Tears sting my eyes, and I press my lips together as I fight to hold them back. I don’t know why I’m about to cry.Isn’t this what I wanted?
“It broke my heart to find out you’d left,” he says. “To see the lengths you would go to in order to get away from me. But it also made me realize that, by making you stay when you don’t want to,thatwas hurting you as well. And I don’t want to hurt you, Anika,ever. I would rather cut out my eyes than see you in pain.”
His words blast through me like a hand grenade, obliterating the walls I thought I’d painstakingly erected around my heart the moment I decided to leave.
I don’t want to hurt Miko either, and it feels like a punch to the gut to realize that’s exactly what I’m doing.
“So,” he says, clearing his throat as his voice grows hoarse. “I’ve decided to let you go if that’s really what you want—I just want to make sure you get somewhere safe, that you have someone who can look out for you until you get your feet on the ground. If you’ll let me, I’d like to speak to my brother Leo. I’m sure he and Sora would take you in.”
“Miko…” I breathe, tears blurring my vision despite how hard I’m trying to hold them at bay.
“Please, Anika,” he begs, every word dripping with agony. “It kills me to make the offer, but I would rather do that than watch you keep trying to run. One of these days, I might not find you in time, and I can’t stand the thought of someone…” He swallows convulsively and shakes his head. “I thought I wasn’t strong enough to live without you. But now I know that the only thing I’m not strong enough to endure is the day I stumble upon yourbody because I wouldn’t let you go. I can’t let you keep risking your life to be free of me.”
No words have been more terrifying or more beautiful.
And as I watch the strongest man I’ve ever met on the verge of unraveling before me, I know that I’ll never be able to leave Miko.
I’m completely, hopelessly in love with him.
For so long, I’ve been terrified of how little control I’ve had over my life, but now that he’s giving me the choice, I know what I’m not strong enough to live without. And it’s him.
“I want to stay,” I whisper, taking a tentative step forward.
“You do?” Miko asks, confusion and disbelief warring across his face.
“How do you sound surprised that she could want to take you back after the speech you just made?” Gio cuts in from behind his brother’s towering figure. “Hell,I’mnearly convinced I want to be your wife.”
A bubble of laughter that borders on hysterical rushes up from my depths, and I press my fingers to my lips as I try to contain my smile.
Miko chuckles as the tension between us snaps, relief flooding in to fill the gaps in its wake.
Slowly, he takes another step toward me as his blue eyes soften, and as his hands find mine, he sinks to his knees before me. “Will you still be my wife?” he asks, looking up at me with all the sincerity that threatens to steal my breath away.
“Yes,” I murmur, then my face falls in devastation. “But, Miko, I lost my ring,” I confess, my throat tightening with emotion when I think about that terrifying night in the train station.
“This ring?” he asks, pulling it from his pocket to slide it back onto my ring finger.
I gasp, staring down at it in disbelief. “How did you…? Where did you find this?”
“We went all the way to Detroit to get it back,” Gio quips.
Miko casts him a dark look over his shoulder. “Would you butt out?” he demands.
Gio chuckles and shrugs before returning his attention to the ground. He leans in, his foot pressing down harder on my assailant’s throat as the man makes a move as if to run for it. “Don’t even try it, buddy,” he growls. “You have alongnight ahead of you—starting with a nice cozy ride in the trunk of a car. If you know what’s good for you, you won’t fight it.”
“Anika?” Miko rasps, bringing my eyes back to him. Rising to his feet, he pulls me into his arms.
“Hmm?” My back arches as my body molds to his, and when I look up into his impossible blue eyes, I don’t know how I ever convinced myself that I could leave him.
The backs of his fingers brush lightly across the apple of my cheek, then trace the line of my jaw as he tenderly cups my face. “I have a hundred questions to ask, but I don’t know where to start—or if I even should.”
“You can ask me anything,” I promise, wrapping my fingers around his palm so I can nuzzle into it.
Pain flickers across his face, closely followed by an aching sadness. “Have you been planning to run all along?”
Heat floods my cheeks as I consider his question.
The simple answer is yes.
