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“Don’t move, Butterfly,” I said, slowly stepping closer to the stairway.
“Don’t come any closer,” Irina said, shifting her weight on the railing. She squeezed her eyes closed, shaking her head as if she needed to chase away that moment of something more that had danced between us finally.
“We both know I’m coming up those steps. If you want to jump, then I’ll go with you,” I said, ignoring Ivory’s gasp behind me. I could picture her hands on her face and the tears in her eyes, but I couldn’t look at her and do what I needed to do.
I’d failed Irina, more monumentally than I’d ever failed anyone or anything in my life. I wouldn’t do it again.
“What?” Irina asked, her mouth gaping with shock. “Why would you do that?”
“I don’t want to live in a world that doesn’t have you in it,” I murmured, staring up at her face and watching the first tear trail down her cheek.
“Why would you care?” she asked, her face strained as she shifted her weight on the railing again. “You’ve never wanted me, anyway. You’ve made that very clear. So why do you care if I live or die?”
“You know that’s not true, cuore mio. I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything,” I said, slowly ascending the stairs.
One step.
Then another.
Irina held my stare, distracted by the conversation between us and not seeming to realize just how close I would come before she could jump.
Just a little closer.
“You’ll never love me. No one ever will, especially not now,” she said, her voice strangled as she admitted what existed in the deepest corners of her mind. As she laid bare all the insecurities and the thoughts that twisted her up until she couldn’t function.
The ones that I’d done nothing but affirm with my actions, even if her thoughts couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Another step, and I crested the top of the stairs.
Irina’s gaze dropped to my foot where it touched the wood floor of the gallery. She stared at it for a moment, lifting her eyes back to mine.
Her mouth opened, her lips parting to make way for what I knew would be her final goodbye. “I love you,” she said, cracking my heart open in my chest. “You deserve so much more than you’ll let yourself have.”
Her fingers relaxed around the railing, sliding across the wrought iron as she tipped her body forward.
Irina let go.
