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I clear my throat, looking up at a very interesting, very invisible spot on the ceiling.
Bronson brushes past me, whispering harshly. “We’ll talk later. And I want to know just exactly how you interpreted me saying my daughter needed discipline.”
“No,” I say, my life on the line, “you don’t.”
He eyes me, ready to kill, then I’m saved by the Beauty. Mrs. Bachman tugs on his arm. “Oh, Bronson, be for real! What did you expect from a Bachman man?” And pulls him away.
I live to see another day.
Tess sneaks us a kiss, blowing it from her pearly white fingertips as she goes. Rowan, trailing the line, gives me, specifically, two thumbs-up.
The church doors are closed. We’re finally alone.
I take her hands in mine. She’s trembling from the excitement. I rub my thumbs down her smooth skin to calm her. “What were you going to say?”
She blinks a few times, looking down. “I don’t want to overstep but?—”
She won’t meet my eye. My heart thumps. Hard. What is it? What could she want that she’s so scared to ask?
“Just say it.” I search for her gaze. “Please, Paise.”
Finally, she looks up at me. “Can I call you Paolo? It’s a strong name. And I just don’t see you as being, you know…”
“Savage?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. I had no idea what she was going to say, but I didn’t think it was something this simple. The woman can call me anything she wants from now on. As long as she calls me hers. I should tell her that.
“Call me anything you want as long as you call me yours,” I say.
She shakes her head, laughing. “How’d you get that name, anyway?”
Heat and shame wash over me. What I did had to be done. The memory will always stay with me. Buried. Let’s keep it that way.
“Doesn’t matter now,” I say, hoping she’ll let it go. “I prefer to leave the past in the past.”
Only the brotherhood needs to know the gory details. But Paolo doesn’t fit me anymore. He’s a young man lost in time.
“Actually,” I say, feeling a bit soft, “I like it when you call me Sav.”
Her sunshine-beam smile is back. “Okay, good. I was shy to ask, but me too.” She stretches up, kissing my cheek.
“Kinda like Save,” I say, somehow seeming to be stuck on this silly line of verbalization, as soft and cheesy as Velveeta. “Considering you saved me from a life of loneliness?—”
“Serial non-monogamy? One-night stands? A different girl every night?” She giggles, her teasing good-natured.
“No,” I say. “You saved me from a life without getting to experience being in love. Real love. The kind where nothing else is as important as that other person and nothing feels as good as being with them. So, thanks.”
Her cheeks bloom with warmth. “You’re welcome.” She leans up, this time kissing me on the lips. “Thank you for keeping me a Bachman and saving me from an arranged marriage to someone I wasn’t in love with. I mean, nothing against Gio. He’s a perfectly nice?—”
My skin prickles with jealous heat. I have to interrupt. “You mean he’s an ugly monster who you never would have gotten along with, and his massive castle is old and dirty and crumbling.” She laughs. “You’re meant to be a Beauty. No one in this family would deny that.” I kiss her again, just at the corner of her flushed lips. “No one wanted to see you go.”
She giggles. “Especially Mom and Tess with their crazy, concocted plan.”
“I don’t know if I would call it crazy.” I glance down at our intertwined hands, our thumbs caressing one another’s skin. “Do you believe in it?”
“Believe in what?” she asks, only halfway interested in my words. She’s giving me that look again. She wants to be kissed.
