Chapter 25
EMILY
If being an elf in Santa’s Village had taught me anything, it was that I was not made for customer-facing work and that men were, on the whole, deeply strange. Not that the second revelation was new, but the elf fascination certainly added fresh and unwanted layers.
I spent Christmas alone in my apartment, but not in a tragic or self-pitying way. There was no weeping over lost love or dramatic staring out of windows, just an aggressive amount of self-care, a murder documentary marathon, and enough sugar to qualify as a slow-moving medical event.
Two full days of cocooning had done me good.
And today, finally, I was going to the mall to order Sophie’s cane.
I had avoided her a little over the holidays, pretending to be busy.
Which, to be fair, wasn’t exactly a lie, I just wasn’t busy in the fun way we had both hoped for.
The real problem was that I had a very hard time lying to my sister.
When I opened the building door, he was there.
Standing in the snow as if he had stepped out of a brooding fantasy, dressed all in black, cashmere coat immaculate, cane in hand, face carrying an expression so uncharacteristically sheepish that it threw me for half a second.
I stumbled in surprise, caught myself almost immediately, and came to a stop at the bottom of the stairs.
“I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome,” he said quietly. “So I thought it best to wait here.”
I pursed my lips. “You seem to do a great deal of thinking where we’re concerned. In this particular instance, you’re correct. I have to go.”
I started walking.
I had just passed him when he spoke again.
“He’s gone.”
I stopped without turning.
I didn’t bother asking who. I knew. And once again, guilt or sadness refused to appear where they probably should have. I made a mental note to question my morality later, likely in bed, and with far more dramatic flair than strictly necessary.
“Ah,” I said. “I hope Matteo enjoyed himself.”
“If I had known he was coming to see you?—”
I turned then, because that at least deserved my full attention.
“What do you want, Pietro?”
“I spoke to Sophie,” he said. “Her cane is in production. She led me to believe you were getting her one too.” He added quickly, “I didn’t tell her anything.”
He didn’t need to. If Sophie had caught the faintest scent of a breakup, she would have blown up my phone.
“I’m on my way to pay for it now,” I said, tightening my grip on my bag.
He straightened slightly. “I made a promise.”
That one almost made me laugh.
“No offense, but I don’t put much value in your promises anymore.”
He flinched.
Good.
I looked down at my watch, not even really seeing the time. “I have to go.”
“I’d like to talk to you,” he said. “Please. Can you spare me a minute?”
I wasn’t entirely sure why that irritated me as much as it did, but the answer arrived all the same, sharp and ugly and probably deserved.
“It’s always what you want, when you want, isn’t it?” I said. “You want to talk now, so naturally we should talk now. Well, I’m sorry, but I’m not in the mood.”
His shoulders dropped a little.
He nodded once. “Fine. No problem. I’ll wait here until you’re willing to give me twenty minutes.”
I blinked. “Wait here? In this weather?”
“Yes.”
I shrugged. “Fine. Suit yourself.”
Then I marched away quickly, before my will could waver and before I could start thinking too hard about whether standing out in the cold like that might affect his condition.
No, Emily. You do not care. He is a grown man. He can leave whenever he pleases. He is no longer relevant to your life.
That was what I told myself all the way to the bus stop.
Knowing Pietro was taking care of Sophie’s cane did at least free up the money I had been hoarding for it, and with nowhere urgent to be except back in my own increasingly dramatic thoughts, I decided to make myself useful.
What was originally meant to be an hour out turned into much longer.
I stopped by the department office and uploaded the grades for one batch of assignments, then picked up a second stack to grade over the weekend.
If heartbreak had a practical upside, it was that it left more time for academic admin and the vague hope of making myself indispensable enough to eventually secure something more permanent.
After that I bought a dessert I didn’t need, a hot drink that had absolutely no business costing that much, and took my time drinking it.
By the time I got home nearly three hours later, I was cold, tired, and feeling almost smug about the probability that Pietro had finally come to his senses and left.
Then I turned the corner and saw him still there.
He was standing exactly where I had left him.
His face was paler, his mouth set in its familiar hard line, but his lips had taken on the faintest bluish tint and even from a distance I could see the slight shiver running through him every so often despite the rigid dignity with which he was clearly trying to suppress it.
It took every ounce of my willpower to walk past him without stopping.
I made it into the building, up the stairs, through my apartment door, and even then I didn’t let myself think. I showered, changed into sweatpants, thick wool socks, and the most aggressively unflattering oversized Christmas sweater I owned—red, knitted, and covered in three-dimensional reindeer.
Then I looked out the window.
Snow had started falling hard, thick and fast and relentless enough to blur the streetlights.
He wouldn’t still be there.
No. At that point it would be practically suicidal, and for all his idiocy, Pietro Benetti was not a man with a death wish.
And yet I couldn’t stop myself.
I grabbed my coat, shoved my feet into boots without bothering to lace them properly, and went back downstairs like I had lost a war with both comfort and good taste.
He was still there.
Snow had gathered on the shoulders of his black coat and in his hair, and though he was still upright, still managing to hold on to that infuriating air of composed stubbornness, I could see the shudder in his frame.
Fuck me.
I yanked the building door open.
He looked up immediately.
“Come in,” I said.
He walked in slowly and I knew right then that the cold did affect the pain.
Don’t feel bad he made the choice. He always had the choice.
“Don’t mistake this for forgiveness. I just don’t want a manslaughter charge on top of everything else,” I finally muttered as we reached my floor.
He said nothing.
Once inside, he stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, managing to look both painfully out of place and infuriatingly beautiful.
I hated that I noticed how much more he was leaning to one side now, how red his hands were where they gripped the cane, how blue his lips had actually gone.
Most of all, I hated how much I still cared.
“Take your coat off and sit,” I said with a sigh, already heading for the kitchen.
I might have been caring, but I was still petty. Instead of making him coffee with the nice beans he brought me, I used the dreadful instant abomination Nora had left in my cupboard that suggested she lacked taste buds and shame.
I wanted him to warm up, not to feel comfortable.
I kept my back to him while I heated the kettle, but I could feel his eyes on the back of my neck the entire time, and it made me jittery in a way I resented. The silence was worse. All I wanted was for him to talk so I could get this over with.
And yet, standing there with my back to him while the kettle worked itself toward boiling, I found myself thinking about indispensability again.
About how the Medici had understood something that most never did: the most binding thing you could give a person was not a cage but a need.
Pietro had made himself necessary to me in ways I had not noticed.
The warmth of him. The steadiness. The specific, maddening precision with which he learned what I was and what I needed and then given me both without being asked.
He had made himself indispensable, and then he had left, and the fact that I had stood in the apartment watching him turn blue rather than invite him in was, if I was being completely honest with myself, proved I felt strongly about him, good or bad.
I was still inside it.
The question was what I chose to do about that.
I set the mug down in front of him with a little more force than necessary, and some coffee splashed onto the counter.
“Talk,” I said. “I have a show to watch.”
He looked up at me then, and damn it, the expression in his eyes almost sent me to my knees. There was love there. Devotion.
Be strong, Emily.
“I missed you,” he said quietly.
“Right.”
“I’m sorry. Truly. If I could go back, I would.”
I crossed my arms. “What exactly are you sorry for?”
He looked down at his hands before answering.
“Everything. Breaking my promises. Knowing now that I couldn’t keep them the way I wanted to.
Wanting to agree to all your rules and then failing you when it mattered.
Lying to you. Walking away. Letting it get to the point where you ended up in that warehouse because of me. ”
I held his gaze. “Is that what you think I’m angry about?”
He frowned slightly, and there it was again, that terrible sense that for all his brilliance he was still missing the point.
“Emily—”
“No,” I said. “Answer me. Is that what you think this is?”
He let out a breath. “I think I hurt you in every possible way.”
“You did,” I said. “But not for the reason you keep circling around.”
He went still.
“I love you like a madman,” he said, as if that explained anything.
“Love doesn’t change a thing.”
His hand went into his coat pocket, and when he pulled out the small blue box, fury hit me so fast I could barely breathe around it.
“Don’t,” I said immediately. “Don’t do this. It’s insulting, and I can promise you the answer won’t be whatever you’re building in your head.”
His fingers wrapped around the box, but he didn’t open it.