“I didn’t know what I was going to do, Dante.” She frowned at me. “I thought about getting rid of him or her.”
When she hung her head in remorse, I tipped her chin back up. “You were eighteen. You had every right to consider every option. No one would judge you for that.”
She sniffled and searched my eyes for a lie. She wouldn’t find one. She cleared her throat. “Well, my body made the choice for me. I just honestly didn’t want you to hate me and so I didn’t tell you. I never wanted any of my family to hate me. I couldn’t let any of you down,” she whispered. The fear I saw when she shivered at the thought was enough for me to at least try to let go of my anger.
Try.
It wasn’t gone.
“Hate? No. But I’m fucking furious with you, Lamb,” I said, as her tears fell into my neck and her pain poured out in waves. I was her shoulder to cry on, and I had to be that before anything else.
She nodded into my neck like she couldn’t bear to lift her head. I wouldn’t have let her, anyway. My hands were in her hair, soothing, petting, massaging. It was like we were finally one again and I was checking my other half for permanent damage.
She had internal bumps and bruises, sure, but we could fix all that.
This had to be fixable.
“You owe me all the answers, but I’ll let you give them to me slowly.”
“I probably deserve to have you torture them out of me fast,” she mumbled.
“Yeah, there’s about a million different forms of torture and punishment that I shouldn’t be thinking about inflicting on you, but I am.”
That finally got her to lift her head, and she squinted at me. “You are?”
“I’m always thinking about how to make a person submit to me, Lilah. It’s in my nature.”
She bit her lip at my words, and I knew this was headed in the wrong direction fast. I couldn’t have this woman sitting on my dick and hold a serious conversation with her.
I gripped her hips, about to lift her off, but her hand shot out to grab my wrist. “Wait. What do you mean, submit? And what type of punishment?”
“Lilah,” I warned in a low voice. “Now’s not the time.”
“I’m here because of my mental health, Dante. I’m here because I can’t get over the thing I can’t do, which is make a baby. I suffered for four years in college. I cried through most of it. I hooked up with men thinking it would change me. I mean, I couldn’t even get off until Christmas in that bathroom with you—”
“What?” Her confession had me halting her. “Were you … When did the miscarriage happen? Did I hurt you?” Suddenly, my mind was trying to calculate whether I could have hurt her, if she would have been in physical pain, and I almost heaved up my fucking breakfast.
She slapped my chest. “No. Of course you didn’t. You never hurt me. I don’t think you’re capable.”
“I don’t think you know what I’m capable of.” She hadn’t seen what I did behind closed doors for the mafia, how I’d broken bones for the government, sniped men off rooftops, studied every technique of torture there was so we could get the intel we needed for our country, for our family, for our power.
“You made me feel better than I ever thought I could again. I’d tried for a whole month to get myself off after the miscarriage, and nothing worked. I thought I was broken.” I took a deep breath, and she took one with me, then wiped under her eyes. “I need this job, I need this life, and I need to get over this thing I created between us all those years ago. I lost our baby, but I shouldn’t have lost me too.” Her voice shook like she was trying to be strong, like a scared puppy facing down a wolf.
“Okay, Lilah.” I nodded like I could work with it, like I could help her get over us when I still wasn’t. “Okay.”
She let out a shaky breath and whispered, “Count to seven.”
I replied, “All the way to heaven, Lamb.”
We breathed together, and I swore I’d try to help her.
Deep down, I knew, though. Lilah was still mine. We were going to be together … even if it meant I had to go through the hell of her damn Eat Pray Love agenda.
I carried her back to my hotel room. She’d never been in it before, but it looked exactly like hers. I set her down on the bed and went to get a big t-shirt of mine for her. Then I nodded toward her shirt. She didn’t even hesitate. This wasn’t about sex, it was about comfort. I needed her comfortable and she trusted me to give her that.