Her breath hitched. “What?”
“Do you hate me, Nina?”
“I hate what you did to me,” she said softly. “I hate how you broke me.”
The honesty in it struck worse than if she’d screamed.
I lifted my hand, brushing her cheek. Warm. Real. Her eyes met mine, and something fragile cracked open between us.
I leaned in without thinking.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
“Nina—”
“Don’t kiss me.” Her fingers wrapped around my wrist, not pulling me away, holding me there. “Because if you do, I’ll fall in love with you all over again, and I don’t know if I’ll survive that.”
My chest tightened.
“I never stopped loving you,” I said. “Not once. I spent yearswatching you from a distance because I was too much of a coward to come back. But it was always you. It’s still you.”
Her eyes glistened. She slipped out of my hands.
“Goodnight,” she said, turning away.
“Don’t go.” It wasn’t a command. It was a plea.
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
She faced me, standing so close I could feel her heat. “Because every time I look at you, I remember everything. The love and the pain. I don’t know how to separate them anymore.”
“I don’t want to,” I said.
“Ronan—”
“Fuck it.”
I closed the distance.
Our lips met, and it was nothing like a first kiss. It was a collision of years, of everything we had lost and never stopped wanting. She froze for half a second, hands on my chest, torn.
Then she melted.
Her breath shook as she kissed me back, soft and desperate, like she’d been waiting for this as long as I had. The world disappeared. There was only her. Only us.
When she pulled away, we were both breathless.
“We can’t,” she whispered, even as her eyes betrayed her.
I cupped her face, forcing her to look at me. “Lo faremo, cazzo, tesoro,65” I whispered. “We will.”
Chapter Thirty-six
RONAN
Seven Years Earlier
