I searched his face, trying to get a read on what he was thinking. Where that had come from.
He brushed the hair back from my shoulder, then up to trace the line of my jaw with his thumb, like he was memorizing me.
“You should have been living your life. Falling in love?—”
I made a disgruntled sound and started to roll my eyes, but he turned my head back to look at him.
“You really haven’t been with anyone else?”
“Never.” God, this felt like a confession, one I’d never actually planned on telling him, but fuck it. “I’ve tried. After you left, when I got to the pissed-off stage. When you came back and I wanted to prove to myself that I didn’t want you. A few weeks ago when?—”
“You went to Lucien’s club,” he finished for me, his throat working as he swallowed. “I remember.”
I felt the change in him immediately, his whole body going still. It was the first time he’d shown any kind of reaction to all those drunken confessions I’d uttered, and the emotion I saw in his eyes cracked my heart in two.
He didn’t want to care. But he couldn’t help it.
It was so fucked up that it gave me relief to know this wasn’t as one-sided as it felt.
“I couldn’t—” I started, and tried again. “It felt like lying.”
Rafael’s eyes closed, and he took a deep breath. “Alessio?—”
“I didn’t want anyone else. Fuck, I… I still don’t. And I know what you’re gonna say, but it doesn’t matter how much you tell me to move on or how I deserve more, or whatever bullshit will make you feel better.”
My words settled between us, and he sighed, dropping his forehead to mine.
“I didn’t know the cost,” he said quietly. “I thought you’d be happy.”
“Without you?”
“Eventually, yes.”
My pulse began to race as I opened my mouth to ask something I didn’t know if I was ready to hear the answer to, but it came out anyway. “And are you? Happy?”
For a long time he didn’t answer, just kept his forehead against mine, our breaths syncing together in the quiet. I hugged him closer, his hesitation telling me what he couldn’t seem to say.
He wrapped his arm around my shoulders, holding me just as tight, easing the anxiety coursing through me as the time we had kept passing. I wanted to freeze this moment, stay right here in his arms, breathing in his scent and wrapped up in his warmth.
“You can talk to me,” I whispered into the silence. “Trust me with your secrets.”
“I know that,” he said, and closed his eyes, his blond lashes kissing his cheekbones. “I… I’m just trying to find the right words.”
“They don’t need to be right.” I slid a hand up to cradle his face. “They just need to be true. Are you happy?”
Rafael opened his eyes and swallowed. “I used to think so. But lately…lately, I’ve felt conflicted. Tested. Alone…” He gently shook his head. “Usually I can find some kind of peace, some kind of answer from prayer, from my fellow priests, from Him. But nothing has helped, nothing has been clear until tonight—until you.”
My heart thumped so loudly against my chest, it was all I could do to concentrate on the words coming out of Rafael’smouth. Because for a moment there it sounded like he’d just said…
“You are peace. You are love. You are passion and chaos and turmoil, and I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what itcanmean.”
“What do you want it to mean?” Rafael opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, I put a finger to his lips. “Answer me as the man lying in this bed with me, not as a priest.”
“They’re the same man.”
“Not tonight they’re not.” I shifted until Rafael was on his back and I was braced on his chest, my hair falling down around our faces, blocking out the rest of the world. “What do youwantit to mean, Rafael?”
His eyes became glassy as he speared his fingers into my hair. “That you’re mine. That I get to hold you, like this, for the rest of our lives. But?—”
