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“Phi, can you?”
She breathes softly at my side, a sigh that feathers my bare chest. “I think you’d be an amazing husband and father, if that’s what you’re asking.”
My stomach flips. “You…what?”
Delphine sits up, keeping the comforter crowded around her shoulders as she folds her legs and sits facing me. Although I still can’t see more than the outline of her in the dark, I know she’s staring at me as intently as I am her.
“I think you will be an amazing husband and father,” she repeats in a matter-of-fact tone.
“You’re being serious.”
“I wouldn’t be in a relationship with you if I didn’t think you had the qualities I’m looking for.”
“But what about—”
“The Mafia,” she says, pulling the comforter tighter around her shoulders. “It’s your profession. You—the man you are—I think would be great. You’ve looked out for me for half of my life. Even when you didn’t have to. When most people would’ve given up and walked away. You’re the most loyal and devoted person I’ve ever met, Jon. You make me feel safe and understood. You’ve been there so many times when I needed you most… when I was in a really dark place.”
She sniffles and I can hear the pain in her voice. The same tone she’s taken on most recently when discovering Ernest’s betrayal.
“Phi, I didn’t bring this up to make you upset. C’mere.” I reach out for her, pulling her and the comforter back down over me. There’s a lump in my throat and a surrealness about the moment. It doesn’t feel real—like we’ve already fallen asleep and I’m dreaming. My arm hooks around her and I hold her flush against me. “I hate families. All families. But especially mine. It seems wrong imagining otherwise.”
“But this would be ours. The family you and I make together. Our family.”
Our family.
The two short words reverberate in my head as I kiss Delphine’s brow and absentmindedly mutter something about her being correct.
It’s true—how has this never occurred to me? Our family. Of course, it would be completely different.
Everything with Delphine is.
The nightmare that was my childhood wouldn’t apply. I would never let it, and neither would she. She would be an incredible wife and mother, like she is incredible at everything she does, and she believes in me…
I think you will be an amazing husband and father.
She had sounded so sure.
Delphine’s maybe the smartest person I’ve ever known. If she could say this with so much certainty…
I drift off with these thoughts, fading into sleep to the feel of her warm, slack body against mine and the sound of rain tapping on the window. Both the light, sweet scent of her skin and the leftover notes from the candles we burned hang in the air.
The dark surrounds us like a cloak we can’t take off.
I should be more relaxed than I am, but even slipping away, my guard isn’t all the way down.
Some find comfort in the dark. I’m not one of those people.
Something I have never told anyone.
Not even Delphine.
Maybe the one phobia of mine.
I don’t like the dark. I bear it when forced to in certain circumstances. But once again, it’s the unpredictability, the suffocating unknown that makes me… unsettled.
When I was a boy, Lucius used to lock me inside a closet for hours. Pitch-black. Tight and confined. It was sometimes worse than the other forms of torture he put me through. Something psychologically unnerving about sitting in the dark with no end in sight. It fucked with me.
I jerk awake as if I’ve only had my eyes closed for a second. When I glance at the time, I discover it’s been almost two hours. Delphine hasn’t moved and the dark has gone nowhere. The rain trickles in at a steady pace.
