His head falls back and the air leaves him as I grip his hand and beg him to listen to me. “It’s one thing to let my mind run wild and think these things. It’s another for me to know it. But Sebastian, I know. I know you.” He turns to look at me as my last word cracks. I whisper, “How could I not?”
“You were never supposed to find out,” he finally speaks, looking away from me and staring straight ahead, failure clearly written in his gaze.
I have to stop and take a drink, calming myself down. I thought letting the words out would feel freeing, but that’s not at all what this feels like. Instead it feels like the unraveling I’ve been terrified of all this time.
“Did you keep it a secret because you wanted to protect me? Or because you wanted me to think you wouldn’t do something like that?”
“Both,” he answers me sincerely, looking me in the eyes.
“Well you protected me, and I love you regardless.”
My chest rises and falls quicker, and I can’t shake this nervousness, not until he asks me with a rawness in his throat, “You know that I love you more than anything. That I would be anyone you need me to be?”
“You don’t need to change who you are, but you need to tell me if that’s why we’re back.”
“It doesn’t have to do with that. Romano’s still here, but not for long.”
“Then why?” I ask him, even though I think I already know. “There was a note?” My assumption brings his icy blue stare to mine.
“From Marcus. He warned me that Carter needed me and that we needed him.” His gaze drops to my belly and he squeezes my hand. “I would never let anything happen to you, Chlo, and I wouldn’t have brought you here if I didn’t think we needed to be.”
“Marcus said we needed Carter?” I clarify, feeling a wave of anxiety run through me.
“If it was only about Carter, we never would have come here. You know it had to be about you.”
His words sink in slowly. Even after so much time, there’s still a mark on my husband, a mark on me in return. “Can you trust Marcus?” I ask him, focusing on the fact that we’re here; we’re safe. And that Bastian will never let anything happen to me or our child.
“No,” he says, and the answer is simple. He leans forward, pulling me into him and giving me a comfort I didn’t realize I needed this badly. “But he was right about Carter and he’s the reason why Romano’s men never came back. I should listen to his warning rather than regret not doing everything I can. If anything ever happened to you, or our little one, I wouldn’t be able to survive, Chlo.”
I have to keep my breath steady; I have to keep telling myself that we’re safe now.
“No one is going to hurt us here. This place is changing. Carter and his brothers are taking it over. We can’t let it stay what it was, Chlo; you know what happened to us, what it was like living here.”
“I know,” I whisper, hearing the pain etched in his words, but also the fight. To fight what’s wrong in the lowest and most depraved ways. To use violence and force in a world that’s nothing but merciless.
“It’s not our fight anymore, but that doesn’t mean we should stand back and do nothing.”
“Leaving this place wasn’t doing nothing,” I tell him and remember the pain, the fear, the courage it took to leave everything behind. But even as they leave my lips, I doubt the truth of the words I’ve spoken, because they were said out of fear.
“I didn’t say that it was. But now, I know we can do more. I can feel it, Chlo. I’m supposed to be here right now.” Taking my hands into his, the rough pads of his thumbs rub soothing circles on the back of my knuckles. Staring deep into his eyes and knowing that I see him for who he is and he sees me just the same, knowing that settles the harsh memories that creep up at the reminder of what used to be.
“I just don’t want you ….” He pauses to lick his lower lip and exhale a heavy breath. “I don’t want you to think I’m…” His words are lost in the air in between us. “That I’m-”
“All you will ever be, Bastian, is mine. You are mine. Just like I’m yours. I made my life knowing that’s who I was, and who I wanted to be.” It takes more than I realized to admit the words out loud. “I don’t want to be anything else and as long as you are mine, that is exactly who you will be to me.” Pulling my right hand from his grasp, I cup the side of his jaw in my palm and feel the rough stubble as my thumb runs along his chin. “You’re okay with being mine still, aren’t you?” I whisper the question. It’s so soft, it’s nearly drowned out by the sounds around us.