CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #3
"Let me ask you directly," Cassia challenged, her voice steady and clear.
"If you knew then what you know now... about the reality of your world, about the impossibility of keeping someone innocent safe in a war zone...
would you have made the same choices? Would you have asked her to marry you, knowing she would have to live in a gilded cage while you fought in the mud? "
The question struck Dante like a physical blow, knocking the breath from his lungs. It was the hardest, most devastatingly honest question anyone had ever dared to ask him.
He thought of the ambush. He thought of the blood on the restaurant floor. He thought of the suffocating isolation of the last eight years.
He considered it seriously, letting the weight of his own history press down on him.
"No," Dante acknowledged, his voice a hoarse, whisper. The truth of it settled over him, bringing an immense, staggering wave of closure. "If I had known then even half of what I understand now... so many of my decisions would have looked different. I wouldn't have brought her into the crossfire."
Cassia nodded, accepting his answer with complete equanimity.
"I certainly would have made different choices in my own life," Cassia admitted, offering a rare, fleeting glimpse into her own regrets. She thought of the walls she had built, the people she had pushed away to ensure her own survival in the foster system. "We all would."
She reached across the table, her long fingers lightly, briefly brushing against the back of his hand. It was a shockingly tender gesture from a woman who so rarely offered physical comfort.
"None of it is about blame, Dante," Cassia added, her voice softening just a fraction, smoothing over the jagged edges of his guilt.
"It isn't about fault. It is not that you did anything wrong, or that she did anything wrong.
It is growth. It is evolution. It is the natural, inevitable process of learning and changing over time.
You survived. And survival changes what you need. "
Dante turned his hand over, his fingers wrapping gently around hers.
He held onto her hand like it was the only solid thing in a shifting universe.
He felt quietly reflective. The ghosts that had haunted his periphery for nearly a decade were finally, truly laid to rest, banished by the fierce, practical light of the woman sitting across from him.
He looked at Cassia. He looked at the lines of her face, the intelligence in her eyes, the brilliant, unapologetic strength that radiated from her every pore.
"You are right," Dante agreed quietly.
He sat there for a long moment, the ambient noise of the café fading into the background. And then, almost without thinking, the realization bubbling up from the very depths of his soul, he spoke the truth.
"If that very first accident," Dante said, his voice dropping into a thick, reverent hum, his thumb stroking the back of her hand, "if getting my car blown up, and taking a bullet to the ribs, and bleeding out in that alleyway was what it took to eventually lead me to your door...
then I wouldn't mind if it happened all over again. "
Cassia froze.
Her breath hitched sharply in her throat. The pragmatic, cynical armor she wore so flawlessly shattered into a million invisible pieces.
"Don't be a moron," Cassia replied instantly, her voice snapping out on pure, defensive reflex.
But her body betrayed the abrasive words.
Even as she said it, a sudden, blinding rush of heat flooded her face, a deep, unmistakable blush creeping across her cheeks and down the column of her neck. Her pale blue eyes, usually so cold and clinical, widened, suddenly shimmering as they filled with thick, unshed tears.
She tried to pull her hand away, terrified by the sheer overwhelming magnitude of the emotion slamming into her chest, but Dante held on.
He looked at the fierce, lethal trauma surgeon who was currently fighting a losing battle against her own heart. He saw the blush. He saw the tears shining in her eyes.
Dante laughed softly, a rich sound of pure, unadulterated joy.
He didn't hesitate. He stood up from his chair, pulling her gently by the hand so that she was forced to stand up with him. Cassia opened her mouth, undoubtedly to hurl another insult at him, to tell him they were in public and he was being ridiculous.
She never got the chance.
Dante cupped her face with both hands, his thumbs sweeping gently over her flushed cheeks, and he kissed her right there in the middle of the café.
It wasn't tentative. It wasn't rushed. It was a deep, consuming, claim. He kissed her with all the reverence and the staggering gratitude of a man who had been lost in the dark for a decade and had finally found the sun.
Cassia let out a soft, fractured breath against his mouth. For a second, her hands hovered between them, unsure, before her fingers finally curled into the lapels of his jacket, gripping him tightly. She kissed him back, the walls finally, truly coming down.
The moment settled over both of them with a golden warmth that felt unexpected, yet, deeply earned.
Because Dante knew, as he held her against him in the autumn sunlight, that if there was any warmth to be found anywhere in Cassia Thorn, it was right here, guarded and in this unguarded moment between them.