Distance still came between us. We hadn’t gravitated toward each other, not yet. Tears ran and collected on the blanket underneath me in puddles.
“I want to give you laugh lines.” His voice was distant, like he was speaking only to himself.
Nick Stone made me laugh.
“Elliot—” he lifted his hands and then let them fall against his chest. “He didn’t care if his friends dated Charlotte. It was you he was concerned about. Shit. I’ll never forget how angry he was when Nick told him that he thought he loved you. I remember thinking,she’s just a kid. At the time, I hadn’t seen you in years. Now I wonder how much he could have loved you, if he could touch Charlotte. There’s no thin line between love and lust. You taught me that.”
He reached out and grabbed my hand. His hands were so strong, so capable, and they engulfed mine. “I’m jealous of a ghost, Scarlett. The fact that he could make you laugh haunts me to no fucking end. I make you cry. I’m jealous of anything that makes you smile. It needs to be me.”
I sniffed. “Stone told you that, didn’t he?”
He nodded. “Yeah. He’s right.”
I thought of asking him what Nick Stone had to do with Nick Lomas, but I knew that one somehow led to the other.
“Tonight, I fought fate. That’s how I felt. You were destined to marry one Nick or the other. I had a taste of how you felt about Jones.” He pulled our connected hands to his mouth, putting his lips against my skin. “Nick Lomas still had his mind on the promise. I broke it.”
He reminded me time and time again—even went as far as laughing at the time that I claimed him with a knife in Paris—that it was never the man who chose the woman, it was always the woman who chose the man. He was mine, chosen that night out in the snow years ago.Long before.
I reminded him of this.
“God only knows why,” he whispered.
A minute or two later I said, “Brando?”
“Yeah, baby.”
“Nick Stone made me laugh. So do you. But there’s one thing he couldn’t do.”
“Mm?” Whiskey made his speech slower, softer.
“Make me cry. I’m yours to break. And to love.” I had read things over the years—marry someone that makes you laugh. True. Laughing was important. But I also thought it was important to marry someone that was worth your tears too. Someone that was worth suffering over—and someone that wouldn’t intentionally be cruel, knowing they held this power. That was when the power turned into abuse.
My husband and I fought, but outside of the battle lines, we were never intentionally cruel to each other.
He didn’t respond, nor did he close his eyes. He seemed to be thinking, until I felt a shift between his body and mine. “I need to feel your skin.” He lifted the hem of the gown, questioning, and I nodded. “Fucking layers.”
Smiling at that, especially after what we had just done, I raised my arms and he slipped the fabric off. It landed in a whisper on the floor, underneath the window.
His face had gone slack with drink—eyebrows lowered, lips relaxed—and he gazed at me with eyes that were distant and so sad that I felt lost. “My eyes. They tear you apart.”
I urged him to scoot to the center of the bed, and he did, but he watched me carefully. His back to the headboard, I straddled him, arms around his neck, looking down. We were still saturated with sweat, both our bodies slick, though the cool air was starting to dry us.
“They do,” I whispered. “But they heal me too, and they move me like nothing else can.”
His hand came up, tucking a piece of wayward hair behind my ear. “Now,” he said.
“Yes,” I said, coming in closer to his mouth. “Like now.”
He looked away from me. I turned his face toward mine. Words seemed like a chore, so I asked him with my eyes, in a language only two could understand—what is it?
He shrugged, eyes going to his hand. His knuckles were swollen, bruised, cut in some places from the fight.
“Look at me, my love,” I said in Italian.
He did, but reluctantly. I could tell the new term of endearment pleased him though. His eyes lowered even further, his breath picked up, and his arms came around my waist, his fingers barely brushing my skin.
“Are you hurting?” I asked.
