“We were always destined to burn ourselves out, Alessandro,” she said when she could speak. “This was doomed from the start.”
He closed the distance between them then, and took her shoulders in his hands. Kind and gentle. Heartbreakingly firm.
“Do you want me to convince you?” he asked roughly, a broken look in his dark eyes. “Is that what this is? Because we both know I can.”
“What?” Her ears were ringing, louder by the second. “No, I—”
“Tell me what you want, Elena,” he said, all of his ferocity and all of the desolation she’d sensed in him right there between them, suddenly. Alive in the damp air. “Do you want me to hunt you down, make you accept what’s between us? Do you want me to leave you alone? You need to choose. You need to fight.”
He dropped his hands then, stepped back, and the distance between them was unbearable. It made her shake.
“You can’t put this all on me,” he continued, his voice low but with the ring of a kind of finality that made everything inside of her twist tight in anguish.
“I don’t know what I want,” she lied, and the look in his eyes then shamed her. Destroyed her. Because he knew she was lying. He always knew.
“I loved you before I knew your name,” he said then. “I love you more now, even when you lie to my face. All you have to do is own this, Elena.”
She shuddered. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t—
“I do,” she said desperately. “I love you.”
“I know you do,” he replied, a slight curve to that hard mouth, but it wasn’t enough. “But that’s not the issue, is it? It never has been.”
And something in her finally broke then. Pride, fear. Selfishness and vanity. All the things she’d been accused of, all the accusations she’d levied at herself. It all simply cracked into pieces and washed over her.
“I left because I couldn’t bear to be so stupid,” she told him in a rush. “To make such a terrible mistake again.” Her eyes filled with tears, spilled over, wetting her cheeks. “But I married you because I wanted to marry you. I wanted you.”
She wiped at her eyes, then focused on him, and he took up the whole world. Commanding and strong. But waiting to hear what she’d say next. What she’d decide. As if she was the one with the power, after all.
“I still do, Alessandro,” she whispered. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything else. I can’t fight that. I tried.”
“You don’t have to fight that,” he said, his dark green eyes so fierce on hers she trembled. “You don’t have to fight me. Just fight for this, Elena. Don’t run away. Don’t hide.”
She made a wordless sort of sound, far past the ability to speak, and he pulled her close and let her cry.
“I’m not your enemy,” he murmured into her hair.
“I know,” she whispered into his strong, warm chest. “I know you’re not.”
She shuddered against him, and then he kissed her. Sweet, sure. Hot. Like a promise. Like hope. And when he drew back she saw the future she’d been too afraid to imagine, right there in his dark eyes, that curve of his perfect mouth.
“Come back to Sicily with me,” he said. “And stay this time. Stay for good.”
Elena nodded, too overwhelmed to speak. And this wasn’t surrender, she realized. She wasn’t losing a thing. She was gaining Alessandro—she was gaining them.
She was trading in something broken, something ruined and outgrown, for a shared set of wings and the whole bright sky to call their own.
“I want you to meet my parents,” she whispered. “My father. He’s not well, but … I think he’ll like you.”
“That is exceedingly unlikely,” he said quietly. “I’m a Corretti.”
And it was Elena’s turn to kiss him then, to press her mouth against his and set him free with all of that fire that was always, only theirs. To love him with nothing held back, nothing hidden. To bask in that terrible, impossible, extraordinary love that had slammed into them with no warning, changing them both. Changing everything.
“He’ll love you,” she told him. She looped her arms around his neck and adored the way he smiled down at her. “Because I love you. That’s how it works.”
He was shadow and light. Ruthless and kind. Dark green eyes and that wild, hot heat when he looked at her.
And all of him hers, as he had been from the start. From that single glance across a crowded room.
“I will always be a Corretti,” Alessandro said. It was a warning. Or, she thought, a promise.