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“You need to feel all the parts of love, Constantine,” she threw at him. “And you don’t. You can’t. It’s not just sex. It’s not just connection to another person. As wonderful as those things are, they’re only one half of the whole. You have to feel its opposite.” When he gazed back at her without comprehension, she made a small sound of frustration. “You have to feel the bad as well as the good to get the whole. Like loss.”
He jolted as if she’d slapped him, with a wall or two in her hand. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She moved closer to him, and she knew somehow, deep inside, that it was because she didn’t know how to stay away.
But that was future Molly’s problem.
“You loved your mother and you lost her,” she said, very intently. “And I’m not pretending that’s an easy thing. Or that I would know what to do if I lost my mother, because I know I wouldn’t.”
“My mother...” He shook his head. “I visited her just today. She—”
“You lost her,” Molly said again. Firmly. “As far as I can tell, you lost her again and again. And so you blamed my mother. Then you blamed me. And you arranged your entire life around revenge—on me, because I made you feel something when you thought only she could.”
“Not something,” he gritted out at her. “Love, Molly.”
“Have you ever stopped to take that in, Constantine?” she asked him then. “Have you ever allowed yourself a moment, just a single moment, to grieve?”
And she watched as that rocked over him. As he stood there before her, Constantine Skalas, rendered...not a devil. Not a scourge. Not the playboy or the reckoning.
He was no more and no less than a man.
At last.
My man, a voice in her said, with a kind of certainty that seemed to ring deep inside her, like a bell.
And she stayed where she was, holding her breath, as he visibly fought to accept what she’d said to him. While between them, all the fury and explosiveness seemed to ease, until it almost felt as if they were back in Greece. Where there was nothing but a breeze from the sea, faintly calling wind chimes, and the sunlight all over the both of them like a blessing.
He stood there like that for some time. And when he found her gaze again, she could have sworn there was a different man there behind those dark, rich eyes.
He reached over and ran a finger down one cheek, and her foolish heart lurched.
“Do you love me, Molly?” he asked her, his voice a rough scrape. “Canyou love me?”
She might have fought on, had he thundered at her some more. Had there been more of that exploding, that heat.
Had he not touched her like that, as if checking to see if she was real.
Had he not...simply asked.
“I should hate you,” she whispered. “I want to hate you.”
He nodded at that, a sharp movement. As if he had already accepted how this was going to go. Not in his favor.
“You have every reason to hate me. I can’t blame you.” He blew out a breath. “In fact, I think I ought to encourage you to hate me as much as possible. It’s only what I deserve.”
Molly searched his face, his dark gaze. Did she want to be strong—or did she want to be happy?
She knew the answer even as she asked it.
Carefully, deliberately, she reached across that space between them to take one of his hard, magical hands in hers.
“I’ve been really, really bad at hating you, Constantine. For as long as I’ve known you. I’m afraid it just doesn’t stick.” She looked down at his hand, because there was too much emotion behind her eyes and thick in her throat. “If you want the truth, I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen years old. And all these things you’ve done to me, I forgave a long time ago. I suppose that makes me as naive and stupid as I’ve ever been, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Even if it is naivete, well, I prefer it to the sad and jaded alternative.”
It seemed to her like an eternity, though likely no more than a second before his fingers were on her chin, tipping it up so that he could look at her directly. So he could lookintoher, she thought, as her breath caught.
“I love you, Molly,” he said, as if he was taking a solemn vow. “I’ve never loved anyone else. I’ve never known how. And I’m nothing if not single-minded. If you let me, I will dedicate my life to learning how to love you so well, so deeply, and so perfectly, that you never question for a moment that you are anything but adored. Never stupid. Never naive. Simply mine, from the start.”
She blew out a breath, feeling that tremor inside of her loom again, but Molly knew what it was now. She wasn’t afraid of it.
