Chapter 41
ELSIE
The day swings into night, and stars bathe the sky in embers. Seeing the sky like that…it makes us so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I’ve gotten used to being insignificant, but with Michael, it was the one time I felt anything but.
There’s a knock at my door, and my defenses immediately go up.
“I’m not hungry, Mom,” I say, knowing it’s her again, probably with a plate in hand to force-feed me dinner if she has to.
But instead of leaving, the door starts to creak. I don’t have to look at it to know that it’s her.
“Mom, it’s okay…”
I sharply turn toward her, but the words immediately die, because the person who’s standing at the threshold isn’t my mother.
“Michael?” I gasp, a hand flying to my chest. “Wha…what are you doing here?” The words stumble out, my heartbeats thrashing and slamming within.
I want to jump into his arms and hold on, but instead I stay where I am, because he left me.
I fling strands of hair off my face, trying to make my appearance a little less disheveled.
Did I even shower today? Oh my God, I probably smell, and my parents were too kind to tell me.
He lets out a low chuckle. The corners of his mouth rise up into a breathtakingly beautiful smile. “Hi, my beautiful little dove. I’ve missed you.”
It’s funny how a few simple little words can clasp on to your heart and make it sing again.
The more his towering shape stalks toward me, the more my stomach dips. A lopsided grin reaches the far end of his mouth, and my pulse does a funny dance in my throat.
“What are you doing here, Michael?” My tone is clipped. “Last time I checked, you and I were done.”
I incline my chin, pretending I’m strong. Brave. That I don’t need him after what he did. But inside, everything unravels. The want, that affection…it blooms. It soars. It wants inside his heart. It wants to love him.
“I’m here to bring you home.” He steps closer, the white button-down he wears straining against the taut, rippling muscles of his biceps.
He wants me back? Since when?
Confusion and desire pulse inside me.
“And who says I’d go with you now?” I pop a brow. “Who says you deserve it?”
He chuckles. But it’s a sad kind of laugh, and it makes my heart leap. I don’t want to see him hurting.
“I don’t deserve it,” he confesses. “I never deserved you, Elsie.”
His chest widens with a frayed breath.
“But I want you…because…I don’t know how to exist without you.
” The tenor of his tone pulses with despair.
“Every day since you’ve been gone has felt like a damn eternity.
There’s been a hollowness in my chest.” He slams a fist into his heart.
“I never understood what it meant to miss a person, to care for someone so much. But I hurt everywhere, little dove. In my head. In my heart. Fuck, baby, even my damn bones hurt without you.” His brows dip. “It’s like I’m breaking down.”
“What else?” I roll my arms over my chest, blinking back tears, wanting every bit of his groveling.
Because even though he thought he left me for my own good, he broke me.
When his lips twitch, I know he can tell I’m trying to torture him while almost bursting into tears.
“I miss the way you sing. The way you kiss me.” He walks another step. “The way your fingers touch that part of me that felt like the ugliest thing about me.”
His fingers extend toward his scar, hovering there, and my guard drops, grief prickling my eyes.
He moves even closer. If he reaches a hand for mine, he’ll feel it shaking.
“I miss the way you look into my eyes and tell me I’m enough. That I deserve you. Deserve love. Even when I’ve spent my entire life believing I didn’t.”
I let out a quiet sob, tears swimming in my eyes.
“I’m sorry, Elsie.” His voice cracks and washes away all the hurt I’ve been carrying in the days we’ve been apart.
“For what?” I fit him with a pout while my heart flutters.
“For being scared. For hurting you. For loving you so much I had to let you go.”
Did he just say…
Without hesitation, without a bated breath, he snakes his hand to the back of my neck and pins his eyes to mine. “But I’m ready to be selfish now. I’m ready to take you home. I’m ready to love you with everything I have.”
My mouth parts, and I let myself feel the words pouring out of him, eyes awash with heartbreak and truth and all things human.
“I’ve spent my life knowing I wasn’t a good man,” he adds. “That I wasn’t what a woman needed. But the problem is, baby, I can’t exist without you. I don’t know who I was before I met you, and I’ll be nothing if you’re not by my side.”
Emotions clutch his every fiber, and I feel them—those words, the aching of his soul as he gives it all to me. Freely. Unequivocally.
“You’re my home now, my little dove.” His other hand cups my cheek, his thumb rolling away a tear as he darts his head back just a fraction. “You’re the woman I once only dreamed about. But now that I’ve known what it feels like to love you, I can’t go back and pretend you never existed.”
“Michael…” I pant, my vision blurred.
“I once told you that love was our greatest weakness.” He drops his lips to my forehead and kisses me gently, leaving me utterly breathless. “But I was wrong. Because it’s also our biggest strength.”
My stomach flips as he aligns his eyes to mine, and everything within me surges and crashes all at once.
“Loving you has been my greatest honor, Elsie Marino, and I plan to love you until the day that I die.”
“You—you love me?” My brows snap as I stammer. “Like, really love me?”
“I know. It came as a shock to me too.” He chuckles all deep and raspy as he draws his mouth closer to mine.
I can feel the heat of his lips, wanting them badly. My mouth tingles, every inch of my skin casted in fire.
“It was your father who made me realize I did,” he whispers.
“Because what I feel for you…God, Elsie…” He sighs.
“I live and breathe for you. These days without you have been agony. And if you were to ever leave me, you might as well just kill me, because I’d already be dead.
So yes, my little dove, I love you. Like, really fucking love you. ”
He picks up one of my hands and places my palm against his heart. It beats in a crescendo, growing rapid, urgent.
“It beats for you. It hasn’t stopped beating from the moment you walked into my life. And it’ll beat even after I die. It’ll beat for you through the pits of hell I’m surely going to.”
I back up, staring at him with overflowing affection, and in a flash, I’m flinging my arms around him.
“Thank God,” he whispers before he lifts me up, palms tucked under my ass as he drags me against his body.
I wrap my legs around his hips and cry against his shoulder, letting those tears soak up his shirt. This man, the enormity of our feelings…it’s overwhelming. His fingers sweep up my spine until he curls them through my hair. He drags me back, his eyes glazing.
“Does that mean you’ll come home to us?” His voice wavers, his eyes glazed as though he’s not sure what my answer will be.
“And if I say no?” I lift a single brow.
“Then I’ll take you back kicking and screaming, baby. Because I’m never letting you go again.”
I nip my lower lip, throwing my arms over his shoulders, a huge grin fighting my face. “That’s the spirit, Mr. Marino.”
He laughs—really laughs—and that sound…
Is this love? Can I be in love with him already? Does it matter if that’s what I feel in this very moment?
Stop analyzing, Elsie, and tell him how you really feel.
We don’t always have time to second-guess and overthink. Sometimes we just have to do. Right now. Right in this moment. Because not all of us get a second chance to do what could’ve been done. It’s in us to take that leap.
And I want to leap. To him. To us. To a love that I once only dreamed about. Because little girls turn into women who find men that prove to them dreams are simply another version of reality.
I cup his face with both palms and gaze intently into those striking brown eyes. “I love you too, Michael. You’re the only man I’ve ever loved. The only man I ever want to love.”
He grinds his jaw, his eyes fluttering shut for a mere moment before they open.
“I don’t deserve you.” He clenches his jaw.
“We kind of already established that.” I roll my eyes playfully.
“What did I tell you about rolling those eyes at me?” He tilts my chin up with a finger, that gaze possessive and heavy-lidded. Just the way I like him.
My body grows tight with lustful desire. “I guess a punishment is in order.”
He smirks. “It’s been a while since I’ve had you over my knee, little dove.”
My breath hitches, my nipples already tight and ready for him.
He brushes his lips with mine. “You have to know staying with me means accepting this life. And if you can’t accept that, I won’t make you stay.
It has to be your choice.” He pitches back, holding my face in his loving hands.
“But if you can, if you can love me despite it all—a man with all his imperfections—then you’ll never know a day without my love beating through my chest for only you. ”
A huge smile adorns my lips even as my tears run free.
“I want you,” I tell him without an ounce of uncertainty. “I want us, and I’d never give that up for anything in the world.”
I drop my lips to his and kiss him once, and he hums a growl.
“You have me,” I promise. “All of me. My heart and soul…it’s yours, Michael Marino. Forever.”
His chest heaves, and suddenly there’s nothing gentle about him. He takes me on a groan, throwing my body up against the wall.
And he does to my mouth what he’s been doing to my heart all along: ruining it for every man who’ll never get a chance to love me.