Chapter 19 #2
I couldn’t speak. I leaned forward carefully and wrapped my arms around her, holding her as tightly as I could without hurting her. She hugged me back at once, warm and fierce and still my little sister in all the ways that counted most.
“You okay?” she murmured into my shoulder.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
And for once, it was the truth.
When I pulled back, Sophie gave me a small, smug smile. “Also he’s really hot, so nice job.”
I laughed then, and the sound felt so good in my chest I almost wanted to cry.
“Get some rest, menace.”
“Bring him back,” she ordered as I stood. “And tell him I want black with silver details. Maybe a dagger handle. Or rhinestones. I haven’t decided yet.”
“Naturally.”
“And Emily?”
I looked over my shoulder from the door.
Sophie smiled, softer now. “I’m really glad you came home.”
My throat tightened. “Me too.”
She hesitated for only a second before adding, “But it’s also okay for you to leave and thrive there. You don’t owe me or this family your whole life just because we love you.”
That only made me feel like I owed her more than ever.
But I nodded.
“I love you, kiddo. I’ll see you soon.”
“Yeah, yeah. Go make out with your hot boyfriend.”
I laughed under my breath and slipped out into the hallway lighter than when I’d walked in.
By the time we were back on the plane, Seattle already felt different in my memory.
Not smaller, exactly. Not less painful either. Sophie’s surgery had still happened. Adam had still stood in front of me with his smug, poisonous smile. My parents were still my parents, loving in the ways they knew how to be and blind in the ways that hurt most.
None of that had magically changed.
I had.
I felt it in the quiet aftermath of everything, in the strange steadiness sitting where fear used to live. I went home and faced the ghosts waiting there. I looked Adam in the eye and not folded. I let Pietro see the ugliest, most bruised parts of my past and not lost myself in the telling of it.
And now, somewhere high above the clouds with the cabin lights dimmed low and the world reduced to the soft hum of the engines, I realized I felt lighter than I had in years.
Not completely healed. But freer.
Pietro must have sensed something in me changed, because his hand found mine where it rested on the seat between us and turned it until our fingers threaded together.
“What?” I asked quietly.
He looked at me with that infuriatingly perceptive calm of his. “You’re thinking.”
“That sounds accusatory.”
“It’s an observation.”
I smiled and leaned my head back against the seat. “I was just realizing I’m happier than I should be after a trip like that.”
His thumb moved once over my knuckles. “Why is that a problem?”
“Because it feels unfair.” I turned my face toward him. “I went home to deal with surgery and family drama and Adam being exactly as terrible as I remembered, and I’m still sitting here feeling…” I let out a breath. “Better.”
His expression changed, altered by something I could never quite look at directly without risking my own undoing.
“That’s because you faced it,” he said. “And you were stronger than what was waiting for you.”
The words settled deep, part of me waiting for someone to say them out loud.
“I love you,” I said, because it was there, warm and certain and true enough now that holding it back felt pointless.
His gaze held mine.
“I know,” he murmured. “And I love you.”
A low ache moved through me then, less hunger than tenderness, though hunger was there too, blunted by the exhaustion of a long emotional day and the relief of surviving it.
He must have seen that as well.
“Come with me,” he said quietly.
I lifted a brow. “Where?”
“There’s a small room at the back.”
I stared at him for a beat. “Pietro Benetti.”
His mouth curved very slightly. “What?”
“I’m not tired.”
“Neither am I.”
That was enough to make me laugh, something that still startled me every time it rose so easily around him.
He stood first, then offered me his hand. I took it.
The little room at the back of the plane was narrow, private, and dimly lit, and the second Pietro shut the door behind us the air changed.
He looked at me for one suspended beat, his chest rising once, hard, like even now he was fighting himself.
Then he came for me.
His hands closed around my waist and his mouth took mine in a kiss that was hungrier but still unmistakably him. Controlled. Deliberate. As if even when he wanted to lose himself, some part of him still needed to make sure I felt every second of being chosen.
“Let me take care of you,” he said against my lips, his voice already rough.
The heated words slid through me.
I nodded, and that was all he needed.
He backed me toward the bed and lowered me onto it. Then he stood over me for a moment, looking down with such open hunger that I felt it low in my belly.
“Do not look at me like that if you expect me to behave,” I whispered.
His mouth curved as the expression in his eyes darkened.
“I gave up on that before we left Seattle.”
That should not have thrilled me as much as it did.
He pulled up my skirt and removed my tights before settling between my thighs, spreading them with slow, certain hands, and I felt the first pulse of real anticipation, enough to make me catch my breath.
He kissed his way up the inside of one thigh, then the other, taking his time in a way that felt almost cruel.
“Pietro,” I said, a warning and plea all at once.
“I know,” he murmured, not stopping. “You’re impatient.”
“Because you’re doing this on purpose.”
“Yes.”
The simple honesty of it made me shiver.
Then he pulled down my underwear and his mouth settled where I needed it.
The whole plane could have dropped out of the sky and I honestly would not have cared.
He was thorough, his tongue and mouth devouring me with intent.
He touched me like a man who had already learned exactly what undid me and meant to make full use of the knowledge.
My hand flew into his hair as I rocked my hips.
He made a low sound against me, and the vibration of it nearly broke me on the spot.
“That’s it,” he said, the words roughened now. “Hold on to me.”