She didn’t reply.
“You can keep your poker face, June, but if someone really pays attention, they can see the blush that rises from your neck, right here.” I placed two fingers lightly on the spot. “It has a tale to tell. And that vein here has another.” I brushed my fingers over it, watching her jaw clench and her breath shallow. “You look calm, but I see the storm underneath. Your eyes become darker. And I saw you that night, June.Yousaw you.”
Her lips twisted in a bitter smile. “‘Songs of Surrender,’ Angelo. You’re an expert at this, aren’t you?”
I dropped my hand. “At what?”
“This! Whatever this is.” She waved her hand between us like she had that night when she’d said we were a one-off.
“I’m not an expert in you, June. You’re like no one I’ve ever met.”
Her tongue darted out and licked her lips like she was parched again. She looked away, picked up her mug, and took a sip, escaping my words.
“I told you, it’s an album by a favorite guitarist. The Edge. Something you could try more of.”
She put the mug down. “I don’t do edges.”
“Sure you do. Can’t have a life without risking anything. You’ve risked things, June. Expanding into a town that might be good for business but has people who scarred you in the past, to name one. And marrying me. That’s the definition of edge.”
“That was temporary.”
“I don’t think so. Not anymore.” I stepped closer, getting into her face. “You see, if that was all, I wouldn’t have lost it when that man touched you.”
June’s chest rose in waves under her shirt. The treacherous vein and blush danced on her skin.
“This ring right here?” I pointed at the one around my finger. “It means that it’s my business when scum like that comes near you, especially when I know what he’s done to you before. You didn’t even spell it out when you told me, but I understood, anyway.” I put a hand on the side of her neck, and the other around her waist, pulling her to me. If before I’d seen red, now I saw flames.
“Hedid this to you. He and others like him are part of the reason you walk around with an armor, why you’re holding tight all the time and won’t show or say what you really feel and want, for fear you’ll be judged, ridiculed, pitied, or rejected. Why you won’t let anyone near you, why you never let yourself feel deeply, why you think you can avoid getting hurt by perfecting everything, by listing all possible scenarios.” I paused before adding, “But you can’t. I’m a scenario you didn’t list.”
Words hung on her lips for a moment before she half-whispered, “You don’t get to analyze me.”
It was all the admission I needed to know I’d struck the right chord.
“So tell me to go. Now. Not tomorrow, not after the interview—now—and I’ll go.” I pulled her closer.
She said nothing for a long moment. We just looked at each other, our breaths blending.
“This ring doesn’t mean that …” She faltered. “You shouldn’t have told him.” Her words contradicted the fact that I could feel her body awakening at my touch, that she didn’t tell me to go, and that she was well aware of it, and it made her angrier.
I dipped my head, my lips levitating just above hers. “What—that you’re my wife? That he was touching what’s mine?”
“I’m not yours,” she expelled, but her lips sought mine.
“You will be. You’re my wife.”
27
June
I kissed him first. He held me and brought his mouth to loom close to mine, but it was I who never told him to go, who caught his lips, striving to taste him, to let him make me his again.
“You willbe,” Angelo said when I had insisted I wasn’t his, but he’d been right the first time. Despite my denial, I alreadywas. And that was my undoing.
All my efforts of the last three days to rewind us to Day One were nulled.
“Touching what’s mine.” Against myself, those words tore right into my heart and pulsated there, and between my legs.
I wanted them to be true. They were. Buthewasn’t mine.
