A long silence passes as he doesn’t move, his eyes pleading, unflinching.
“Say something! Say something, you bastard, say anything, but make sure at the end of it is goodbye. I don’t want you. We’re nothing. Nothing but business. Leave!”
He stands there mute, guilty, his expression filled with pity, which only infuriates me.
“You’re halfway there, you’ve ruined his daughter, time to aim for the head. Take him down. Please,” I beg, my resolve crumbling, “take him down.”
He moves toward me, climbing the steps as I back away toward my door.
“No, don’t you dare!” I turn to flee when he reaches me, pulling me into his arms just as the levee breaks. “I hate you,” I cry, my sobs muffled as I bury my face into his neck. He runs his hands through my hair, hurried words leaving his lips.
“I’m so sorry, Cecelia. I’m so fucking sorry.” The soothing lilt in his voice only makes me cry harder, and I fist his jacket as he lifts me off my feet, leaving no space between us.
“Just breathe. Okay? Breathe,” he whispers as I sob into his neck, my face stinging with tears, the burn unbearable.
“He p-p-aid me off, Tobias. He paid me off.”
He grips me tighter to him, as I weep freely in his hold. After several minutes suspended in his arms, he sits on the steps of the porch, situating me along his lap as I unload twenty years of rejection.
It’s there on my father’s front porch, in his nemesis’s arms, that I find solace. Tobias murmurs into my ear, alternating the press of his lips between the top of my head and my temple while his warm hands glide up and down my back. Unbelieving that the man intent on breaking me is the one who’s mending me; with the stroke of his hands, the gentle kiss of his lips, I pull back and gaze over at him, utterly at a loss. With tender thumbs, he wipes the black smudges from my face. And we just…stare at the other.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again.”
Silence.
“Were you in Charlotte?”
He slowly nods.
“You followed me there?”
Another nod before he presses his forehead to mine.
“He doesn’t decide your worth. No one does. I know that doesn’t make it better, but he doesn’t deserve you.”
I bite my lip as twin tears glide down my cheeks.
“And we both know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, either.”
“Tobias, we can’t—”
“Shhh. Not now,” he soothes before pulling me tighter to him like he’s comforting…a little girl.
I wonder if he still sees me that way, especially now, in this state, throwing a tantrum. I wonder if he could ever understand if I put a voice to my thoughts. If I admitted from what I’ve been taught from his pupils, his brothers, from what he’s taught me, in a twisted way, he’s become more a father figure than my own. My cries die down, and when he tips my chin, I become lost in the licks of tender flames.
I sniff, smoothing down the lapel of his jacket. “I don’t know if you’re a very bad man who does good things or a good man who does very bad things.”
His voice is raw when he speaks. “What do you think?”
“I think I’m crazy for attempting to try and figure it out.”
He exhales, running his knuckle along the trails on my cheeks.
“With you, Cecelia, I realized anger can make you just as reckless as any other emotion. And yet here I am, doing very bad things to a very good thing,” he whispers, just before he claims my salty lips.
I wake on the couch from a deep and dreamless sleep where Tobias had carried me after my breakdown. There he held me against his chest as we sat there wordlessly. I can’t remember closing my eyes and drifting away, but coming to, I find myself covered with a blanket, my head resting on one of the throws. Slightly disoriented while I rouse, I hear faint, melodic French music drifting from the kitchen. When I reach the threshold, I see Tobias uncorking a bottle of wine. Without looking my way, he pours two large helpings into stemless glasses before he turns and extends one to me.
“Just in time for the show.”