But of course that was impossible.
"I love her."
And God, oh God, to hear Olivio's voice break right after saying the words—-
I'm scared, God.
She was so, so scared to believe what she was hearing...even as his words reminded her of what love truly meant.
Love, a pastor had once described, was an unconditional commitment between two imperfect people.
Chelsea's leg was still hurting as she pushed herself up—-
Love was how God forgave everyone over and over.
Taking it one shaky step at a time until she eventually made it to the door—-
And love...was also this.
If God could so lovingly forgive her that He makes all her scarlet sins white as snow, how could she not at least try to be the same?
Chelsea opening the door in the same way she was opening the door to her heart—-
And what she saw on the other side undid the last of her resistance.
Olivio on the couch, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and the posture of a man who had run out of ways to hold himself together. He looked nothing like the man she'd married nine days ago. He looked like what was left when everything that man had built was taken away.
She must have made a sound, or the door did, because his head jerked up, and his eyes found hers, and the expression on his face—-
She'd been afraid she would never see anything real in his eyes again.
But this was real. This was the most real thing she had ever seen.
"Olivio?"
Her voice came out small and rough with tears, and she watched his body move before his mind caught up. He was on his feet with a speed that nearly cost him his balance, and disbelief locked every joint rigid.
"You..." The word came out strangled. "Have you been sleeping?"
"I..." Her hand was gripping the doorframe, her knuckles pale against the dark wood. "I woke up to the sound of your voice."
She swallowed.
"I heard everything you said."
Her chin crumpled.
Oh God.
She started to run.
Not the way people ran in the corridors of this building, sharp, purposeful, directed. She ran the way Chelsea moved through everything, slightly uneven, her left leg negotiating the distance with the fierce determination of a body that had learned to work with what it had, and it was the limp that broke him, the limp that shattered whatever was left of the thing he'd been holding together, because she was running to him on a leg that had every reason to carry her away, and it was carrying her forward instead.
It was only his reflexes, the same reflexes that had caught a woman in a blue-flowered dress when a journalist had shoved her in a lobby nine days ago, that had him catching her as she threw herself into his arms.
Barely.
Her body collided with his, and his arms closed around her with a force that had nothing to do with control and everything to do with the drowning man's grip on the thing that kept him above water, and she was shaking, her whole body trembling against his, and her face was buried in his neck and her fingers were clutching the back of his shirt and she was saying it—-
