“Like I pity you?”
“Yeah.” Restless, she pulled her hand from his and stood, pacing away from him, then back again.
“No. Livvy, I don’t pity you. I love you.”
The rushed words made her stop and stare at him. “What?”
“I love you.” His shoulders lowered and he smiled up at her, the years falling away from his face, his younger self and the man he was now merging together.
She shook her head, feeling like someone had dunked it in a bucket of water. His words were coming from far away, too muffled and low for her to understand. “What?” she repeated.
He didn’t look impatient, but amused. He came to his feet and walked over to her to hold her shoulders and look down at her. “I love you. I’ve always loved you. That’s what I should have said when we were in that hotel room. I don’t know why it was so hard. It feels pretty easy right now.” He pulled her unresisting body closer.
She allowed it. She reveled in it. Livvy closed her eyes and absorbed every second of this moment—the way he smelled like an inexplicable combination of chocolate and earth, the strength of his arms around her, the words resonating in her ears, smoothing over the ragged edges of the wound she ripped open on an annual basis.
She drew it in and wrapped it around herself, because she knew it couldn’t last. Committingeverything to memory, she pulled away. “Thank you.”
“Thank you?” His dark eyebrows met over his swollen nose. “Is that all you have to say?”
“I love you too. But you know that.”
His smile destroyed her. Especially when it started to fade. “Why do you look like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like this is bad news?”
She’d opted for a simple button-down and leggings to come over here, and she was glad she had. She didn’t need her usual armor of outrageous clothes when she was going to strip them off anyway.
Nicholas kept his gaze on her face as she removed her shirt and leggings, until she was standing in front of him in only a bra and panties. She pointed to the heart in the parenthesis on her breast. “It’s an E. E. Cummings poem: ‘i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart).’” She touched the dragon on her leg. “Because I need protection sometimes.” She tapped her shoulder and the vine crawling over her flesh. “I didn’t want to cling to you anymore.”
She almost turned around to show him the compass, but that would be a step too far. She couldn’t.
When his gaze met hers, she took a step back from the tenderness there. “Livvy.”
“Nico. I can’t.”
He recoiled, the words seeming to hit him harder than her brother’s fist. “What?”
“I can’t accept your love.” She licked her lips. “Ican imagine what Jackson told you, but my wanting to die after we broke up, that wasn’t solely about you. I have depression.”
He didn’t move, simply watched her.
“Jackson was the only one who knew about it when we were young. I hid it, because I thought I had to. My family called me moody or temperamental, and I don’t think it was so awful until I hit my late teens anyway.” Livvy ran her hand through her hair. “When we broke up, that was a bad episode. Probably the worst I’ve ever had, though the time after Paul’s death wasn’t so great either.”
Nicholas took a step closer to her, stopping when she backed up. “Let me finish. This is a part of me, and sometimes the darkness comes and goes for no reason. But there are definitely things that make it worse. Feeling alone, or overwhelmed.” She swallowed. “Feeling like the people I surround myself with can’t accept all of me.”
He drew in a breath. “Livvy.”
She spread her hands in front of her. “The reality is, you’re always going to be inside me. On me.” She gestured to her body. “In one way or another, you’ve influenced my life. But I only have so much skin left.” She picked her shirt up, drew it around her shoulders, and buttoned it up.
“You don’t trust me. I know what mistakes I made last time, and I won’t repeat them. Give me a chance, Livvy.”
“You can say that now, Nico. When our relationship comes out, what’s going to happen the first time some obstacle gets thrown in our way?”
“You think I’ll choose the company or my family over you? I wouldn’t.”
“It’s happened before.” Each word fell between them, damning him. “I believe you love me. I just don’t know if you’ll be able to stay with me. Out there, in the real world. And I—I deserve that.” As she said the words, she felt them lifting her spirits and her self-confidence. “I deserve that,” she repeated. “When shit goes down, storybook princes are unreliable. I need a man who’s going to stand by my side in the cold light of day. I can’t be someone’s secret anymore. I can’t carry the emotional load all by myself.”
