Page 256 of Valentino

He frowns.

“I won’t ask anything unreasonable, but you need to promise me that if I feel like you are in danger, you’ll listen to me and pull back from whatever it is that I’m scared of.”

“Anna.”

“I mean it, Val. I pray to God it never happens. But I need to have that from you or else I cannot do this.”

“Like what?” he fires back. “Give me an example of what you mean.”

“Okay….” I think for a beat. “Just say someone breaks into our house in the middle of the night.”

He screws up his face. “What?”

“Someone breaks into our house, and they make a run for it and you want to go charging after them with a gun.”

He drags his hands through his hair, frustrated with where this is going.

“You want to be the hero and I say to you, don’t go, Val. Let the police handle this. I need to know that you would listen to me and will do as I ask.”

“That’s what you mean?”

“Yes. I need to know that I still get a say. It’s my life too, and if I ask something of you that revolves around your safety…. I need to know that you’re going to do it.”

He nods, he slides across the floor and kneels in front of me. “Okay.”

“Promise?”

“I promise, Anna.” He leans up and kisses me softly. “I love you.”

I smile against his lips. “You’re getting good at saying that.”

“Now let me show you just how much.”

VALENTINO

I lie in the dark, my head is on Anna’s chest, and her fingernails slowly trail up over my back and down over my arms.

It’s been a big day, a wonderful day. So much has happened and yet somehow it just feels like the truest version of what on some deep-down level, I always knew.

I love her…. I have always loved her.

Everything has fallen to the place where it was always meant to be.

I’m supposed to be here in Anna’s arms, with her heart under my head, and my heart in the palm of her hands.

An overwhelming feeling of tiredness has come over me, the kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from sleep deprivation. Perhaps the adrenaline that was pumping through me before I laid everything out on the table in what was the most important conversation of my life has peaked and left my system.

Leaving in its wake an emotional depletion so deep that it’s hard to tell how long it’s been with me…but it feels like a lifetime of emotional dysregulation has come to a head.

I can hardly keep my eyes open.

Anna’s lips are at my temple, and this is the first time that I’ve been on her chest and not the other way around. And I’m not quite sure what that says about where we sit emotionally. Or who’s in control now, but who am I to fight with perfection.

Safely in her arms, I kiss her naked breast and snuggle in a little bit closer.

Finally…. I’m home.

ANNA