The tears well up again, choking me, and the flow of words stutter to a stop. I look into Max’s eyes, terrified of rejection, terrified that I somehow misinterpreted what he meant. “I could have made it through anything except a world where you didn’t exist at all anymore.”
“Sasha–” The pain in Max’s eyes pierces me to my core, tearing at me as the tears flow faster. He reaches up to brush them away, pulling me closer. “I woke up in that cabin realizing that I never said what I needed to say most to you, that I made mistake after mistake trying to protect you. It would have been the biggest regret of my life if–”
He breaks off, and I feel as if my heart is being torn out of my chest. “What?” I choke out breathlessly, frozen as my heart gallops in my chest. “What are you trying to say?”
Max shakes his head, and I realize with a start that his eyes are full of tears, too, glimmering hazel in the dim lights of the airplane cabin. “I love you, Sasha. I think I have loved you for every moment of every day since I met you. I love so much about you, so many things that I could list them from now until the moment this plane touches down six hours from now, and still have more to say. I love you, and I have made more mistakes than any man can ever be forgiven in trying to love you from a distance, thinking that was right when it never was.”
For a moment, the world spins to a stop. I’m afraid to believe what I’m hearing, afraid to believe that this isn’t all a dream after all. I remember all too clearly what he said to me the last time we were on a plane together, that time to Italy, when I’d been the one to confess how I felt.
You can’t love me, Sasha. I’m not right for you, and I won’t ever be.
I’m a failed priest. A failed brother. A failed man.
I’ve broken every vow except for one.
I’ll protect you with my life. That’s the only promise I can still keep. But I can’t touch you again, and you can’t love me. You can’t. You’ll regret it in the end.
“You told me once that I would regret loving you,” I whisper softly. “But out of everything in my life that I could have found reason to regret, loving you was never–couldnever have been one of those things. No matter how hard or painful it was sometimes, no matter how much it hurt to think I’d lost you, I would never have taken it back.”
The tears are dripping steadily down my face now, more than Max could possibly try to wipe away, gathering in the crevices of my lips and sliding down my cheeks and chin as I blurt it all out, everything I’ve been feeling for so long.
“I tried,” I whisper, my hand still clutched around his. “I tried to keep my distance, like you kept saying that we needed to do. I tried not to want you as much as I did, to make peace with the fact that we couldn’t be together. But through it all–I couldn’t stop loving you. Even when you thought you needed to marry that Casciani woman to keep me safe–I still loved you. I don’t think anything could have made me stop.”
Max’s face twists at the mention of Adriana, guilt and pain evident in his expression. “I’m so sorry,” he says hollowly, reaching to take both of my hands in his. “Sasha,God, I don’t even know what to say to make it better. When I found out the truth about who was after you, who your father was–I felt like I was going mad trying to make it right, trying to keep you safe. I didn’t know what to do. But it’s no excuse. I should have found any other way.”
He swallows hard, shaking his head. “I know I can’t ask you to forgive me for what I’ve done to you–tous. But I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you, if need be.”
I stare at him for a moment, uncomprehending. “Max, I–” I swallow hard, feeling my heart stutter in my chest. “I told you. Iloveyou. Like you said–I’ve been falling in love with you since we met, I think, a little more and more every time I saw you or spoke to you. At Alexei’s, when you came to find me–” I close my eyes, feeling a shudder run down my spine at the memory. “You saved me. You’ve saved me over and over again. But even if you hadn’t–”
I can feel my nails biting into his palms, my teeth sinking into my lower lip. I feel wound tight, terrified of whatever comes next, of the cliff that I might be about to fling myself over.
“You think that you’ve failed so often,” I say softly. “Your family, yourself,me. But you’re agoodman, Max. You have been for as long as I’ve known you. The only people you’ve ever hurt are those who have hurt the ones you care about. I don’t think that’s a flaw. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. I never have, and I stick by it.”
“I hurt you. Trying to keep us apart, thinking that I needed to do what Casciani wanted and marry Adriana to take my place among the Families again. I have no excuse for that–”
“You thought you were doing the right thing. You thought then that it was the only choice. Ibelievethat, Max. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you right now, telling you that I love you beyond anything I have ever felt in all my life–then, and now.”
Max shakes his head, and I feel my chest tighten, a sense of panic rising in me.I can’t lose you again,I think desperately, clinging to his hands.Please don’t leave me again.
“Do you understand what I try to keep you from seeing in me?” He looks at me with darkened, grief-stricken eyes, but he doesn’t let go of my hands. “You know what I’ve done–or some of it, at least. I’ve killed men, Sasha, and no matter how hard I try, how many ways I punish myself, I can’t forget it–and I can’t bring myself to regret it. And when I hear you talk about Edo kidnapping you and my brother wanting you for himself, I want to kill them, too. I want them to hurt, and I can’t find a way to reconcile that with myself, to think that I can feel that way and still be worthy of you–
“Max, I feel that way too.” I stare at him, trying to find a way to make him understand. “I want them to hurt for what they did to you, to me, tous. The only person I care about forgiving is you–and I don’t think you’ve done anything that you need me to forgive.”
“Not even almost marrying someone else?”
Despite the wrenching pain in my chest and the racing of my heart, I can’t help but laugh at that. “Maybe that,” I concede. “But I still love you–and I loved you then, even when you walked out of the library that night. Nothing has changed about how I feel, Max. If there’s anything to forgive, then I forgive you.”
“Sasha–” He looks down at our clasped hands, drawing in a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t deserve you.”
Slowly, I slip one of my hands out of his grasp, reaching to touch his face and tilt it up toward mine. “Maybe, maybe not. But I love you all the same.”
With one swift movement, his arm slides around me, pulling me across the seat and nearly into his lap as his other hand tangles in my hair. Then all I feel are his lips crashing down onto mine.
It feels as if the world spins to a stop, as if there’s no one else on the plane but him and I, as if we might not even be on the plane at all. I can’t entirely comprehend what’s happening at first, because I had thought I would never kiss Max again, that everything that would ever happen between us had already happened.
I’d thought that all I would have left were memories, but despite it all, there’s a new one being made at this very moment.
Max’s hand runs through my hair, his lips warm and soft against mine, and if we really were alone, there’d be nothing that could have stopped me from climbing into his lap and taking it as far as he’d let it go. I’ve never wished so much for Viktor’s private jet, for a bedroom where we could be alone. Desire courses through me, a tidal wave of it, and I reach up, clinging to him with my hands in his shirt.