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More naked than I was in L’Oscurità’s cellar. More naked than I was in my bedroom. More naked than I was in the hallway. More naked than I was in his shower.
I’d stripped myself bare in all the places that mattered, and he could tear me apart right now, and I wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it.
That barrier we’d shattered couldn’t be replaced.
He didn’t move as he whispered against my lips. “I see you.”
“What do you see?”
“Everything.” His thumb brushed the skin beneath my knee. “It’s not your fault your mom died. You couldn’t have predicted that. You didn’t hurt her on purpose.”
“I know that logically, but it’s another thing to accept that emotionally.”
“What will it take?”
“I used to think it would take time to heal. Now, I’m not so sure.”
I’d confronted more about my past since I’d met Bastian than I had in the twenty-nine or so years before. The truth was, someone to fill the void that had swallowed me whole was what it took.
I hated that it was Bastian who did that because I’d never met a man who scared me more.
Not because he could snap my body and discard of me as easily as a stale bag of chips but because despite every flaw he possessed—and there were many—he’d managed to crawl his way beneath my skin and sink hooks into me.
He hadn’t even tried.
The Jupiter to your Ganymede.
What delusions of romance.
He pressed on a sensitive spot on the inside of my knee when my breath hitched. “It’s never time. It’s finding someone to fill the void.”
“That sounds like experience talking.”
“It is. Over eight years ago, I had a girlfriend I planned on proposing to, she turned out to be a bigger bitch than a pregnant two-hundred-pound Mastiff, and I was lucky enough to find someone else I love to fill the void soon after.”
He loves someone.
A lump in my throat robbed me of air, filled with resentment and shock and all the jealousy I wished I could claw out of my body.
“And where is she?”
He avoided my question and tugged on the edge of the Wharton shirt. “I like this on you.”
I let him dodge the question. I wasn’t ready to hear what he had to say, but I opened my mouth, wanting to ask him what this was. What was happening.
As if he could read my mind, he tugged me closer to him and pressed a kiss to my shoulder. “Don’t question it. Just sleep.”
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
BASTIANO ROMANO
Days Missing: 6
