39. Enough #2
“I know you’re used to doing shit alone,” he continued. “But tomorrow, we’re in this together. That’s the only way this works, and we take McKenna down. We need to trust each other.”
“Says the man who bashed my head into cement.”
“Actually,” he smirked. “The cement was at fault there. Not me.”
“You’re really shite at apologies.”
He laughed. “Told you.” He stepped through the door. “Six o’clock. Out front. Don’t be late.”
When the door slammed behind him, I rubbed my face with my hands. If I didn’t accidentally kill him before we landed in Belgium tomorrow, it would be a miracle.
I needed to clear my head. Grabbing my packet of cigarettes, I left the pool house and froze when I noticed there was no Buccini soldier standing guard outside.
I peered around, spotting pairs of armed men patrolling the perimeter of the estate, but none paid me any notice.
I guess the Buccinis were showing me that trust worked both ways.
Strolling around the outside of the mansion, I leaned against a tree trunk and lit a cigarette, peering up at Soraya’s bedroom. The lights were off. It seemed too early for her to be asleep. So where was she? Not knowing made tension coil tightly in my shoulders.
A soft, deeply sad melody drifted towards me from an open ground-floor window beneath her room. I stilled.
Somehow, I knew it was her. She was playing.
My feet were moving before I’d even decided, drawn towards the music as if it were a leash around my neck, different from the one I’d worn for years.
I stopped by the wall of the French windows, pressing my back against the climbing vines and flowers that framed them.
Peering through the window, I saw the music room lit with a warm glow from a floor lamp.
Soraya sat at the piano with her eyes closed. She wasn’t even reading the sheet music. Her fingers simply moved from memory… gliding across the ivory keys with an aching tenderness that made something sharp twist in my chest.
The room vanished. Instead, I was transported back to the bunker.
She sat at a keyboard, testing notes with a pencil in her mouth. I moved behind her, leaning in to kiss her neck. She smiled, trying her best to ignore my wandering hands.
“Put your headphones back on,” she said, giggling as I nuzzled her again, my hands cupping her tits. “It’s not finished yet.”
“Play for me.”
“Not until it’s finished.” She pressed a quick kiss on my lips. “You are so impatient.”
“What’s the song about?”
“You,” she replied, smiling sadly. “Us.”
I frowned. “It sounds depressing. And painful.”
She giggled. “It’s also hopeful. And…” She stopped herself and licked her lips.
“And?”
She turned to face me, abandoning the keyboard.
“When you hear it, I want you to know how I feel about you. I want you to know that I see the man you really are. That you are worthy of everything you want in life.” I swallowed as she wrapped her fingers around the back of my neck and looked into my eyes.
“I want you.”
She smiled the sweetest damn smile I’d ever seen. “You have me. This will be our song. It won’t be a reminder of how we survived this place, but of how we found each other in the darkness.”
“I don’t need a song to remind me of that. You’ll always be mine, Little Monster.”
I sucked in a sharp breath as the memory faded, and I gripped the window ledge tightly. Turns out I did need a song to remind me. Soraya continued to play, unaware that each note was carving out a piece of whatever resolve I had left to leave her alone.
The melody came to a gut-wrenching end; the last note lingered in the air, heavy with grief.
I knew little about music, but I knew she’d just composed a soul-destroying masterpiece.
She sat perfectly still, fingers idly resting on the piano.
A single tear slipped down her cheek, and my heart lurched.
Every instinct in my body screamed for me to climb through the window and go to her.
To tell her… I remembered. Enough to know all that we were and what she meant to me. Still means to me.
That I’m in love with her.
But being loved by a man like me? A man who was only ever capable of ruining her life and causing her pain, even when it was the last thing I wanted. She deserved more than that.
She stood up and closed the piano lid. She let out a shaky breath and walked out of the room. Pressing my back to the wall again, I closed my eyes and gritted my jaw, fighting the urge to make a really stupid decision.
Stay away from her.
Do not climb in the fucking window.
Do not get shot the night before you kill McKenna.
Don’t do it.
Do not—
Waiting for the nearest soldiers to vanish around the corner, I turned and slipped into the music room, moving as quickly as I could before any other soldiers spotted me.
I ran my hands over the keys she’d just played and stared at the music sheets.
At the top of the page, in her handwriting, she’d titled it My Monster.
My gaze moved to the door she’d just left through. I couldn’t let watching her through a window be the last time I saw her.
I waited in the music room for an hour until I was sure everyone had gone to their rooms for the night. The corridor was quiet as I carefully opened the door. The only soldiers in the house were stationed at the exits, which made it easy for me to take the staff stairs up to the second floor.
I hesitated outside her bedroom door. I was being a selfish dickhead. I’d promised myself I’d leave her alone. I’d promised her.
Yet I still lifted my hand and tried the handle. She should have locked it, but it clicked open. What did that mean? Was she waiting for me? Expecting me? Hoping I’d come?
It opened a few inches. Light from the hallway flooded into her room. The bed was empty. Untouched. My eyes flicked to the huddled figure in her window seat. Her head snapped towards me, her hazel eyes wide. She looked exhausted. Her pretty eyes were rimmed with red.
Neither of us spoke as I stepped into the room, quietly closing the door behind me.
Raya slowly rose from the cushion. My gaze trailed over her, wearing an oversized black T-shirt that looked suspiciously like one of mine. Moonlight from her window lit the tanned skin where the hem brushed the tops of her thighs.
Her eyes searched mine with the same longing that had kept me awake every night since she walked away from me.
“I tried to stay away,” I admitted.
“I know. Me too,” she whispered, her voice catching.
I crossed the space between us, the knot in my chest easing with every step closer to her.
I lowered my forehead to hers as her fingertips traced the lines of ink on my chest. Her touch grounded me more than anything else.
I could breathe again. When I brushed a curl back behind her ear and let my knuckles caress her cheek, she closed her eyes and let out a shuddering breath.
“Don’t tell me to leave.”
Her eyes opened again, glistening in the silver light.
Instead of answering, she slid her fingers around the back of my neck, drawing herself up on her tiptoes.
She brushed her lips against mine, her breath sending tingles across my skin.
My jaw pulsed as I tried to hold back for a moment longer, giving her a last chance to tell me she couldn’t do this.
“Don’t leave,” she whispered. “Stay. Just for tonight.”
I swallowed. My chest ached. “Just for tonight.”
“It’s enough.”
“No,” I breathed.
She smiled sadly. “It has to be.” She stared into my eyes with that quiet strength that always undid me, forcing herself to be brave even as she wanted to crumble.
Did she really believe this could be enough?
When she takes another man’s name and moves to Russia, it won’t be enough. As long as we are both breathing, nothing will ever be enough to stop me from wanting her. From needing her. From loving her.
But it’s what she had to allow herself to believe. And it’s all I could give her.
I threaded my fingers through her hair and kissed her in a way I knew, without a doubt, I had never done before. With a vulnerability that went against everything Sean had made me.
One night of… enough.