Chapter 25 #2
“I didn’t bring it because I expected reconciliation,” he said. “It was made before any of this. I ordered it before I ever took you home. You are the love of my life. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“You don’t even realize it,” I said, anger and heartbreak tangling so tightly together I could barely separate them. “But saying that makes it worse, not better.”
His lips had finally lost their bluish tint, which meant I was no longer morally obligated to keep him here.
“You seem warm enough now,” I said. “You should go.”
He stared at me. “So that’s it? You don’t love me anymore?”
I rolled my eyes, mostly because if I didn’t, I might cry. “Of course I still love you. That is very much not the problem.”
The words seemed to hit him harder than I intended, but I didn’t let that soften me.
“I love you,” I said more quietly, “and that changes absolutely nothing about the fact that I deserve better.”
He rocked back as if I had struck him.
“I won’t settle for less than I deserve,” I went on. “I learned that the hard way, and yes, some of that learning came from you. You showed me things I needed to see. You made me feel respected and chosen and equal. Then, at the first real hurdle, you broke the most important promise of all.”
His brow furrowed. “I always respected you.”
“No,” I said. “You respected me right up until respecting me became inconvenient.”
He opened his mouth, but I didn’t let him speak.
He looked genuinely stricken now, and still I kept going because if I stopped, I would lose the nerve.
“Worst of all,” I said, “you had already convinced yourself that you wanted forever. You ordered a ring, planned a future. Then a real crisis happened and suddenly you decided alone that I couldn’t handle the life, that I shouldn’t get to choose it, that I should just be grateful you were throwing me away for my own good. ”
I shook my head slowly.
“Do you have any idea how little trust that shows? You didn’t trust me to choose you with full knowledge. That is not something I can build a life on.”
He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again there was no defense left in them, only the kind of rawness I had wanted from him all along. I hated that it had taken this much damage to get there.
“It wasn’t trust I lacked,” he said hoarsely. “It was courage.”
I didn’t reply.
For once, he seemed to understand that silence did not mean the conversation was his to control.
“I was afraid,” he said. “Not only of losing you to my world, but of keeping you in it long enough for you to see that all the promises I made you were things I wanted to give, not things I could guarantee.”
He set the little blue box down on the counter as if he could no longer bear to hold it.
“I kept telling myself that if I let you go first, if I made the choice before the life did it for us, then maybe I could save you from hating me later.”
The words landed with quiet force.
“Hating you.”
“Yes.” His mouth twisted, the expression close to self-disgust. “I know what I am, Emily. I know the parts of me that fit too easily into the violence, the compromises I’ll make, the lies I’ll tell myself are necessary, the blood that will paint my hands again whether I want it or not.
I was terrified that one day you would turn around, look at me, and realize that loving me cost you too much.
That the man you thought you were choosing and the life attached to him were never things I could keep separate for long. ”
He leaned forward on the counter, not enough to crowd me, just enough that I could see how earnest he was.
“You already changed me,” he said. “You have no idea how much. The more time I spend with you, the more power you have over me, and I do not say that like a complaint or a burden. It terrifies me. I was raised to control every variable, to anticipate every weakness, to never hand another person the means to break me. And then you walked into my life and it stopped mattering, except when it mattered too much.”
My throat closed against my will.
“So I panicked,” he said simply. “And I did the worst thing I could have done. I made the choice for you and told myself it was love because that was easier than admitting it was fear.”
I folded my arms more tightly across myself, needing something to hold on to while he stood there finally saying the things I had wanted and not wanted to hear.
“And that,” I said quietly, “is the tragedy of it, Pietro. Because what you’re describing is life.”
He frowned slightly.
“That’s the beauty and the terror of it,” I went on.
“You never know. You don’t get guarantees.
You don’t get to promise forever with absolute certainty and then only proceed if the future signs a legal waiver.
Life is scary. Loving someone with your whole heart and knowing they can hurt you, that you can disappoint them, that life can twist things into shapes neither of you expected, is the risk.
That is what everyone is doing all the time. ”
He was listening with the kind of stillness that meant the words were getting under his skin.
“What I deserved,” I said, “was the decency of you telling me that. Not deciding for me that fear made the choice obvious. Not robbing me of the chance to look at the same danger you were looking at and still say yes. I’m not unreasonable.
I’m learning this world, as you are learning me.
I can understand fear. I can understand panic.
I can even understand you wanting to run before you got hurt. ”
My voice caught slightly, and I hated that enough to force myself to continue more steadily.
“But if you don’t speak, if you don’t trust me enough to let me face the hard truth with you, then what you’re offering me isn’t love. It’s management.”
He flinched.
“You say you lacked courage,” I said. “Fine. I believe you. But now you’ve shown me a side of you that frightens me far more than the one I saw in that warehouse.”
His whole body went still.
“That side didn’t scare me because at least it was honest,” I said.
“It was brutal and terrible and hard to witness, but it was the truth. This?” I shook my head slowly.
“This scares me more, because now I know that when you are afraid, you are capable of taking the people you love and cutting them out of the decision entirely while convincing yourself it’s noble. ”
I stared him down, because he deserved to see what the words cost me.
“The warehouse showed me what you are capable of with your enemies,” I said softly. “This showed me what you are capable of with my heart.”
For the first time since he walked into my apartment, I saw something like defeat move through him. The awful recognition of a wound opened exactly where it belonged.
“Emily…”
I shook my head.
“No. Don’t say my name like that and expect it to do half the work for you.”
The silence was almost unbearable.
I loved him. God, I did. I loved him enough that staying angry took effort and some softer, weaker part of me wanted to cross the room to let him hold me and pretend understanding was the same thing as repair.
It wasn’t.
He seemed to know that, because when he spoke again there was no plea in it.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” he said.
“No,” I replied. “You don’t and neither do I.”
And that was the most honest thing either of us had said all day.
He held my gaze for a long moment, and when he spoke again there was something steadier in him, something quieter and far more dangerous than apology.
“I’m not giving up on you,” he said. “I can’t. As long as there is love, there is still something to save.”
I said nothing. I didn’t trust myself to.
He nodded once, as if my silence was answer enough for now. Then he stood up, reached for his coat, for his cane, collecting all the pieces of himself he had walked in with, and the simple movement of it hurt more than the sight of the ring box still on my table.
At the door he stopped and looked back at me.
“I’ll prove to you,” he said quietly, “that I’m smart enough to learn from my mistakes.”
Before I could answer, before I could decide whether that promise infuriated me or undid me, he crossed the small distance between us and pressed a kiss to my forehead.
It was so gentle it almost felt cruel.
Then he stepped away and let himself out.
I stayed exactly where I was, listening to the door close, to his footsteps fading down the hall, to the silence that rushed in after him and settled through the apartment like dust.
I had let him go.
I stayed strong.
I held the line exactly where I needed to.
And standing there alone with my heart still beating too hard and his warmth still fading from my skin, there was a small, traitorous part of me that wished he would.