Chapter 23 #3
"All those years ago I thought I was the one saving you.
" The words come out barely above a whisper, pushed through a throat that is closing around every syllable.
"I didn't know you'd spend eleven years saving yourself.
Building armor so strong that even the man who loved you couldn't see past it until you chose to let him in.
" I lift her hand and press my lips against her knuckles, feeling the bones and the skin and the warmth of her beneath my mouth.
"And I never thought this petite woman with her heart in her eyes would end up saving me. "
“Saving you?” She asks with her gaze pinned to the floor at her feet.
I guide her face to mine with a small touch under her chin. “The night you texted me, I was resigned to living life alone. To never knowing the warmth of love. Your love. So yes, Sloane. You saved me from a very lonely existence."
Her composure breaks. Her face crumbles, her brow furrowing. She squeezes her beautiful eyes shut, and two tears roll down her cheeks in slow, steady lines that catch the golden dawn light from the window.
And then something happens that I haven't felt since I was eleven years old standing in a room where my mother's body lay still.
The pressure builds behind my eyes. Thirty years of grief and guilt and loneliness and the fierce, terrifying love I feel for the woman beside me press against the wall I built when I was a boy.
The wall that has held through every case and every crisis and every night I spent alone in this penthouse.
The pressure pushes and the walls tumble free.
Silent tears fall to the edge of my jaw then drop onto our joined hands.
Sloane's breath catches. A small, sharp intake that tells me she sees it.
Her free hand rises and her thumb presses against my cheek, tracing the wet trail the tears left behind.
Her touch is so gentle it barely registers against my skin.
She holds her thumb there, warm against the dampness, and I feel her hand trembling for the first time tonight.
She leans forward. Her lips press against my cheek, soft and warm.
Her mouth resting on my cheek for one heartbeat, two, three.
I feel her breath against my skin. The pressure of her lips.
The dampness of her tears mix with mine.
Her hand tightens in mine and her other hand slides from my cheek to the back of my neck, her fingers curling into the hair at my nape.
"I'm not going anywhere, Mass." She whispers it against my cheek, her lips moving on my skin. The nickname settles into my chest the way her toothbrush settled into my cup. Like it was always meant to be there.
Her tears drop to my chest. I make a secret vow right then to never do anything that will make her cry again. Pain and anguish will never touch her pure soul.
"I am lucky then, because I know I can lose you." I press my forehead against hers. Our breathing tangles, warm and uneven, our faces damp, our hands locked together. "You are the most precious thing in my life and I love you Sloane."
She tilts my chin up by cupping my face in her soft hands. She gently presses a kiss to my lips and we hold each other’s gazes. “I love you Massimo. You know that. You were intended for me and me for you long before either of us even knew it.”
“I promise to never hurt you again. I will not let history repeat itself.”
A warm, understanding smile curves over her mouth. "And you're not your father."
My eyes close. My jaw works against the pressure that wants to break me open completely.
She said this to me before. In a different moment.
She says it again now and it lands deeper than bone.
It lands in the place where I keep the memory of my mother's love and my father's sins.
Tucked inside the same box is the fear that I may slip into becoming the man who caged her.
Sloane’s thumb traces my cheekbone, wiping the last trace of moisture away. "We get to write our own story, Mass. No contracts. No clauses. No fine print." Her blue eyes hold mine, bright and wet and steady. "Just us."
The words hang between us, simple and enormous at the same time given how we got to this point.
My heart beats against my ribs so hard I'm sure she can hear it. Her thumb traces circles on my cheekbone, slow and steady, and I turn my face into her palm and press my lips against the center of her hand the way she pressed hers against mine the night she told me she trusted me.
Full circle. Everything returning to where it started but different now. Tested to the point of breaking. But now we are stronger.
I pull her into my chest. She comes without hesitation, her body fitting against mine, her head finding the space under my chin where it belongs. Her soft touch presses flat against my heart where my pulse is finally, slowly, beginning to settle.
The penthouse fills with golden dawn light. It slides across the hardwood and warms the throw blanket and fills me with hope love can win the good fight if you open yourself up.
“I made a mistake, Sloane. I promise right now to never be that man again.”
I take her hand. She takes mine. Her fingers lace through mine and squeeze, firm and warm and real.
My Cinderella didn't need a prince. She needed a partner. And I needed her more than I ever knew how to say.