“I’m here,” I said quietly. “I told you I would be.”
Whatever fragile composure she’d been holding together broke open at once, and she clutched at my coat with both hands, pressing herself against me as if proximity could keep her upright. I pulled her closer without thinking, tucking her against me and bending my head over hers while the rain tapped uselessly against the roof of the car above us.
“Come inside,” I murmured. “You’re soaked.”
She nodded, but she didn’t let go, so I moved her with me instead, guiding her gently into the passenger seat before circling to the driver’s side. By the time I got in, she was already turned toward me, one hand gripping my sleeve as if she had no intention of risking even the small distance between us.
I started the engine and turned the heat up.
For a moment neither of us spoke.
Then she looked at me, eyes too bright and face pale from the strain, and murmured again, “You’re really here.”
“Emily,” I said, brushing wet hair back from her face, “there is very little on this earth that would keep me from you when you ask for me.”
Her mouth trembled.
“I didn’t think I needed anyone,” she whispered. “Not like this.”
I took her hand and brought it to my mouth, pressing a kiss to her cold knuckles before folding both of my hands around it to warm it.
“You don’t need everyone,” I said. “You just need the right person.”
That drew a broken little sound from her throat, half laugh, half sob, and the noise pierced me harder than I wanted to admit.
“She’s still in there,” she said, finally letting the fear have a voice. “It’s taking so long, and nobody’s telling us anything, and Mom keeps pretending it’s fine, and Dad looks like he wants to punch walls, and Adam is—” She stopped abruptly, her whole face tightening.
I leaned a little closer. “Adam is what?”
She closed her eyes. “There. Hovering. Smiling. Acting helpful. I know he hates that I’m not scared of him anymore, and I know he’s going to try something, and I’m so tired, Pietro.”
The last words came out small enough to cut me open.
And that was the moment. The opening. The clean, honest chance to tell her what my father had learned, what I now carried in my own hands like something sharp and poisonous: the Albanian connection, the layer beneath Adam’s charm, the part of this that reached wider and deeper than she understood.
I should have told her then.
Instead, I looked at the exhaustion in her face, the fear she was already dragging behind her, the trust that had brought her out into the rain to find me, and I stayed quiet.
She had enough on her plate. Enough for one night. Enough for one body and one heart already stretched too thin.
It was an understandable silence.
A loving one, if I wanted to dress it up.
It was still a lie.
I reached for her and drew her across the center console and into my lap as carefully as I could manage in the cramped space. She came without hesitation, curling into me in a way that felt more intimate than anything we had done in bed. I wrapped both arms around her and held on while she tucked her face into my neck and breathed me in.
“There,” I murmured against her hair. “Let him hate it. Let him see exactly how little power he has left.”
She shivered once.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she admitted.
“Yes, you do.”
I felt her lift her head slightly. “I do?”
