“And every day after I remembered who I was, every hour I didn’t tell you, I knew exactly what I was doing. I was choosing the version of me that got to keep you a little longer over the version that did the right thing.”
I believe him. Not because it excuses anything. It doesn’t. Because it makes every good moment we had feel even more real, and therefore harder to survive.
“You don’t get credit for knowing better while you were doing it,” I force out.
“I know.”
My throat burns.
“I still don’t trust you.”
Silence stretches on the other side of the door.
“Then don’t,” he says quietly.
I frown. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t trust me. Not yet.” His voice roughens. “But I still don’t think you should be in that house alone.”
My hand tightens at my side.
“Nat, please.” A beat. “Can I come in?”
I straighten up. Wipe my face with the back of my hand.
He’s not the man I thought he was two days ago. He’s also not the monster I tried to make him into on the flight home. He’s a person who did a terrible thing for a pathetic reason, and the pathetic reason is one I understand down to the bone.
That doesn’t mean I trust him.
That doesn’t mean I forgive him.
But I’m alone in a house that’s no longer safe, and the only person telling me I’m in danger is the same person who put me there. And I need to know what I’m dealing with.
29
LUCA
The silence stretchesso long it starts to feel physical.
Wind comes off the water in flat, steady sheets, the kind that numbs one side of your face and leaves the other burning. Sand hisses across the deck boards like static. I’ve been out here long enough that my ears ache and I stopped feeling my lips ten minutes ago.
The deadbolt turns, and my whole body sags like I’ve been holding my breath for eight hours. Which, honestly, I might have been.
The door opens about six inches. Just enough for me to see one eye, one shoulder, and the tight line of Natalia’s mouth. She looks like she slept about as well as I did, which is to say not at all. Her hair is pulled back, but pieces of it have escaped around her face, and her eyes are red-rimmed and furious and so goddamn beautiful that I almost forget where I am.
“Hey,” I say.
Brilliant. Truly. Decades of Andretti charm distilled into a single syllable.
Her gaze drops to my hip. To the Glock tucked into the waistband.
I watch the shift happen in real time. Whatever softening brought her hand to that deadbolt hardens right back up like concrete setting. Her knuckles go white on the door frame.
“You came armed.”
“Yeah.” The air goes out of me. I do have a reason. I came here because I think she’s in danger, and walking around unarmed stopped being an option in my life a long time ago.
But none of that changes what she sees when she looks at me now.
