Page 258 of Reign

“You put yourself on the list.”

“I corrected an oversight.”

“You weren’t on it.”

“I should have been.”

My breath catches.

Luciano closes the pen and places it on the nightstand.

“I should have put my name there from the beginning,” he says. “I should have been a consideration.”

“You told me you don’t plan to get married.”

“I didn’t.”

“Didn’t?”

His eyes hold mine.

“Then you happened.”

Oh.

My heart gives one brutal, painful thud.

Luciano rises from the bed and comes toward me.

“I knew from the moment I agreed to let you stay here that putting you beneath my roof would become something,” he says. “I didn’t know what. I told myself I could control it long enough to find out.”

“You thought living with me would be difficult?”

“I knew living with you would be difficult. I underestimated your commitment to the task.”

That nearly makes me smile.

He stops in front of me.

“Then you asked me for this list. I chose men I trusted. Men who would understand your limits and protect what you gave them.”

“Then you crossed them all off.”

“I found reasons they were wrong before you ever had the chance to consider them.”

His gaze drops briefly to the book.

“Phoenix would suffocate you with rules. You would injure Caine with the first available branch. Dominic did nothing wrong except exist, and I still disliked him for it.”

My lips twitch despite everything happening inside my chest.

“Sam and Søren?”

“They might have understood you.”

“That sounds like a positive quality.”

“It made them worse.”