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Rome studies me with cautious eyes. “Are you okay?”
I nod. “You? Are you okay?”
It’s not exactly the reunion I’ve been picturing in my mind, but then, I didn’t imagine he’d be holed up in a Holiday Inn with a tracking anklet fixed on his leg.
He shrugs. “I’m out of prison, at least. I’m pretty sure you had something to do with that.”
He’s right - sort of. I couldn’t pay his bail without raising suspicion within my family, but I did pay off a judge to make sure hegotthe bail hearing in the first place. I made it very clear how urgently bail needed to be offered.
“You can get anything, for the right price.”
“Almost anything,” he corrects me. I know what he’s referring to. The people who kidnapped us had the chance to demand an outrageous ransom. They didn’t even keep the eight million dollar diamond ring I was wearing when they took me.They sent the fucker back.
“Almost anything,” I echo softly.
“You sure you’re alright?” Rome asks, a hint of worry in his bright blue eyes.
I can’t believe we’re standing in the same room. I can’t believe how much I’ve needed him. It’s unreal. It transcends reality.
“I don’t know,” I blurt out.
He shoves his hands in his pockets and looks away. Silhouetted in the light from the sliding door, he has never looked so beautiful. His tattoos stand out so starkly against his skin, almost obscene against his plain white t-shirt, and I want to fold myself into his arms and trace those lines for the rest of my life.
“I know I’m not supposed to be here.” Panic is closing in, and it’s closing in hard. It hurts. It’s cracking my ribs. My thoughts spiral out and away, then back again. It’s whiplash. I’m breaking apart. “I did something horrible. I didn’t know where else to go.”
Rome stares at me. Through me. “What did you do?” he asks carefully. I hate that he’s so far away from me. On the other side of the room, and even that doesn’t seem to be far enough away for him. I don’t have to be an expert in body language to tell he would probably like to jump off the balcony of this hotel room and land in the street to get away from me right now.
“I went to the fertility clinic. Where they were storing the embryos.” I told Rome about the embryos, in one of our more lucid conversations when we were stuck in that hellhole together. He was horrified. I did tell him, didn’t I?Yes. It’s getting harder to tell which memories are real.
“I went there and I made them give me the embryos. And I took them out of their cold storage. I took them to the mausoleum and I buried them in the ground. They’re dead. They’re all dead. They can’t survive without—” Oh, shit, it’s ugly, the storm of tears. I can’t stop it and I can’t slow it. There’s nothing to be done about it except t0 give into the heartbreak of it all. “They have to be frozen or in my body. They’re dead now. Buried. I can’t get them back. There’s no way I can take it back.” My voice goes higher and higher until it’s not my voice anymore. I’m open-mouth sobbing now. I feel unhinged.
And finally Rome moves toward me. He’s across the room in a few long strides and the moment he touches me I fall against him. The relief at touching him, holding him, is immense.
“It’s okay,” he murmurs, but I can barely hear him because somebody is crying so loud and hard. It’s me. I’m the one crying. I can’t make myself stop.
“They wouldn’t give them to me,” I whimper against his chest. “I had to use a gun.”
Rome slowly peels himself away from me, holding me at arms length as he searches my eyes for answers. “A gun?Youused a gun.”
I nod, furiously blinking tears away.
“Did you shoot anyone?”
“No! God. I just…” I take a shuddering breath. “I threatened the woman behind the desk with the gun when she said she wouldn’t give the embryos to me.”
“Where did you get a gun, Avery Capulet?” If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was amused.
“The strip mall,” I choke, my breaths spiraling into increasingly more painful gasps. “It’s way too fucking easy to get a gun in this country, by the way.”
“We’ll figure it out, Aves.” He wraps me up in a hug so tight that it has the opposite effect and releases some of the panic pressure in my lungs. The feel of his body against mine is so solid, so hard, so right. I am in the eye of a storm and he is my anchor, keeping me firmly on the ground.
“Tighter,” I gasp.
He holds me tighter.
The smell of him, those muscles pinned around me, it breaks something open inside my chest. It has been so long. Too long. He’s wrapped around me, but it’s still not enough to satisfy this cruel emptiness inside me.
I reach up and grab Rome’s face, pull it down, kiss his mouth. He stiffens at first, not daring to open his lips or give me his tongue or do anything that would indicate he’s returning the gesture. His bright blue eyes are wide open, and he’s staring into mine with an unfathomable sadness that is so palpable, it feels like I’m being stabbed right through the heart.
