CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
"A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her."
~Oscar Wilde
PRESENT
DANTE
We'd lapsed into some semblance of normal faster than I could have hoped for.
We had our issues. Of course we did. Our history was long and destructive. I knew we'd be working through some of it for years. I'd never been naive enough to imagine otherwise. Not for one second had I ever been that delusional.
I tried my best to be patient. I tried my hardest to stay hopeful when I saw her internalizing everything when what was needed between us, now more than ever, was communication. I let things slide, let issues drop that perhaps I shouldn't have, all with the assumption that she just needed more time.
It wasn't easy, though.
And it wasn't natural, or right.
I thought I was showing some rather impressive restraint with her and her boundaries, but sometimes I just could not take it.
It was when I caught her face in the moments when she didn't realize I was near. It was what I saw when she wasn't trying to hide that made me realize how much she was keeping bottled up inside.
The haunted look in her eyes, the pain embedded into her every unguarded expression. All of it spoke of the burdens she was carrying. Alone.
That I could not take. That I could not let slide.
It was dark out. I'd just come home, but she'd beaten me to it, for once. They must have wrapped up early for the day.
She was out on the balcony attached to our bedroom, wearing a bathrobe, her hair still wet. She was hugging herself like she had nothing else in the world to hold onto, her posture one of defeat, her face set into stark lines. The eyes she aimed out at the night were full of vile things, old memories, old nightmares.
My God, where did she go when she did this to herself?
I could hardly stand to even guess it.
And I could not take it. Could not take another day with her doing this to herself.
I joined her out on the balcony, loosening my tie as I moved.
She started when I opened the door, turning to me.
She schooled her face when she realized she wasn't alone, but I'd seen it, every last ounce of the despair still written on her.
I held out my arms to her, but she wouldn't even take that.
She shook her head, turning back to stare out at the night.
"Don't be like that, tiger," I teased her, pressing myself against her back, mouth at her ear.
She was in no mood to be teased. "Listen," she said, voice tense and brittle. "I'm not saying this to pick a fight, but sometimes I just need to be alone. I don't want to be comforted. I just want to be alone."
That was foreign and wrong. "Not anymore. That's not what we're doing. We never used to hide things from each other, and we're not going to do that now. If you have a burden, you share it with me. We take the weight together. That's how this works. Whatever's troubling you, we'll get through it."
"No," she said, and I could feel the way her shoulders set stubbornly against me. "I'm in no mood, Dante. Not right now."
Just as she could stir my desire with a glance, she knew how to invoke my temper just as quickly. There was an edge to my words as I responded, "Yes, I know. You prefer being alone. Let's try anyway."
"You don't know," she said, her voice soft. "You really have no idea."
Soft or hard, it was the last fucking straw. I was tired of hearing it, the same words spoken for different reason, all with a meaning known only to her. I was sick of her saying it, but even more sick of her using it as a shield against me. "What don't I know? Let's have it. About the men? I know about every single one. And frankly, if there's something that could hurt me more than them I can't imagine it."
That set her off. Of course it did. It was unfair of me to mention it, even if it was only the absolute truth.
She shrugged me off, moving a few angry strides away to glare. "What about you? Do you really have the nerve to go there? You were no saint when we were apart."
To tell or not to tell. Which thing was more hurtful? More lies or the savage, unbelievable truth?
"A saint? No. Of course not. Not for a day in my life." I took a very deep breath, let it out. This was going to be bad, but I was done dealing with her in lies. "But there were no other women." I rolled my tongue around my mouth and added, "Not one."
Simple. Complex. Hurtful.
She sent me a look that was as crushed as it was disbelieving. "What? What are you saying? I saw you. I fucking saw you! What the fuck are you talking about?" She was close to screaming by the end.
Even as she questioned me, I saw that she was starting to understand it, to believe.
"Everything with Tiffany was fake. Part of the arrangement I made with my mother. I agreed to a six-month engagement with her to keep you out of prison, but it was a ridiculous failure. I never so much as kissed her. I agreed to those pictures for the same reason, but it was all fake. I never touched her beyond what you saw.
She was backing away from me, hands in her hair, pulling.
She looked deranged and completely heartbroken.
I couldn't stand it. For every step she retreated, I advanced. We would get this out so we could work past it. It was as simple as it was hurtful, and I was determined to get it done. To put it behind us, if that were possible.
"Liar," she said, voice weak, tears running down her face.
I just stared at her for a beat, two, letting her see in my face my absolute sincerity. "I've told plenty of lies. I can't deny that. But I promise you I'm not lying about this."
She pointed a shaking finger at me. "Tiffany was one. One. I saw the others, too. Woman after woman you paraded in front of me. You think I forgot? You think I'd forget even one of them?"
I winced. It was a stretch to say I didn't have a lot of things to be ashamed of, but that petty revenge had been the most selfish. "Fake. All of them. I took them out, made sure you saw. Took them home. I was a perfect gentleman with every single one. You thought I'd betrayed you in the worst, most unthinkable way. You had an excuse for the things you did. And, while I was angry enough to want to hurt you, I could never make myself betray you fully. Not like that."
She studied my face, eyes moving desperately over every inch, seeking a lie, almost hoping for it.
She didn't find one.
I was closer by then, but that didn't work in my favor.
She lost her mind. Hitting, scratching, attacking me with blind determination and absolute abandon.
It was awful. I had to subdue her bodily, carry her inside. I pinned her struggling to the bed because I thought that she might hurt herself.
I was holding her down, trying to calm her, my voice soothing, as composed as I could manage.
But make no mistake. I was affected. By her pain. By my own. Shaken by it. Trembling with it.
Nothing seemed to help. I was at my wits end when I asked her in dismay, "Did you want me to be with other women?"
"Of course not," she almost screeched at me. "No. You don't get it at all. Don't you see, though, that it's so much easier to forgive your sins than it is to forgive mine? Do you think I needed another score against myself? Do you think I don't hate myself enough?"
I did understand something about that. Self-hatred was an old, familiar friend, and this night was rife with it.
I shut my eyes, touching my forehead softly to hers. She allowed me to for a moment.
"We'll get past this," I told her tenderly. "We'll work through it all. The worst is past."
That had her struggling anew. I was so caught off guard by it that she was up and across the room before I could react.
I'd barely risen from the bed when she slammed the bathroom door closed and I heard it lock.
Well, fuck.
I knocked and asked her nicely to come out. She ignored me.
I offered through a clenched jaw if she'd prefer that I break the door down.
"Fuck you!" she called back, the last word a sob. "I'm directly on the other side. If you break it down, you'll hurt me."
Well, fuck. Even when she was near hysterical, she understood well how to stop me in my tracks.
Because I was good at it, I quickly resorted to dirty tricks.
It only took me a minute to walk down the hall, snatch our sleeping kitten from its favorite spot, and carry it back to the bedroom.
I sat with my back to the bathroom door, the still sleeping kitten cradled against me.
I could feel her on the other side of the door, her body propped up against it.
"Diablo is trying to get to you," I told her. "She's crying. She misses you."
Her voice came muffled and forlorn. "No, she's not. I'd hear it if she was."
"She's so sad, tiger. Baby wants her mama."
For some reason, that set her off sobbing the hardest of all.
I turned, leaning my forehead against the door. Sometimes it felt like my whole life was this. Waiting on the other side of the door from her, hoping to be let in.
Diablo was awake by then, rubbing up against my stroking fingers and purring loud enough that I wondered if Scarlett could hear her through the wall.
"She's really upset, tiger," I tried again. "Don't you want to at least check on her?"
"You're mean!" she called back, sounding like a forlorn child.
It made my heart turn to a tender pile of mush in my chest.
"My white flag is up, tiger. I won't say one more upsetting thing tonight if you'll just unlock the door."
"It's not you I'm worried about," she said, dread in her voice.
Wasn't that the damn truth. "I can take it. What I can't take is a locked door between you and me. C'mon, angel. Let me in."
Diablo was a good wing kitten. Suddenly and loudly, as though she'd just realized Scarlett was close, she let out a loud and plaintive meow. And then another.
Slowly the door opened behind me. She leaned down, plucked Diablo from my arms, and moved away, not toward the bed but to the chaise in the corner.
She sat down, not looking at me, and restlessly stroked her hand over the kitten's fluffy coat, over and over.
I thought that was the end of it, but our demons were not finished with us yet.
I rose, was about to move to her, when she said, voice low and accusing, "I should have had a choice. You should have given me a choice."
I didn't have to clarify what she was talking about. I knew. I fucking knew. And just like that, I was furious again. "A choice?" I asked her bitingly.
"Yes. You had choices. You could have told your mother to go to hell, consequences be damned. I didn't have that privilege."
"Privilege? You're going to call that a privilege? To go to fucking prison? That's what you wanted? That was never an option. I would never have allowed that, and you fucking know it."
"Look at what you did allow! Was that any better? I'd have taken prison over what you let her do to us. That's a fact."
"No. No. No." I felt my head shaking, over and over. She was about two sentences away from me losing my temper. I felt my rage taking over and told myself to walk away. But I just couldn't do it. We had to fucking have this out. "Not an option. Not a fucking option."
"I should have had the choice," she repeated.
I pointed an unsteady finger at her, upper lip quivering with fury. "This is why. This is why I couldn't tell you. I'd have taken the fall for this; it was a solution I could have stomached, but you, you stubborn . . . "
She curled my lip at me. "What? Say it."
"Would you have let me take the fall for you?" I knew the answer. I'd always known. Her stubborn pride had ruined us both.
I could tell she wanted to lie, just for the sake of winning this argument, but she couldn't do it, she was too righteously furious for that. "Of course not. Never. I would never have stood by and let you take the fall for something I had done."
My eyes were wild, screaming at her. "See?" I was shouting now. "This was why you didn't get the choice! I know you, and I knew what you would do. If you can't forgive me for that, I don't know what to do, but I still don't see that I had another way. I won't apologize for protecting you the only way I knew how."
She knew I didn't. I could see it in the resigned eyes she turned on me.
Even she, the mother of all grudge-holders, could only hold a grudge for so long.
"I'm tired of hating you," she said quietly, a world of regret in it. "When all my heart has ever needed is to love you." Those words were so very hard for her, I could tell, and the next ones were harder. "For helping me survive for so long, for going through hell with me and getting me, somehow, to the other side of it intact, I will learn to forgive you. Even with all of the ways you've destroyed me, I could never forget all of the ways you've saved me, Dante."
"You saved me, too. Never forget that, either."
"And destroyed you," she said the words lightly, but they held all the weight in the world. For both of us.
I smiled and it was so bittersweet that she had to look away. "Yes. Broken. Destroyed. But now saved again. It's enough for me. You are. You always were. I have many demons. But only one angel."
Now the problem, of course, was that she had to learn to forgive herself.
We both did.
It was later. We were in bed and she was tucked securely against my chest.
When I spoke, it was a quiet whisper into the night. "You learn more about someone when you're fighting them than you do loving them. Things you can only learn from war. We know each other in ways we wouldn't have. Maybe it wasn't all in vain. I love you in more complex ways than I did before. I understand you more intimately."
"You're a fool," she said forlornly into my chest.
"I know, tiger. Believe me, I know."
"I love you for it."
"I know, angel. That, too."