Present
“I’m saying I don’t think I want kids,” she whispers with a look of heartbreak on her face that I want nothing more than to wipe away.
Does she really think that would be a deal breaker for me?
Does she really not understand how fucking in love with her I am?
“Listen to me, Sloane, and listen well. I love you. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything in my life. You’re my whole goddamn world. My universe. You could want no kids or ten kids, I don’t care as long as I have you. I want a family with you, but if that family is just me and you? Well then I’ll be the luckiest motherfucker on Earth if I get to call you mine. There’s nothing you could say or do to make me feel differently. You’re a part of me, you burrowed yourself into my soul ten years ago and never left, and I don’t ever want you to.”
Her eyes well with tears and her mouth opens and closes, as though she just can’t find the words. I nod, silently telling her that I understand.
That I understand her.
I motion for her to come closer and she moves back to the position she was in previously.
Right where she belongs.
In my arms.
“What happened after I left? Did you have any more issues with my dad?” Her soft voice breaks though the silence and I tighten my hold on her as the memories of that night rush through my mind.
“Apart from the night when everything went down, I only saw him a couple of times and we never spoke. Never acknowledged each other.”
She nods against me, and I can almost hear her mind working as she thinks of what to ask me next.
“Do you know who the, um… who the girl was? That my dad did that to?”
My throat works on a swallow as I recall the days following the… incident.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice a deep rasp. “I had planned to figure out who she was and track down her family, to tell them how fucking sorry I was that she was gone, to help them move to wherever they wanted to go, and do whatever they wanted to do. I just wanted, no… I needed to feel like I was doing something to help them.”
“What happened?” she whispers, and there must be something in my tone that has her wanting to face me because she goes to turn around. But I tighten my hold on her, not quite able to look her in the eye as I talk about it.
“Her name was Aria. She was only sixteen and lived in a group home. She’d been there since she was seven, ever since her dad raped her mom and killed her. She saw the whole thing. The more I looked into her, the more sick her story made me. She was applying to colleges and was walking home from the library when your father or one of his men must have spotted her and picked her up. She was making a better life for herself,” I murmur, feeling sick about Sloane knowing all of this, but she deserves to know.
I swore no more lies.
“She’d have been twenty-six now,” she whispers, so quietly I almost missed it, and I press a kiss to her temple.
“Since she didn’t have any family other than her father who’s in prison, my plan went to shit. So instead, I started a scholarship in her name at every college she applied to, along with providing the funding each year to the group home she was in. Other than that, there wasn’t much else I could do.”
She pulls away from me, too quickly for me to stop her before maneuvering herself until she’s straddling me and takes my face in her hands.
“You did everything you could, Marco. You couldn’t have stopped my father that night. You couldn’t have saved her, but I know that you would have if you could. I know you’ve probably carried the guilt of that for the last ten years, but now you have me to tell you to let it go. I know it’s hard, and I know you’ve done everything you can to try and make up for what happened, but you need to let that part of the past go.” Her thumb caresses my cheek as she stares into my eyes. “You’re an amazing man, Marco Romano, and I’m so freaking lucky that I get to call you mine.”
My throat bobs as I swallow. My hands find her hips to move her closer to me, as close as I can get her.
I never want to let her go. I never want to go another day without her again.
She’s the one thing in the world that could destroy me, and I’d happily let her.
If it made her smile, if it made her happy? I’d let her destroy me. I’d let her shatter me into a million goddamn pieces as long as the light shined in her eyes as she did it.
“I’m the lucky one, little warrior.”
