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“It’s OK,” I say, gently wrapping my hand around his still-gloved one. “You can be vulnerable in front of me.”
Saying words like those to a man like Elio Titone is one hell of a gamble. A muscle twitches in the cheek above the scarred side of his jaw, and I brace for defensive anger.
But it doesn’t come. Instead, his mouth twists into a bitter grimace. He pulls his hand out from under mine then bites the glove off with his teeth before releasing the leather and letting it fall to the floor.
“You think this is what makes me vulnerable?” he says, lifting a sardonic brow and stiffly wiggling the fingers of the hand he just degloved. “No, Deirdre. I only have one real vulnerability these days, and it’s not some dumbass complex about my scars.”
My eyebrows knit together.
“What, then?”
He leans back against the chair, studying me through the glimmering slits of his gaze.
“What do you think it might be?” he says, spinning the question right back at me. “Or better yet, who do you think it might be?”
“You don’t mean me!”
He snorts.
“Course I do. Do you see me acting as a human shield for anybody else around here?”
“I never asked you to do that!” I exclaim, guilt poisoning me from the inside out.
“You don’t have to ask me, Songbird,” he says. “I’m gonna protect you whether you want me to or not. Whether you think you’re worth it or not. And you are, just for the record, in case there was any doubt in that pretty little head of yours.” He leans forward, sliding his injured hand along the desk towards me. I stare down at his torn knuckles and swollen flesh to avoid the piercing thrust of his gaze.
“I would walk through fucking fire for you.”
The raw intensity of his voice makes my nerves snap to attention. Goosebumps rise beneath my sleeves.
He’s breaking down my walls. Every day, every moment, shoving his way inside, finding cracks I thought I’d sealed. He’s digging deeper, deeper, until he brushes up against the broken bits inside me. The bits that cracked when Mom died, and fully shattered when Dad abandoned me.
He would walk through fire for me. Fight for me, burn for me.
He says it and I know it’s fucking true.
I can’t deal with what that means. Panic is rising, pushing back tooth and claw against the fact that someone might actually think I’m worth enough to fight for.
Throat too hot and tight to speak for a moment, I snatch up the disinfectant spray and unleash the stinging stuff on Elio’s knuckles. I watch the muscles jump in his arm.
“Cristo Santo, Songbird, you couldn’t give a guy a warning?” he grits out.
“Well, you certainly didn’t give me a warning this morning,” I reply tartly, relieved to get away from the more intense topic of conversation. “I didn’t know you were planning that engagement announcement. I had to read it on the freaking news today!”
I can hear the smug grin in his voice as I use clean gauze to dab at the excess antiseptic and dribbling blood on Elio’s hand.
“It was good, wasn’t it? Valentina helped us write it.”
“Helped us?”
“Yeah, Curse was there too.”
“For God’s sake,” I snap. “It’s like you asked everybody else for input instead of me!”
“Why? Was there some wording you would have wanted different? I’ll get them to republish a corrected version.”
“No! I don’t want any version of it published at all because we are not engaged!”
Elio inhales sharply through his nose, but I ignore him. He can be mad about it if he wants. I go to tape some more gauze to his knuckles, but he whips his hand away from my reach. He pinches my chin firmly and forces my eyes up to his.
