He had watched me once or twice try to reclaim what was once mine. I had hidden most of it from him, though. Not wanting him to see the truth.
How dead she was. His Ballerina Girl.
I’d attempt to dance when he wasn’t around or wouldn’t at all. Too frustrated with myself to even allow him a glimpse of the pain. Of the grief. Of the embarrassment. That he’d see me this way. So much less than the woman he had married. It was the kind of shame that made a person burn with the feeling, tucking themselves in and away from the world to avoid others seeing at all costs.
I almost went down but caught myself at the last second. Brando went to react, to come to me, but I held up a hand.
A distressed noise came from him—both plea and demand.Let me help you. I will help you.
Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath, unclenched my fingers, and tried again. Even though my knees knocked, and my skin trembled from effort.
This time I had done too much, and without warning, had gone down, hard. My bones hit the floor with a solid thud that reverberated in my jaw. A pain shot up between my breasts, and my palms stung from the impact.
Brando’s hands were on me before I could even react.
“No!” I shouted, attempting to move his help away. My hands were slick with sweat, whereas his were dry, able to grip me better. “Let me be! Dammit! LETMEBE!”
“Scarlett,” he whispered, his voice dripping blood.
Oh God. The sorrow. The heartbreak. Torturous feelings that gutted us both.
Staring at the floor as if I could will it to swallow me hole, I blinked back the tears.“You see?” I whispered, but underneath I knew he could hear the unshed rage—the pent-up grief. “You see what I am now? What Ican’t do?That part of me is dead, Brando! I’ll never be able to…” I couldn’t even finish.
The sob I had been holding back since I learned of what had been stolen from me threatened to shatter me into a million irrevocable pieces. The darkness of them would shimmer against the hot sunlight blasting through the glass walls, illuminating all the blood and bone, the carnage from the scene of the crime.All that I had been keeping close to the breast. Near to poisoning my heart.
“No hiding,” he said. “You wanted to show me this.”
“Yes,” I whispered, and slowly, tentatively, I lifted my arms, setting my hands against his, holding on tightly. “I wanted you to see.”
One tear slipped down my cheek, warm and fast, and then another from the opposite side.
“Scarlett,” he said, his voice hoarse enough that it seemed like all those broken pieces had cut him to the core. “You break against me. I break against you. We keep each other as one. Always have.”
I nodded, sniffing. “What do you see when you look at me?” My face burned, and the tears cooled, making me feel feverish. “I can’t anymore, Brando. I can’t!”
“Look at me. You want to see what I see? Fucking look at me.” He took a firmer grip of my arms and shook me a bit, like he was shaking me awake from a deep sleep. “Please.”
I lifted my eyes to his, and the intensity there made me shudder. His eyes were bright with the light, a milk chocolate instead of the onyx they became in the still of the night. All his secrets were bared to me. I had been cut, and he steadily bled.
“The truth, my wife. You made mefeelwith the way you could move your body, the way you could dance like no one was watching. You had the power to make me cry, to bring me to my knees.” He rolled his shoulders. “And sometimes I hated it so much that the rage would almost eat me alive.”
My eyes narrowed against his open, earnest ones.
“Yeah, it’s what you were born to do. But you were born to love me. You were created for me. When you danced, I knew what they were thinking. All those men.” His jaw tensed. “I knew the trouble it would cause and bring to our door. Those that don’t learn from history are fucking fools. You think I didn’t know what I was vowing to? What I had committed myself to from the very beginning? I’m a fucking man, Scarlett. Always have been. I knew the risks and accepted them willingly to get to love you. For one second in your arms. If it’s all I had. You are worth every wound I’ve ever gotten—the scars that mar me with your name on them.”
His grip grew even tighter, and a noise escaped my throat at the increase in pressure. But I held on tighter, too, pulling closer.
“I would see other dancers, those ballerinas on stage, who couldn’t even come close to you without being blinded by your light. And I’d think…if it were only that simple. If only it didn’t attract such monsters. But we both know what happened when you danced. The blast your fire caused. Never again. I’m so fucking sorry for what’s been done. What I couldn’t stop from being done.” His body trembled, but he kept his eyes firm on mine.
“But I’ll never be sorry that they won’t get to share you in the same way with me again. You still move in the bedroom like you did on all those stages. Do you understand me? And now it’s all mine. It’s fucking selfish and I feel like a bastard for even saying it out loud. But I’ve never lied to you. I won’t start now for the sake of feelings.
“I’ve always wanted you for myself. All mine, Scarlett. But I accepted that dance was in your blood, what you were born to do. I let the jealously eat me alive so you’d never have regrets. Now?” He shrugged and sniffed. “Now I feel relief that I’m the one who’ll be enjoying you in that secret way. For the rest of my life. You’ll light me up. And I don’t have to share.I don’t have to fucking share you anymore!” he roared, so much emotion that it made me almost go weak, and I swayed despite his hold.
“You want to know who I pity. I pity your grandfather. Matteo the painter. That he wasn’t alive to see the ending of Maja’s career. The sword that both protected and killed them. I’ve loved you all of my life, Scarlett Rose Fausti.” His voice broke, but he kept on, determined. “I’ll love you even after my last breath. What you can or can’t do doesn’t make a fucking difference to me. What’s in your eyes—the only reflection I trust—is mine. All I want. And from now on, it’s what I’ll get.
“My wife, the mother of my children, without the worry that some monster will try to steal her from the beast that loves her more than his own life. You hear me, woman? My life is nothing without you. My life is yours because you are my life. Steal my rib, steal my heart, you can have my soul. You have me. I pray that whoIam is enough for you, because all I see when I look at you now is beautiful time. Time for us and ours to grow. To live.”
His strength seemed to wane with the last word, and the distance between us became too much. He yanked me to his chest, burying his face in my hair, a moment before we both shattered. A cry came from his mouth that reflected mine.
