Her spine steels, a heavy breath stumbling out of her mouth. “Tristan…”
Digging my fingers into her waist, I look her dead in the eye. “You don’t want to hear this, but you need to. You don’tget where I am without tainting your very soul. My hands are bloody, my empire is corrupt.”
“Then what does that make me? A foolish, naive girl… a cliché? You want me to accept you for who you are. Love the man you truly are. Are you doubting my love?”
She squirms in my lap, about to move when my grip on her tightens. “Careful,mo run.”
A beat of silence follows.
She gulps, but her voice comes out steady. “How many?”
I cock my head, running my knuckles along her side. “Everything after one is one too many, Viviana. You lose your soul when you take a life. Afterward, you embrace it, getting drunk on the power.”
She places her cheek on my chest, which pounds a merciless beat.
It feels like absolution that she stays rather than runs. But where would she run to? It’s too late. For her. For me. I’d find her anywhere, crawl through hell and claw at heaven’s walls if needed, scourge every inch of every known world. I wouldn’t rest until I reunited with her.
I’d take her hate every day for the rest of my existence, but she won’t leave me.
I can’t breathe without her.
I can’t live without her.
“I think you’d be a great father. You survived horrors I can’t even imagine, and you’d never do that to a child,” she says after lifting her head to look me in the eye.
“So sure? You have more trust in me than is sensible.”
Her chest heaves with a sigh, and she palms my face. “Should I stop wanting one…becoming a mother? I’ve made peace with knowing my children will be born into a world that is bloody—filled with sinners.”
Resting my forehead on hers, I say above her lips. “We all end up becoming one. That’s why you chose to become a preschool teacher. To hold on to the innocence, forgetting that it doesn’t last. You’re a hopeless dreamer,mo run.”
Perhaps that’s why I fell in love with her to begin with.
She looks down at her lap, whispering, “Would you let me go?”
Cupping her cheeks, my eyes bore into hers so she can see how earnest I am, erasing any doubt. “I can’t.”
“Even if I asked to? Even if I need you to?” Her voice breaks, the despair clear.
I could lie to her. What’s one more on the already full plate we’ll choke on in a few days. Next week she’ll face my sins while cold realization wakes her up. I need her to accept that it could only have ended up like this. She fell for me—the worst man she could have.
Gripping her chin, I stroke my thumb along her cheek. “I can’t. I won’t.”
Her eyes burn up with a fierceness that could incinerate me. The part of her she keeps mostly contained has been ripped open.
She pushes herself off me, swaying on her feet. “You can’t say things like that, Tristan. It’s scary.”
I cock my head and let out a self-deprecating laugh before I shoot to my feet, towering over her. “Too late for that. I already have you, Viviana.”
“I am not a possession,” she snaps.
Wrapping my hand around the back of her neck, I press my forehead to hers. “You’re a treasure. My fucking treasure.”
She stabs a finger into my chest. “We can’t continue like this.”
“Don’t say something I will have to punish you for,” I grit out.
Her eyes round, but the spark of desire overshadows her apprehension. We’re mad together, and it owns us. We can’t fight the connection. We can’t outrun our feelings. Love is attached to our backs like a shadow, a constant companion neither of us can shake off—a permanent fixture, inherently part of us. I gave up long ago fighting or trying to understand it. The only reasonable thing is to accept. Fall deeper and ultimately accept fate.
