Vanni shook his head. “I’ve never told another soul about Cristina.”
“Do you think you’ll ever tell him?” Emma asked quietly, cupping his shoulder.
“Maybe. Probably,” he amended after a moment. He met her stare, looking pensive. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“Okay,” Emma said, sensing his intensity.
“Take off your bikini first.”
“What?” she asked, surprised.
“Just do it,” he directed, the quirk of his brow a subtle challenge.
She laughed, but did as he asked, then lay on her side next to him again. His gaze moved over her naked body with warm appreciation.
“Okay?” she asked amusedly.
“Better than okay,” he murmured, caressing the side of her breast and sweeping it downward over her sensitive side, making her shiver. His hand opened on her hip and he met her stare. “Do you think it was wrong of me, not to grant Cristina forgiveness when she asked it of me?”
Emma tried to mask her surprise at the unexpected question.
“No,” she said honestly. “Forgiveness is a state of mind. You know what I’ve told you all along about Amanda and me. If you weren’t feeling it, if they were just words, it would have been wrong to lie about it.”
He stared out at the sea as he rubbed her hip, the sun-infused water turning his eyes into brilliant cerulean crescents.
“Vanni . . . do you want to forgive her?” Emma asked.
His mouth quirked slightly. “It’s too late now.”
She touched his whiskered jaw, and he looked at her.
“It’s never too late.”
She saw his throat convulse as he swallowed.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said out there.” He nodded toward the floating dock. “About me carrying a good load of the guilt for Adrian’s death, and how Cristina knew that, and how she asked for my forgiveness not just for her . . .”
“But for you,” Emma said, tears burning her eyes. It was a miracle to her, to see him tackling his demons . . . to watch him heal. “That’s why it’s never too late to forgive, Vanni. Because in the act of forgiving another, the forgiver is changed . . . lightened. But it’s not something that you can just say. You have to—
“Feel it,” he said, nodding. “I understand it’s not black and white, like I thought. And I do. Feel it, I mean. I’ll never love Cristina, but I understand that she was doing all that she was capable of, coming there to mother Adrian and me . . . never really feeling or wanting that role. She was wrong for her neglect, but she was trapped by her selfishness. I think she wished she could have been different.”
“I know she did,” Emma agreed, stroking his shoulder.
His gaze flashed up to meet hers. “I never told you this, but the night before you were in that accident, I swam out
again.”
Her caressing hand stilled. She knew what he meant by “swam out.” He meant that he’d tempted fate again, tested whether or not he would ever be taken like Adrian had been.
“Something happened to me out there,” he admitted starkly.
“What?”
“I remembered more than I’d ever recalled about the day when Adrian died. I’d always thought that I’d let go of him, that I hadn’t held on tight enough, that I wasn’t strong enough to save him . . . but that’s not what happened.”
She waited, her naked skin prickling with amplified awareness. He looked into her eyes, and a shiver coursed through her.
“I didn’t let go,” he said. “I was ready to go down with him. He let go of me,” Vanni stated succinctly. “His hand didn’t slip away. He pulled his hand out of mine, and I zoomed to the surface like a balloon.”