Because I knew it would cost you more than I admitted.”
She breathed out slowly.
“And do you still want me here?”
The room narrowed to that question.
“Yes.”
Her eyes dropped to my mouth. Mine followed the movement before I could stop them.
“Elena.”
“What?”
“If I kiss you, it cannot be because you are frightened or because this house is the only place you have tonight.”
“I know.”
“And it cannot be because you think you owe me something.”
Her gaze came back to mine. “I do not.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you still sitting so far away?”
I could have taken that as permission. I did not. I lifted one hand and waited until she looked at it.
“May I?”
The word seemed to surprise her. Then she placed her fingers in mine.
Her hand was cool. Mine closed around it carefully, giving her time to pull back. She did not.
When I leaned toward her, I moved slowly enough to make the choice visible. Her breath caught, but she came forward too. The first touch of her mouth against mine was gentle, almost questioning. The second was not.
She kissed me with one hand at my jaw and the other still linked with mine. There was anger in it, and relief, and all the words we had failed to say when either one of us had been too afraid that saying them would make the other leave.
I wanted more. I wanted to pull her closer until the cottage, the rain, the debt, the dead, all of it disappeared.
Instead I stopped.
Her forehead rested against mine. “Why did you stop?”
“Because I do not trust myself to separate want from panic yet.”
A faint laugh moved through her. “That may be the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“It was not intended to be romantic.”
“I know.” Her fingers tightened around mine. “That is why it was.”
We stayed there beside the dying fire, not kissing again, not moving apart.
For the first time in years, I understood that restraint did not always mean denial.
Sometimes it meant giving something a chance to survive the night.
Sometime after midnight, the rain eased.
Elena had fallen asleep on the couch with a blanket over her legs, one hand curled beneath her cheek. I stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the sitting room, watching her breathe, and understood why men made bad decisions when they confused vigilance with devotion.
Every instinct in me wanted to stay awake until morning.
To sit in the chair opposite her with a gun within reach and count every sound the cottage made.
I had done that for people before. For Rafe.
For Nico when he was young and got sick.
For my mother after Roman’s enemies sent an envelope to the house with no return address and too much silence inside it.