Page 155 of Dishonored

“Do you really love me?” she asked softly.

It was only the subtle turn of his head that let her know he was staring at her again—that, and the way her skin tingled. “How can I not—you didn’t give me a choice, and I don’t know whether to love you for that, or hate you. And it’s not even your fault. It’s me. It’ll always be me, Aria.”

He thought he was broken.

She knew he was just … bent.

“I miss you,” Aria said, offering the words freely.

Caesar’s head did snap to the side that time—he didn’t even try to hide his staring. “Do you?”

“Every day.”

“Say it again.”

Aria grinned, and gave him a look. “Mi manchi, il mio tiranno.”

I miss you, my tyrant.

She found comfort and warmth and a strangely familiar love in the blues of his eyes when they finally met hers. She found something she hadn’t even been looking for—he was not the only one who walked into this with one thing on their mind, and walked away with something else entirely in their heart.

“I’ve done everything I needed, and I have everything I wanted,” Aria said. “Everything to be free, and to have my life back. And somehow, I’m alone now because I’m not with you.”

Caesar set his foot to the floor, and leaned closer as he hooked a finger for her to come nearer to him, too. He didn’t speak again until their lips were just a breath apart, and the only thing she could see was him.

Here’s that restart you wanted.

“I could fix that for you,” he murmured.

“My loneliness?”

“I could fix it … on one condition.”

“And what is that?”

“That you won’t ever leave.”

Aria stilled, taking in his words.

He’d been wounded so much; left behind far too many times. The forgotten one; his life nothing more than a throwaway.

Trouble and bad and awful they called him.

And worse were the people who could be blamed for that abandonment and fear he had about loving someone, or wanting to keep her with him. People who should have loved him, and yet, they either hurt him, or overlooked what was hurting him.

A shame, really.

“I will always stay, but …”

“Mmm, what?”

She smiled. “I keep my last name no matter what.”

Caesar chuckled darkly. “Donna, I will take your fucking last name if you want me to. I don’t care.”

So be it.

“Deal,” she whispered.