Chapter Thirty-Two #2
I took a breath, feeling it rattle through my lungs as I did.
My partner, my bonded, my best friend. I’d pushed Luca aside for so long and for what?
To minimize the risk to a House now on the brink of war anyway?
I’d pulled myself away from a relationship with the man the gods deemed my equal because of the politics, the optics.
I’d kept myself away from the only friendship I’d ever wanted to pursue because it was what had been expected of me.
But if I was going to finally give into my own desires, if I was going to let myself want, if I was going to start taking what I deserved, then I was going to take it all.
I never stopped loving you, I shot across that tether of time and space and whatever else created this ethereal connection between us.
Me either, he replied a moment later, softly.
I turned to face Harrison as he closed the door to his apartment behind us and turned on the light.
He met my gaze and my breath caught. The light above us flickered, the electrical current so much weaker down here on the Third than up above, but I hardly noticed it over the buzzing within my own veins.
Every hair on my body stood on end, hyperaware that we were alone once more, incredibly conscious of what had occurred between us the last time we were together in this apartment.
Harrison’s gaze dipped from my face to trail down my body and the temperature in the room increased tenfold.
I knew he was remembering too. The searching gaze informed me that I only had a moment to say what I needed to say before it became far too late for conversation.
I took a deep breath so I wouldn’t back out. Then I spoke.
“I believed you,” I told him, my voice almost a whisper.
I didn’t have it in me to make this confession any louder than that, but he blinked at me as though he didn’t have the slightest clue what I was talking about so I had no choice but to explain.
“The second you told me you weren’t a rebel despite the mark on your back, I believed you.
I never really considered it a possibility.
Even when Cosmo had you stripped of your shirt and accused before the whole city, I knew it was a lie because I knew you. I…trusted you.”
He just watched me without a word, knowing I had more to say and allowing me to finish.
“I’ve never trusted anyone before,” I admitted.
“Not my grandmother or Dante. Not even Milo. That feeling scared me far more than your tattoo did. So I used it as an excuse to push you away, telling myself you’d lied to me, assuring myself it was for the best, but I was wrong.
This isn’t easy for me but that doesn’t mean I should run away from it.
Even though I know I don’t deserve this, I want it.
I want you and it’s fucking terrifying.”
I finished, breathless, heart racing in my chest. I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut and disappear so I wouldn’t have to face him now.
I was mortified and vulnerable and desperate in a way I’d never been before and it made me sick.
I hated this weakness, hated my heart for this betrayal, hated my lips for saying those words out loud where he could hear them.
I was the strong one. I was the one who held emotion at bay and did what needed to be done.
I’d broken rules before but not like this.
Harrison was a Third Ringer. We were doomed to fail before we even began and yet I couldn’t stop myself from running headlong into the damnation.
I looked up, pulling my gaze from where it had strayed to the carpet as I’d avoided looking at him during my declaration.
He was beaming at me, a silly crooked grin on his lips, listening with rapt attention.
Nose wrinkling, I opened my mouth to speak again but, before I could say a word, he took two long strides to reach me and knelt on the fraying old carpet.
I froze, lips poised open, as I stared down at him in confusion.
“You told me to beg,” he reminded me, arching a brow.
A coy grin split his lips and I couldn’t help the laughter that bubbled up and out of me in that moment.
His eyes shone at the sound of it like a million tiny twinkling stars in his iris.
“All I ever needed was a chance to win your heart, beautiful.”
My heart. It twisted in my chest. An ugly, broken thing, I’d never believed anyone else would ever want again but here he was begging for it. Could I do it? Could I give it to him and pray he didn’t break it like so many before had done?
Watching him, seeing the adoration in his gaze as he looked up at me from where he knelt on the carpet, I thought I could.
Leaning over him, my hair falling around us, I grabbed his face in my hands and kissed him. He bobbed his chin, tilting his head back and deepening the kiss. He reached up to grab my wrist and stood, sliding his fingers down my arm to my back where he pressed me firmly against him.
There were so many things fighting to keep us apart; thousands of years of separation between our rings, Tribunal law, a rebellion, my own insecurities.
Yet we found our way to each other again and again in spite of it all because there was something even stronger, something I couldn’t explain, pulling us toward one another.
It was almost enough to make me believe in the gods.