Chapter Ten #2
She looks at me then, really looks at me, and I see vulnerability in her dark eyes that makes me want to cross the space between us and pull her into my arms.
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because I know you," I say simply. "I've always known you. The stories are part of who you are, Lucia. They always have been."
A silence falls between us, heavy with history and present tension.
The fire pops and crackles, sending sparks up the chimney, and outside the wind howls like something wild and desperate.
Lucia's eyes meet mine across the space, firelight flickering over her face, casting shadows that make her look both vulnerable and impossibly beautiful.
“I’m writing a new book.” Lucia’s wide, dark eyes crinkle at the corners as a slow smile lifts her lips. “Started it three days ago.”
Her tone is low, like she’s confessing something secret.
Like she’s afraid if she speaks any louder, it will disappear into thin air.
As I look into her soft, beautiful face, I feel the same pull I felt all those years ago—magnetic, inevitable, dangerous.
My chest aches with want and regret and the terrible knowledge that she's here now, within reach, and I still don't know if I have the right to reach for her.
Well, I do know. I have no right to her. No right to disrupt her life with my feelings, my secrets.
“I’m glad,” I tell her sincerely. “I never doubted you.”
“Well, that makes one of us.” She chuckles.
Her lips part slightly, and I see her pulse jumping in the hollow of her throat.
The air between us feels charged, electric, like the moment before lightning strikes.
Every instinct I have screams at me to close the distance, to touch her, to say the words that have been burning in my throat for a decade.
But I can't. Or can I? Ernesto’s words flutter in my brain like moths and everything I always thought I knew seems fickle and unimportant.
Coward.
I grip my whiskey glass tighter, knuckles white against the crystal, fighting every instinct that tells me to move. I know with golem certainty that if I touch her now, if I kiss her again, if I say what's clawing its way up from my chest, everything will change.
The question is whether I'm finally brave enough to let it.
Then she pulls the rug right from under me.
"Do you regret it?" she asks quietly, her voice barely above a whisper. "What happened between us? Do you ever think about that night?"
The question hangs in the air between us, and I watch as something raw and vulnerable flickers across her face. For a moment, I see the girl I used to know underneath all that polished strong woman persona she wears.
“Every day,” I say, the words leaving before I can think any better. “Not a day has passed since that morning that I don’t think about you.”
She swallows and I follow the movement of her throat. My entire body radiates with need, with the memory of what it felt to have her. To hold her.
“Then why? Why wouldn’t you even explain yourself to me?” There’s hurt in her tone, but also strength. So much strength. “You stopped caring, just like that. Like flipping off a switch.”
I shut my eyes against her words. I want to be strong and keep her at arm’s length. I want to tell her the words that will make her hate me for good. But I can’t do it.
Or maybe, just like Ernesto said, I need to stop being a coward.
"I never stopped caring, Lulu," I say, my voice rough with emotion. "You're everything to me, Lucia. You always have been. From our first kiss, I always knew there was no other woman for me."
The words hit her and she exhales forcefully. I can see it in the way her eyes widen, the way her lips part in surprise. All these years, she thought she meant nothing to me. That she was just some teenage mistake I wanted to forget.
Exactly the way I had wanted it. Exactly the opposite of the truth.
“Do you mean you haven’t been with anyone else all this time?” She blinks like she’s trying to focus and can’t quite manage it.
“Golems mate for life.” I nod slowly. “One heart. One mate. One life. It’s who we are.”
“Wow.” Her eyes become unfocused for an instant and she looks down at her lap. She seems to be thinking to herself, but her gaze is clear and lucid when she looks back at me. “And does it bother you that humans are different? That I had lovers other than you?”
My throat closes, and it hurts as I try to swallow. I knew this. I always knew this.
“No.” The answer is as simple as the truth. “I figured you would, since I never told you the truth.”
The words seem to satisfy her and she smiles a sheepish, almost shy smile.
“I never stopped thinking about you, either.”
Her words ripped what little sanity I have left and suddenly, I’m paralyzed, frozen in place. Unable to even think.
She locks her gaze with mine, and all I can do is watch as she reaches over and grabs my glass, setting it carefully on the side table, her gaze never leaving mine. The crystal makes a soft clink against the wood, unnaturally loud in the sudden silence.
"I'm going to kiss you now," she tells me, her voice steady despite the way I can see her pulse hammering at the base of her throat. "You can tell me to stop if you want to."
I try to speak, my lips parting, but no words come out. My mouth feels dry, and I swallow hard as I intensely search her face. Every rational thought I may still have been capable of scatters like leaves in a windstorm.
She smiles then, slow and wicked and probably a little dangerous.
"I'll take that as a yes."
She makes slow, deliberate motions, swinging one leg over my lap to straddle me on the sofa.
Her body presses against my hardness, and I feel my breath catch sharply, my hands hovering just above her hips like I'm afraid to touch her.
She bends forward until her face is inches from mine, her breath mingling with my own, filling the space between us with an electric kind of tension.
Her hair falls on each side of her face like a silk curtain, sealing us off from the outside world, creating our own private universe.
Then she kisses me, and the world as I knew it ceases to exist.