My pulse kicks harder.
“No,” I whisper.
His thumb brushes once under my eye. “No.”
The touch is so gentle it nearly undoes me. My breath catches, and his gaze drops to my mouth for the smallest fraction of a second before returning to my eyes.
The room feels too small. Too warm. Too full of everything I never wanted to say and cannot unsay now.
“So what does that mean?” I ask, though I think I already know.
Luca’s stare holds mine. “It means this ends one of two ways. With him still owning your life.” His eyes go flat. “Or with us making sure he can’t.”
Fear moves through me first. Cold and immediate.
Right behind it comes something worse.
Relief.
I suck in a breath. “Luca.”
“I know.” He leans in and his forehead almost touches mine, not quite. Close enough that I can feel the heat of him without contact. Close enough that if either of us moved an inch, there would be no space left at all.
“If we do this,” I say slowly, “then I’m choosing it too.”
Luca’s eyes stay on mine. “Yeah.”
My throat tightens. “I don’t know what that makes me.”
“It makes you done waiting for him to decide your life for you.”
“If this happens,” I whisper, “it has to actually end. I cannot survive half measures. I cannot survive just making him angry.”
“It ends,” Luca says. No hesitation. “Or we don’t do it until we know how to make it end.”
That should terrify me more than it does. I know what happens to people who move against my father. I’ve seen the aftermath.
Instead, all I can think is that this is the first conversation about my future I have ever had where I am being treated like I belong in it.
“Okay,” I say.
Luca stills. “Okay?”
“Yes.” My voice shakes, but it holds. “If the only way I ever get free of him is to help put an end to this, then… okay.” My fingers knot tighter in the blanket. “I’m in.”
His breath leaves him in a rush, and for a second neither of us moves. It’s just the two of us, close enough to share breath, the whole impossible weight of what we just agreed to pressing down on us.
I pull back for a moment. “And If we’re doing this, we’re doing it together. No more lies. No more secrets.” I hold his gaze. “I need to hear you say that.”
“No more lies.” His voice is adamant. “No more secrets. You and me.”
He reaches for me slowly, giving me plenty of time to pull away if I want to. I don’t. When his hand settles against my cheek and his thumb traces the line of my jaw, I lean into the warmth of his palm and close my eyes. When he kisses me, it’s soft at first. Careful. Like he’s still half afraid I’ll pull away.
I don’t.
My hands fist in the front of his shirt and I kiss him back, and the sound that leaves him is broken and rough and wrecks something in me all over again.
I’ve missed this. Missed him. There’s no use pretending otherwise now.
