“Okay,” I sink to kneel in front of him and survey his face. The face of a man in torment, not the confident man I collided with. “Then I’ll tell you without being asked. But you should know he wanted you to be happy.”
“Do you think it’s possible?”
“I think that you’re upset right now, and it’s not a good time for us to talk,” I answer. I grip his hand again and press a kiss next to his angry, blistered skin.
“You still love me,” he whispers, watching my face intently. “But you don’t want to love me anymore,” he says mournfully before brushing his thumb over my lips. “Tu es si belle.” You’re so beautiful. “I never thought I’d find you, and when I did, you weren’t mine.”
I shake my head. “I hate how admitting it feels, and I wish you would stop making me, but I’ve always been yours.”
“But you really loved them.”
I nod. “Tell me what you need to tell me, Tobias.”
“These things I think about? Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
“You promised.” There’s a warning in my voice.
“Which admission do you want?” His brows furrow into a deep v. “That I’m scared that every day I wake up with you, every time I fuck you or make love to you, I’ll feel guilty. That every day I live this life with you, I’ll hate myself a little more.”
“You can’t—”
“The more I try to let go, the more my head refuses to let me. There’s so much you don’t know. Most of my life I lived without you. Thirty-one years of life I lived without you, and my brother was there, my brother,” he swallows, “he was with me for most of that time…I can’t move on from that. Dom…” he chokes on his name, and it cracks my heart. He’s still grieving as though he just lost him. “There’s no escaping it.”
“What are you saying?”
“How different would this have all turned out if I would have just fucking listened to them?” His voice is tattered when he speaks. “You have to think about that. I know you do. About the future you would have had with one or both of them if I wasn’t in the way. It kills me that you might still think about that. Dream about it. I can’t…this feeling, Jesus Christ, this jealousy I still feel at times. It eats at me. I saw how you loved them, and I still did it, I did it. I forged my way in, purposefully, as the man in your life because that’s how much I wanted you. Brothers be damned, everyone be damned. And you know what that did? It damned everyone, including us.”
He lifts his chin defiantly, and it’s clear his nemesis is staring back at him in the reflection of my gaze. “Maybe I shouldn’t want your forgiveness. Maybe I need you to continue to punish me. Because I don’t deserve the pardon, Cecelia. It’s fucking wrong that I get you, while my brother rots in the ground.” He gathers some of the scattered pages from the floor with his free hand and lifts them between us. “Maybe I hate this,” he crushes the pages in his hand, “because it’s the truth.”
“Did you finish it?”
“Yes.” He shakes his head. “I want to give you a better story. I just wish I could give you a better man. My brother was the better man.”
“Tobias—”
“Just tell me if I’m too late, tell me the truth.”
“The truth? All the good admitting the truth got me with you before,” I snap.
“It got me here!” he roars. “It got me here. But I want the ugly, Cecelia. I need it. Fucking tell me, so at least I know where I stand with you.”
“You have never dealt with honesty well, Tobias.”