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“I love you,” she whispered. She kissed his cheek. “I love you.” Then his lips, the touch feather-soft and perfect. “I love you.”
He gritted his teeth, trying to fight against the pain, the need, that was building in his chest, threatening to overwhelm him, to consume him completely. “I’m glad, Paige. If that makes you happy, then I’m glad.”
“Is that all?” she asked, searching his face, demanding honesty.
He gritted his teeth and looked away. “It’s all I have to give.”
“You’re a liar, Dante.”
Anger flooded through him, unreasonable and hot. “I’m a what?”
“A liar. And not just about this. Your entire life is a lie. Your whole existence.”
He pushed up from his chair and she leaped backward, her eyes wide with shock. “Of course,” he snarled, battling against the pain in his chest. “How could I forget? I’m the Italian bastard, adopted by a respectable family. The one who doesn’t belong. Of course my existence is a lie. I have spent years pretending to be civilized, pretending to be a man of honor, when we both know I am not. I don’t share their blood,” he said, speaking of his parents. “I have the blood of a killer in me. The blood of a low-class, violent coward who abused women. Killed them. That’s who I am…of course this is a lie,” he said, sweeping his hand around the well-ordered, perfect room. The lie he had built for himself.
He stared her down, stared into her wide eyes, waiting for the fear to win. Waiting for her to realize that what he said was true. That he wasn’t the man she thought he was. That he wasn’t the man he pretended to be. That beneath his armor, was a darkness that no one would ever want to touch.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “You idiot. You think I don’t know that’s what you think of yourself? You think I buy what the press writes? What you show everyone? Don’t forget I’m the one who dragged you out of that cold shower. I’m the one who warmed you with her own body, so don’t try to scare me now with the same lie you tell yourself every day. Because this is the lie, Dante Romani. That you’re broken. That you can’t love or be loved. Look around you…people love you. Because you’re worthy of it. Don and Mary love you. Ana loves you. I love you. And you won’t let us. Because you’re too damn afraid.”
“Hell, yes, I’m afraid,” he growled, feeling the walls he’d erected around his heart crumbling. “I am half of that man, Paige. Do you know what that means? Passion is poison for me. It could be.”
“It’s not true.”
“You think it’s not true. Why? Because you love me? She loved him, Paige.” He shouted the words, desperate to make her understand, to make her believe him. “That’s why she didn’t leave. She loved him…she thought he could be different. That he could change. Don’t you understand? Love doesn’t fix anything. It hides flaws. Makes people blind to them. But love is not all brightness and sunshine. It can’t heal a damned thing.” His voice broke, the memories of his mother flooding his mind. “It has a dark side. Everything does.”
She shook her head. “Only if you choose to dwell in the dark. He made a choice, Dante. You can’t blame love for that. That wasn’t love.”
“Passion then. Emotion. A lack of control. I won’t let myself do that. Do you see this?” he asked, sweeping his arm across his office. “Order. Control. That’s who I am. It’s what I’ve made myself. What I’ve trained myself to be. So that I will never hurt someone like that. So that I will never become that man.”
“So that you’ll never be hurt,” she said, her voice soft.
“That, too,” he said, everything in him feeling exposed now. Raw.
“This isn’t real,” she said, looking around the room. “It’s just stuff. It’s just the outside. It doesn’t fix who you are.”
He laughed, the sound divorced from humor. “Nothing can, I’m afraid. All I can do is keep hiding who I am. Keep it locked up.”
