Tears pricked Serena’s eyes at that thought, but she gripped her hands into fists and blinked them back. She would not cry. She’d ratherdie.
Before she could decide her next steps, the door creaked open. She looked at it in the mirror, still too fragile to move, then nearly fumbled right there at the sight of Luciano entering the room. But she didn’t whirl. She didn’t sob. She stood completely and utterly still and regarded his reflection in the mirror.
Their eyes met, held there.
He washere, and she knew better than to let her hopes soar. There was that grim set to his mouth, that haunted look in his eyes and the fact he wore now what he’d worn last night leaving her.
And carried a folder full of papers.
Serena inhaled carefully, bracing herself for all that was to come, then turned to face him. Every muscle in her was tense. But she kept her chin up and her eyes cool.
“The wedding planner is looking for you, I believe,” she offered when he said nothing. Just stared at her. “And the wedding is due to start soon. Yet you are not dressed. You do not appear ready at all.”
He blinked once, then twice, before looking down at the folder in his hand. Serena took this moment of him not looking at her to lower herself into a chair. Maybe if he couldn’t see how gently she moved, he wouldn’t see through her.
He took a step forward, held out the folder. “I have come to some new conclusions.”
“I just bet,” she murmured, and she absolutely refused to reach out and take those damn papers, whatever the hell they were.
“I do not need Ascione. You can have it.”
He dropped the file of papers into her lap. She didn’t want to touch it, so she hesitated, trying to work through his words. What he was saying.
What he wasn’t saying.
I do not need Ascionemight have been the words he said, but what she heard wasI do not need you.
So she firmed her mouth, pulled the papers out of the folder. She took her time and made sure her voice would be clipped ice before she spoke.
“While it’s good to come to this conclusion before we married under these false pretenses,” she said, skimming the document and feeling a strange twist of emotions that she couldn’t make sense of. Success. Failure. Love. Hate. And because there was so much inside of her, she treated him to ice when she looked up at him. “I do wish you’d done it before we’d planned everything. Before I’d gotten dressed.”
His eyes roamed over her. “You look beautiful.”
That just about broke whatever kept her temper firmly frozen, but she was too tired to start a fight. Too tired to do anything but survive.
She pressed a finger to her throbbing temple. “Why are you here, Luciano?”
“It is our wedding.”
She snorted inelegantly, eyes still closed against the assault of all this. “I have the sneaking suspicion you weren’t planning on attending.”
For a moment, he said nothing. “I will not take the coward’s way out,” he said loftily. “I have given you Ascione outright. It would not do to have someone else deliver this news.”
She laughed. It was a little bitter, maybe tinged with hysteria, but she laughed all the same. “What about the news that you don’t plan to marry me?”
“You get Ascione.”
She opened her eyes and looked up at him, staring for perhaps a full minute. He said it like it was a trade. She got his company. He got to not marry her. It shamed her and made her feel small, and she would have settled there. She would have accepted that.
Before.
Before he’d spent evenings with her watching the movies she liked. Before he’d gone with her to meet their—herfuture puppy. Before he had stood up for her and treated her like she mattered. Not because of how smart she was, or what she could do or represent, but simply because of her.
Because of how he had recognized his own experiences in hers. And everything from that moment had felt real. The unfurling of something…wonderful and lasting.
The ice was melting, and she wanted—needed—to hold on to it, except she remembered what he’d said about his mother. About trying to save her.
That night had been the changing point. For both of them. She had realized someone might stand up for her, and she had thought he’d realized someone would allow him to.
