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“Like I’m going to feel it every time I walk.”
Something changed in the moment she chose to kept silent instead of speaking, forfeiting her life, and he chose to shoot her in the arm instead of her
heart, sparing her life.
She’d chosen to not betray him to these people. He’d chosen not to let her die.
Because she realized, she wasn’t the only one reckless between them. Things, while the same, had changed. Inadvertently, tonight, they’d both decided.
“I don’t know whether to snap your neck or fuck the life out of you,”
“You want to touch me, Mr. Caine?” she spoke in an equally low voice. “You tell me the truth.”
“Don’t. Ever. Try. To. Fucking. Control. Me.”
“Then I suggest you control yourself, sweetheart.”
“This body belongs to me, Ms. Vitalio,” he murmured in a low voice, the whiskey and sin combining to make her head tip back over his broad shoulder as her stomach clenched. “This body is mine,” she retorted, unable to recognize her own voice dripping in sex.
He continued, like she hadn’t spoken, cupping her ass. “I’m a territorial man. And this has been mine since the moment you locked that bathroom door.”
“You do something like that again, I’ll fucking shoot you in the heart.”
“I decide when you die.”
“I never hated you for that.”
Me: Yes, you did. It’s a good thing I’m not into gentlemen. Gentlemen can’t handle me. Tristan Caine: I don’t think anyone can handle you. Not if you don’t want to be handled.
Tristan Caine: I think my guards are afraid of you.
Me: They should be. After all, I just blew up a car and killed two men in cold blood.
“But the fact is simple — I don’t know who Tristan Caine was. Who he is. Help me understand him. Help me fight.”
“I see how he looks at you. Despite knowing about you all my life, I never thought he’d be as he is with you.” “How is he with me?”
“Alive.”
“There’s no other word for it. That’s why I don’t believe he can truly ever hurt you. Because after tasting life, you don’t really ever let it go, do you?”
His insistent words from the morning came to her. ‘Did I hurt you?’
Knowing Tristan, knowing why he holds that hatred so close to himself, he will inevitably hurt you.
“The truth will change the way you understand him, Morana. It will change things for you, but it won’t change things for him. Do you still want to know?”
“I want to know.”
Never again. He was going to become the scariest of them all. Saving her had destroyed him. One day, he vowed as he watched a man pick up the little girl and take her away, his eyes on her, he would collect his debt.
‘You ever put a leash on me, I’ll fucking strangle you with it.’
“Fourteen.”
“He was fearless, Morana. That was the first time any of us had seen a boy shut the Boss up. That was
also the moment Dante decided he was completely Team Tristan. And when his father told him the truth about Tristan to make him stay away, it only made Dante more adamant to befriend that boy.”
Amara was wrong - he wasn’t nothing. He felt. He felt so deeply he didn’t let himself feel. He felt so deeply he feared his own reactions to it.
“I’m just happy to have you. In my life and especially in Tristan’s. He’s… he’s spent twenty years in pain without acknowledging it. I love him, Morana. He’s like a brother I never knew I had. And he’s been through so much, so alone… just…”
“I can understand if it’s too much for you… if he’s too much for you. Frankly, I’d be surprised if he wasn’t. Just — if it is too much — just don’t give him hope if there’s none. He never shows weakness. He doesn’t expect anyone to stay with him, stay for him. That’s a reason why he doesn’t trust anyone. So, please, this is my only request to you, Morana. Please don’t encourage him to trust you if you’re going to leave in the end.”
“Where the fuck is she?”
He did. He touched her car. Stroked it. Just once. But he did.
She knew. She had seen. And she was going to fight him, fight for him, like he’d fought for her.
“I know…” she bit her lip, “Tristan.”
“Thank you,” she began
“Thank you, for saving me,”
“Not only in the past few weeks but twenty years ago.”
“I know it came at a cost nobody should’ve had to pay, least of all a young boy, and I’m so, so very sorry for all of it.”
“You hate me, loathe me, for something I never did. While I can understand that — I completely understand it — I cannot live with it. Not knowing that I was innocent,”
“But you did save me, and my conscience won’t allow me to move on without giving you a chance for closure.”
“So here’s the thing, Mr. Caine.”
“I have made my decision — for good or bad. Now, it’s time for you. I’m giving you the chance to kill me, right here, right now.”
So, point that gun at me one more time and aim for my heart. Shoot me. Find your closure. Find what you’ve been looking for, for twenty years.”
“But understand this,”
“This is the only chance I’m giving you to kill me. After this, should you choose not to, this will never come up again. After this, you’ll need to let go of the idea that you’re killing me. After this, you never, ever threaten me with my life again.”
“You deliver my death or you let it go. Either way, you need to make a choice, as I’ve made mine and come to peace with it. Because if your choices affect my life so deeply, if a choice you made two decades ago is defining my life right now, then I’ll make you choose again. This time, not as a boy but as a grown man.”
The warmth of a breath over her face. And then she felt it. Lips. Soft, tender lips settling upon hers. Her heart stopped.
