She sat back on her heels, feeling it was the most natural thing to be naked with him in every sense of the word.
“When you told me you grew up without your father, too, I thought I saw scars beyond your perfect, placid facade and I hoped they’d been long healed. But now I feel this goes far deeper than growing up fatherless like me, that you suffered way more hardships and injustices and abuse than anything I can imagine. And it makes me even more proud of you and in awe of what you attained in spite of it all.”
“What if you’re right, and there’s way more to me that you can dream of in your worst nightmares? What if it’s so terrible that if you knew, it would send you away screaming?”
“You’re not hypothesizing, are you? You’re really afraid I can’t handle the truth.” His eyes went bleak, overwhelming her with the need to unburden him. She pressed her hands to his heart, needing to absorb his pain. “This damage I feel inside you...it goes beyond a physical or psychological ordeal. You’ve...done things. Ugly things.” His gaze faltered, and it felt as if his last reluctance gave way, letting her plunge deep. And she felt she was reading everything inside him, dragging out every festering darkness. Her voice shook as she put what she saw into words. “You were involved in...violence. You used your skills in cold-blooded and lethal ways. Even to...kill.”
She bated her breath as his eyes widened, stunned.
Then all the fire that had ever been there was extinguished and he only said, “Yes.”
* * *
Ever since Antonio had realized he wanted Liliana, he’d broken out in cold sweat just thinking how it would hurt her if she ever learned she’d initially been a tool in his plan of revenge, even if he hadn’t and would never act on it.
Though he couldn’t come clean about it, ever, he needed to be honest with her any other way he could. He’d already started by opening up about his feelings. Now he needed to go further, all the way, and open up about himself.
His surface was as perfect and placid as she’d said. But he was anything but inside. Not even his brothers knew of the wreckage inside him. But she’d seen it. She’d said it made her proud of him that he’d become what he was in spite of what he’d been through. But though she’d somehow seen what no one else had even guessed at, she still couldn’t even guess at the specifics.
What if he told her all the things he’d done as a slave of The Organization, what he’d had to do to gain his freedom, and it horrified her? What if she thought him too damaged, beyond redemption, and ran for her life?
But he owed her the whole truth. He’d keep from her only what might hurt her feelings or damage her trust in him. What didn’t apply to them anymore anyway, and never would.
More than anything he wanted to make her promise she’d never leave him no matter what she learned, but he couldn’t do that. She’d give him her pledge, and she’d keep it, even if she hated it and him. She was that noble, that kind. No, she had to have total freedom to act in her own best interests. Even if it meant leaving him behind. Even if he couldn’t survive without her.
Needing to put some distance between them so he wouldn’t weaken, he pulled away from her, rose to fetch his pants.
As he came back to stand over her, she pulled the sheet over herself, as if she feared she couldn’t face whatever he’d say in the vulnerability of nakedness. It made him hate himself more for causing her even a moment’s uncertainty or anxiety.
Holding her suddenly fragile gaze, praying she wouldn’t end up hating him, he said, “Though I’d give anything for you not to know, you need to know. What I am, what I’ve done. I’ll abide by whatever decision you make once you know everything.”
And he exposed all the horrors of his past, what not even his brothers knew. The only thing he left out was the identity of the family who’d discarded him.
All through his confession, what most agonized him were the brutal emotions that ravaged her, from shock to horror to denial to desolation. He couldn’t stop to analyze each one so he could go on.
When he was done, he stood before her, unable to believe he’d finally unburdened himself, shaking with the discharge of a lifetime of torment and rage that he’d suppressed under layers of steely discipline. But what truly shook him was dreading the reason behind her weeping.
Before he could bring himself to ask, she scrambled off the bed and launched herself at him so explosively, she made him stumble and fall.
He barely caught himself before he crashed flat on the ground, cushioning her on top of him as she rained copious tears and frenzied kisses all over him. She sobbed so hard he was terrified she’d do herself real damage.