I nod, my hands stuffed into my pockets because I don’t trust them not to reach out for her.Dio, I want to touch her. I want to hold her and never let her go. I want to apologize, to beg her to forgive me. Instead, I murmur, “Sleep, I’ll be?—”
“Don’t,” she cuts in.
I huff something that might be a laugh if it weren’t so pathetic. “Right.”
I melt into the dark, my steps weighed down with each inch of space I put between us. At the end of the walk, I stop where she can’t see me and listen to the chain slide, then the deadbolt thunk, and the old house exhales. Or maybe that’s me.
My phone buzzes before I get far. It’s a message from Leo asking for an update. Then Ale lights up my screen. Guilt rises as it continues to ring, and I let it go to voicemail. I let them bothwait while the tide crawls up the shore, and I tell myself the same old thing.
One more night. One more tide. Then I’ll let her go.
And I pray I’m as bad at obeying as Cat is at asking for help.
CHAPTER 29
TELL ME TO STOP
Caitríona
The rain wakes me before the fear can. A hard, slanting curtain slams against the old panes, the kind that makes the house breathe and the dunes hiss. Every nerve is awake now, on full alert. I lie still and listen. I search for the wrong sound, the right one, anything that doesn’t belong.
There. My pulse skyrockets. A scuff under the portico. Not the wind.
I slide off the couch, knife in hand, and creep toward the door. The window is the wrong angle, and the peephole is useless in the dark, so I draw in a steadying breath before I crack the chain and ease it open an inch.
Matteo.
He’s hunched under the shallow overhang, soaked to the bone. Rain gutters off the brim of his hood, and his hands are jammed into his pockets like he’s trying to keep them warm.
Anger hits me first, clean and bright. Why the hell is he still here? Then the second thing, so much worse. It rises like a tide I can’t command back: want, memory, the ache of a name inkedbeneath my collarbone. TheI still love youthat has been playing over and over in my mind since last night.
I yank the door wider and step into the rain. The cool droplets hiss against my heated skin. “What part of don’t follow me sounded like a riddle?” I growl over the storm. Cold needles my bare legs and Noel’s borrowed sweatshirt clings to my ribs. “Why are you still here?”
He doesn’t flinch. Water tracks his jaw. “Because you’re still here.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one that matters.” He rises slowly, backing away a step, but only a tiny one.
“That’s not good enough.” I push closer, stupid and furious and suddenly too awake. “Why can’t you just leave me alone?”
His throat works. For a moment the pounding storm is the only voice. Then a long minute later, he replies simple as a fact, “You know why.” He lifts his eyes to mine, the tempest brewing beneath the emerald surface rivaling the one surrounding us. “I already told you why. Because I’m still fucking in love with you, Cat.”
“No…”
He huffs out a dark laugh. “Yes.”
“You don’t get to say that. You lost that right a long time ago, when you left me… when you leftus.”
Pain scorches across his features, something ugly and wrenching. “And I’ve regretted every moment since. I went back for you, Kitty Cat. To that bar in Sicily where we first met. No one knew where I could find you. Hell, I searched all of Belfast for you a few weeks later. I had no idea where you were, where to look. But I fucking tried…”
The world jerks. A gull screams like a bad violin. My grip on the knife falters, and I slap it against the doorframe, as if that can pin the night in place. He came back for us?
“Don’t,” I finally whisper, because his confessions are flaying me open.
Matteo steps forward a fraction, the rain breaking on the line of his shoulders. “Then tell me to go and mean it this time.” He pauses, and I swear he’s holding his breath. “Say it like you never meant it on that beach.”
I hate him for being right. I hate myself more.
