I scoff to keep from shattering. “You’ll be waiting a long time.”
“I’m good at that,” he says, and it’s awful because it’s true.
We start to move again. Anything to skip over this moment. The bed complains softly as we pick up the punishing rhythm. I want to forget. I need to forget.
Matteo’s head drops, mouth skimming my jawline then moving lower. Down my neck… I’m so consumed by the moment of pleasure, for an instant I forget. His hand pushes my shirt down my shoulder and then he drags his tongue across my flesh.The neckline falls low with the motion, lower, and the cabin light finds what the rain didn’t.
The orange blossom inked over bone, petals guarding a name in small script.Livia.
Matteo goes still as his eyes lock onto the tattoo. “What is that…” he murmurs, not a question, not quite a plea.
I freeze, instinct screaming one thing, and my heart screaming another. I fix the shirt, pulling it up like I can shove the past, like the locket, back under the cloth. “Nothing,” I lie.
He sits back, breath hitching, eyes locked on the place I’m hiding. “Cat.”
“It’s a flower,” I spit.
“And the name?” He’s impossibly still, his entire face carved out of stone.
“I—” The next word saws my throat raw. “I had an abortion.”
Silence detonates.
He rocks like the plane changed altitude, and I scramble off his lap. A small sound rips out of him. It’s ugly, human, and he drags a hand over his mouth as if he could wipe the word off the air. Heartbreak hits his face unguarded, followed by something darker that I deserve.
“When?” he asks, voice shredded. “How—why didn’t you?—”
“Because there wasn’t a you,” I cut, too fast and too sharp. “Because you left.”
He flinches like I slapped him. “So you—” He can’t say it. “You ended it.”
I nod once, because this is the story that keeps him safest. “I ended it.”
He stares at me for a long, terrible moment, green eyes gone winter. Anger climbs his throat, and he swallows it like poison, burying it under something colder. He swings his legs to the opposite side of the bed and braces his elbows on his knees, back to me, head in his hands.
The hum of the engines returns as loud as a judgment. I pull the collar higher and press my palm to the blossom like it might keep me from falling apart.
We don’t speak for the rest of the flight. Leo doesn’t knock. The ocean doesn’t care. Belfast draws closer, and so does everything I can’t outrun.
CHAPTER 32
DON’T BE A HERO
Matteo
I don’t speak as we start the descent. I haven’t since she dropped that bomb and just walked away. I don’t touch her either.
Clouds peel away to a gray strip of coastline, cranes like rusted antlers along the water. Belfast. Cold gets under the skin here. It’s like it finds the places you didn’t cover with armor.
My thoughts zip to the past, to four long years ago when I came looking for her. A stupid kid certain that love could triumph over all. I was desperate. Desperate to fix what I’d broken between us. Now, it was shattered completely.
Across from me Cat buckles in and stares at nothing. I keep my eyes on the window because if I look at her I’ll ask again, and I can’t afford to hear the same answer twice. She said she ended it. Our child. The word sits in my chest like shrapnel I put there myself and still I resent her for twisting the blade.
It was my fault. I know that. I left. But knowing and forgiving are not the same.
Wheels finally slam into the tarmac, my stomach hitting my spine. Reverse thrusters howl. Leo stands as soon as the overhead light dings green, practiced calm poured over coiled muscle.
For a second, I’m envious. I wish I could find the calm right now.
