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“Take the child. Leave. You were right all along—this was a mistake.”
The words felt to him like a thunderclap. Intense and huge. Impossible to ignore.
And everyone knew that when thunder rumbled, the storm could not be far behind.
“I could do that.” But Cecilia’s voice was too quiet. Too soft, and yet not weak at all. Steel serenity, and he knew precisely where she’d learned it. Her violet gaze held his. “Or instead, I could beg.”
Beg.
The word seemed to take over his head, his chest,him. It seemed to pour in from the sprawling, ancient city outside to fill the room. It was in his blood, bruising and powerful.
I could beg, she had said.
And he remembered, again that moment on a frozen field high up in the mountains. He remembered how deeply and fervently he had wanted all the things he knew he couldn’t have. Because he had never had them.
His woman. His son.
A family.
I could beg, she’d said.
He knew better. He was Pascal Furlani, not another, softer man. And all he knew how to do was struggle. How to fight. How to punish the world in general and his father in particular for failing him.
But Cecilialived.
She had nursed him back to life, literally. She had given birth to a brand-new life, Dante.
She was life. Love. All the things that Pascal did not dare permit himself to imagine he could ever, ever have—
“This is me begging,” she said, her voice musical. Impossible.
And then she made it worse by sinking down onto her knees, right there before him. With all the ease and grace of a dancer or a queen, as if she wasn’t the one capitulating.
Or as if, he thought in some kind of a daze, as if surrender cost her nothing.
When he was certain it would destroy him.
“Pascal,” she said, her remarkable eyes locked to his. “I want you to make me your wife, in every possible way. I’m begging you to do it. Right now.”
And Pascal had been born a lost cause. Accordingly, he’d lost himself for years, as an avocation. He reveled in that dirt, that stain, and had only imagined himself found when he’d nearly died on a distant mountain. Until this woman smiled at him, then nursed him whole.
He was lost in that gaze of hers, violet and sure.
And maybe the truth was that he was already lost. That he had been for six years now, and counting.
So he pulled her to her feet, then swept her into his arms, taking her mouth in a kind of fury.
And lost himself for good.
