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“I’m really not. He told me how you met, and in his words, the rest is history.”
“Pretty much true,” she tells me and rolls a little. “One loyal bastard. He always had my back over anyone else. He’d do The Company proud.”
“We’re discussing that in the morning. It’s not our worry right now.”
“Okay,” she murmurs, settling down. She sighs almost happily. “Where do we go from here?”
“Wherever we need to.”
“Where do I go?” she asks, and while her eyes remain closed, I can’t ignore the tone she uses. “If you got Vinnie, it must mean I’m not going far.”
“It’s you and me against the world, darling girl.”
It’s an allegiance I should have made so set in stone she never second-guessed it, and while I’m angry she believed my father, I understand why. He forced her hand when he so violently ripped something away from her.
“So, you believe me?”
“Never should have questioned it.” There’s more to this to unravel, but the one reason we were pushed apart is hard to ignore. “He played us against one another.”
“I never wanted him.”
The fact she felt the need to tell me that in response to what I said tells me how much this has pinned itself to her soul.
“Shh, you don’t have to say that again. I know. I know what he did to you was unforgiveable, but the idea that he turned what we had into something so malevolent is not something I can just forget. He used my love for you like a weapon.”
“Vice versa,” she says, and I feel my heart sit heavily in my chest. “Hey.” She pushes herself up. “You’re not getting soft on me now, are you?”
She’s suddenly alert, focusing on me in time to catch a rogue tear as it drags down my face, chasing the contours until the saltiness hits my lips. Gently, her hands cup my jaw. Her long fingers curl so her nails dig ever so slightly into my skin, forcing me to focus on her.
“You’re not, are you?”
“No,” I reply, chuckling mirthlessly. “I just keep thinking about the last seven years. Fuck, Talia. The time we lost. The timehetook from us.”
“I know,” she murmurs sweetly. “But we’ve got time to make up for that.” She freezes, her hands starting to leave my face. “If that’s what you want.”
Hearing uncertainty from Natalia is never easy, but it humanises her. For all of our lives, she’s been on a pedestal, and she used that in her power. Even after falling, she appeared to come back stronger than ever, but there’s always a part of her that echoes with doubts.
I need her to know that I have the same.
“Can we trust one another? Can you trust me?”
“I thought we were discussing this in the morning?” she quips, giving me a wicked smile. “I guess we’re going to just have to have trust in what’s going to happen.”
“It’s not going to be easy.”
“Nothing about us ever was,” she scoffs gently.
As she sobers, I watch her closely and find myself enthralled by her. I’d call her a drug, but she’s so much more than that. She is everything every man wants—strong and weak, bold and broken, sweet and sour—and I nearly lost her.
I did lose her.
Not by my own hand. If I had truly been a guilty party—and a fraction of me is to a degree—I wouldn’t be here right now. I wouldn’t have come back to her room, back to her bed, back to being attentive. If I had been guilty, I’d have let her go.
“Why are you staring at me?”
“Just thinking about everything that’s happened.”
“Oh, yeah. And what’s the conclusion?”
