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“They’ll scream,” I add, loving this word game we’re playing, laced with real emotions. I spin her around until her back hits the rail. The impact tears a hiss from her, and before she can speak, I slam my mouth down on hers again. My cock is painfully hard in my pants, and as I devour her mouth with anger, something else seeps in that makes my lips slow down.
“I love you, Carina.” I open my eyes. I need to see her, make sure she understands the truth of my declaration.
It’s like a snap of a finger. Her anger fades, replaced with something bittersweet and full of trust. The surety has her tilting her chin back. “I love you, too, Luca. I always have.”
“Always will,” I finish off. Because that’s exactly the way it shall be until we both rejoin the earth.
I press another kiss to her lips as if I can seal the promise we have just made to each other.
We will be unstoppable.
Because we are together.
Chapter 22
Carina
Twenty-Seven Years Old
DearDiary,
I had to read this book once about a mockingbird who wasn’t a bird at all and a little girl who learned some tough lessons about how terrible people can be to one another.
There was this one line that stuck out to me—something about how you shouldn’t judge people until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.
We do an awful lot of judging in my world. Judging, jurying, executing…all in one fell swoop. I’m trying to be better.
I’m trying to put myself in Luca’s place, which God help me, means I have to imagine him and Francis in that cage.
I’m not sure I can do it.
But if I want any peace at all, I have to try.
I have this image of Luca waiting for his challenger, grim and resigned and just trying to survive the night. The gate opens, and he turns to see…Francis.
His friend.
I see Francis’s face through Luca’s eyes. His terrified brown eyes just like mine. His dark hair and pale, pale skin. That skinny build he hadn’t really grown into yet. At seventeen, he was nothing but baby fat over bone—a boy on his way to manhood but nowhere near there yet.
There’s no way Luca would have wanted to fight him. I know that.
But God, does it hurt to think about it.
It hurts to know it was Luca’s hands that painted each bruise on Francis’s white flesh.
It hurts to know it was Luca’s impetus that stole my brother’s breath.
It hurts to know that while Luca killed Francis, the souls of two men were murdered that night, as surely as I draw breath.
But while it hurts, I know…
I can’t let Luca go another hour suffering the torment of his choice.
There was no choice.
Thisfuckingbalcony.
It’s haunted me for too many years, the shadow of my and Luca’s last encounter here, the last memory I had of anything physical between us.
