“Come here,” I growl, my voice rough with emotion I don’t want to examine too closely.
He blinks at me, confusion replacing some of the devastating emptiness in his expression. But he obeys, moving toward the bed with the instinctive compliance of someone who’s spent his entire life following orders from people who claim to care about him.
The chains have just enough slack for me to reach him when he gets close enough. I cup his face in my hands, forcing him to meet my eyes, feeling the delicate bone structure beneath skin that’s far too pale.
“You are wonderful,” I tell him fiercely. “Amazing. You’re clever and caring and passionate and beautiful. One day some lucky bastard is going to be so in love with you he won’t know what hit him.”
Ginni’s expression is skeptical. “No, they won’t.”
I shake him gently, just enough to make sure he’s listening. “Ginni, you are perfect. Dangerous and sexy and brilliant. There is no one like you in the entire world. Who wouldn’t want that? Who wouldn’t want someone so devoted, so creative, so completely themselves?”
“You.”
The single word is delivered with such quiet brutality that it stops my heart for several beats and tilts the very universe.
“You don’t want me,” he continues when I don’t respond.
We stare at each other across the small distance between us, and I can see years of rejection and disappointment in his eyes. Every cruel word from his family, every person who treated him like something shameful, every moment of being told he was too different, too impossible to love.
“I don’t blame you,” he adds softly. “I’m too much. I’m trouble and I’m crazy and I kidnapped you. Of course you don’t want me. No one in their right mind would.”
Something breaks open in my chest at the resigned acceptance in his voice. This beautiful, brilliant boy who thinks he’s unlovable because everyone who was supposed to protect him told him so.
“One day,” I say gently, stroking my thumb across his cheekbone, “someone is going to see you and their heart will just... stop. And they’ll think, ‘That one. That boy is the one. He’s absolutely insane, but he’s mine.’”
Ginni’s eyes fill with tears, but he shakes his head. “No they won’t. They’ll be scared, and they’ll run away. Just like you would if you weren’t chained to this bed.”
“Then they’re fucking stupid,” I snarl, sudden fury blazing through me at the thought of anyone not seeing Ginni’s worth. “Blind, idiotic cowards who don’t deserve you anyway.”
“Are you stupid?” he asks softly, gently.
As if he knows I am, and he is resigning himself to a lifetime of unrequited yearning while I blunder around wasting my life and being an idiot.
The question hangs in the air between us, simple and devastating and absolutely loaded with everything I’m not sure I can face.
Am I stupid? Stupid for not wanting this beautiful, dangerous boy who’s turned my life upside down? Stupid for not seeing his worth like I just raged about?
A funny feeling spreads through my chest, warm and terrifying and undeniable. Recognition, maybe. Or acceptance of something I’ve been fighting against forever.
“I think I might be,” I admit quietly, and the words feel like jumping off a cliff. “I think I might be very stupid.”
Ginni’s eyes widen, searching my face like he’s trying to determine if I’m lying or just being kind. What he sees there makes his breath catch, makes him lean into my touch like a flower turning toward sunlight.
“Really?” he whispers.
“Really,” I say.
The smile that breaks across his face is like sunrise after the longest night, radiant and beautiful.
My heart thumps in my chest, a hollow feeling, deep and heavy. As if it is settling into a new rhythm. A new reason to beat.
Is it possible to stop being stupid?
I don’t know. All I do know is that in this raw, honest and vulnerable moment… I want to try.
Chapter twenty-four
Ginni
