Elise is the first thing I see when I open my eyes.
God, she’s adorable like this. Everything about her looks soft. She came home in leggings and her Bake It Real Good T-shirt, a Take the Cake monogrammed hoodie over top. The air in my bedroom warms to her scent. So does my chest.
“You should sell those hoodies. I’d buy one.”
She blinks, glancing down at her sweatshirt like she’d forgotten it was there. “Oh…it’s one-of-a-kind. My friend Samantha made it for me. She knows how to embroider. I haven’t talked to her in…”
Elise doesn’t finish the sentence. It just disappears. My stomach twists, wrinkling like a cheap shirt.
Her dark eyes come up to mine. She’s, what, six feet away? Eight? It feels like I’m looking at her from a great height.
“Maybe…” Elise wets her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue, her hands curling into the pockets of her hoodie. “Maybe I should go.”
“Go?”
“Yes. Go back to my bakery and my apartment.” Her eyes start to slide away, but she catches herself. “My dad’s gone. Your brother’s lawyers are going to dismantle the consortium. You’re not in danger. That’s the…that’s the icing on the cake of this whole becoming a murderer thing.”
Elise doesn’t smile at her joke. I hate it. I force myself to memorize the moment anyway. This is what I won’t stand for. This is what I’ll spend the rest of my life working to prevent. This…distance. This sadness. I need to remember how much it hurts so I can keep it out of our lives.
I won’t be able to save her from all of it, but I’ll sure as hell try.
“You could. If you wanted to.”
Elise’s face crumples. Her chin dimples so hard I’m surprised that no tears drop onto her cheeks. She puts on a brave face at the last second. “Okay. Cool. Yeah.”
Her shoulders curve forward, and she makes a move for the door.
“Elise.”
“Yeah?”
I can’t believe she doesn’t know what I’m going to say. I can’t believe she’d think—
“Come here.”
She hesitates, pressing her lips together, but I do my best to look injured and hot and loving, and she relents. Elise pads over in her socks and gets to her knees between mine. It’s a sexy place to be, but this isn’t about sex. This is about my broken ribs, and her broken heart, and having her this close makes it easier to lean in and take her face in my hands. Elise’s hands go to my wrists and hold on. She’s gentle, because I jumped out of a building, but I can feel how much she wants to dig her fingers in and never let go.
One tear slips out. Two.
“Don’t go.” Her eyes widen, and more tears slide down to my thumbs. My heart will actually fail if she leaves. It’s desperate for her. I’m desperate. “Stay here with me. Not for your safety, or for your sister’s safety. Stay because I want you to. Stay because I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure you’re happy. And well-fucked.”
“That’s what you want?” Record-breaking tears, now. “Even though I’m a murderer?”
“Sweetness, you arenota murderer.”
“My dad died as a direct cause of my actions.”
“Your dad died because he had a heart attack. Those happen to people.”
“How can you—” A sob interrupts her. Fuck, she’s beautiful. All the time. Every minute. “How can you trust me? I planned to kill him. It wasn’t in the heat of the moment. What if someday you turn around and worry that I’ll—”
“You were planning to protect your sisters. You were planning to protectme.Those were acts of bravery, Elise, even if society would consider them to be evil. And you have agonized over them every day since he died. I’m sorry, but that’s just not the behavior of a stone-cold killer.”
“I tried—”
“Yes. You tried, and honestly…I find that hot. I find it very hot, how far you’re willing to go for me. But you didn’t quite make it. In the end, you didn’t shoot him. You didn’t inject him full of insulin.” I brush away some of her tears. I don’t care that there are too many. I just want her to know that I’m not afraid to touch her. To be with her. “Have you ever thought that the universe might’ve taken it out of your hands?”
From the look on her face, she hasn’t. “The universe doesn’t do that.”