And I knew when she got engaged. Knew when the wedding would be, and where.
Two decades doing nothing but swallowing little news-worthy snippets of her life and dreaming of her face. Twelve years of keeping the same fucking phone number on the tiniest chance that she might one day use it. That she might one day call on me, her monster, to do whatever needed to be done.
That day has come. And I’m not giving her up now. If I have to keep her tied up with me every single night for the rest of our lives, then that’s exactly what I will do.
Of course, I don’t say any of that out loud. It runs through my mind but never makes it to my mouth. I don’t talk much, and I think some people assume my brain doesn’t work quite right as a result. My brain probably isn’t quite right, to be honest, considering the euphoric high I get from squeezing the living daylights out of other people. But I can certainly think. I think a lot. I just never usually spit any of those thoughts out for anyone else.
But Aurora clearly expects me to spit them out now. She hasn’t moved towards the bed, and is standing there with her arms crossed, waiting for me to answer.
“As long as it takes,” I say at length.
She still doesn’t move.
“Don’t make me come and get you.” I sit up straighter, preparing to swing my feet off of the bed and to the floor. “Because I will.”
A sudden look of sorrow crosses her features and nearly stops my fucking heart.
“You don’t know how many times I dreamed about you saying something like that to me. That you’d come and get me.”
My bones don’t feel right inside my skin.
“After you left Taormina and we were staying with the Messinas, I thought…I hoped…”
I didn’t know she stayed with the Messinas in Taormina. I didn’t know shit, because my world had just been blown apart, and Elio, our uncle, and I were doing everything we could to muscle the ragged pieces back together. But I suppose it makes sense that her papà was close with that family, both in Sicily and New York. He obviously made a deal to get his only daughter engaged to Marco Messina. It obviously wasn’t some kind of love match, considering Marco was pushing sixty and Aurora never even lived with him in New York before the ceremony.
And, of course, that she basically bashed his brains in for touching her on their wedding night.
“You hoped I’d come back,” I say, finishing the trailed-off sentence she’s left hanging in the air.
“Yes,” she whispers. “Every night.” She blinks rapidly and turns away, wiping at her face. Dio mio, she’s fucking crying. Why? Why now?
Why does it feel like her every tear is fucking acid to me?
I don’t give a fuck when people cry. Never have. A surprising number of tough guys can be reduced to begging, blubbering idiots when you cut off enough of their appendages. Especially things like dicks and balls. Tears never move me. If anything, I frankly find those kinds of emotional displays pathetic. Repulsive.
But Aurora crying sets my teeth on edge and makes something nameless inside me hurt. I don’t find her tears pathetic. I find them to be completely unbearable.
“Stop,” I say, rising from the bed. Something in my voice must shock her, or frighten her, because she jerks her head to me and does actually stop. Her eyes glisten; her cheeks are flushed and damp. I close the distance between us, my hands coming up to the sides of her jaw.
She doesn’t like men touching her? Well too fucking bad. Because I can’t look at her tearstained face right now and keep any sort of distance between us. I press my thumbs into her cheeks.
“Why?” she asks on a shaky whisper. “Why do I have to stop crying?”
“Because when you cry,” I grit out, “it makes me want to fix it. And I don’t know how to fix things, Aurora.” Her skin is so incredibly soft. I rip my hands away from her. “I only know how to break them.”
She brings her own hands to her cheeks now, wiping. Maybe trying to scrub the memory of my touch right off of her.
“Maybe I’m already broken,” she says.
I give a bitter snort at that. At this flawless fucking angel before me, thinking she’s anything but the best this world has to offer.
“If you are,” I reply, “then I don’t even want to know what that makes me.”
I snap the other cuff onto her left wrist. She jumps a little, but doesn’t try to dodge it. When I start walking back to the bed, she comes without resistance. I let her lie down first, stretching out my arm, then follow, lying on my back beside her.
Maybe it was the tears, or maybe she’s just extremely fucking tired of me already, but she falls asleep quickly. More quickly than me. Last time, I was asleep when she started hugging my arm, and only noticed it when I woke up. But right now, I’m extremely fucking aware of every move she makes. When she’s awake she might hate the idea of being too close to me. But in sleep, it’s a different story. Some unconscious part of her is seeking me out.
A foolish part of her, probably. Trying to cozy up to someone like me.
