Page 71

And there it is. The Sartori reflex. A problem named, a problem solved, somebody bleeds for it and the ledger balances.

I picture him out there with a gun in the dark, hunting down the source of my tears, and the source is a fourteen-year-old at a dinner table in Chicago.

"You can't fix this one," I tell him. "There's no one to kill. I checked. Believe me, if there were, I'd hand you the address."

He almost smiles.

"Then tell me what you need," he says. "I'm not good at guessing. People around me usually want things I understand. Money. Protection. Someone gone."

"And me?"

"You, I don't understand."

"Okay." I wipe my face with the heel of my hand, smearing the tears into my sleeve. "Then here's what I need. An answer."

"Ask."

"Why did you take so long to kiss me?"

For a second, he just breathes.

Then his shoulders drop, his head ducks, and the sound that comes out of him is so unexpected I almost don't recognize it. A laugh. Low, dragged up from somewhere rusty. He scrubs one hand down his face and shakes his head.

I slap his hand away from his face. "Don't laugh at me."

"I'm not laughing at you." He catches my wrist before I can hit him again, his fingers warm and rough against my skin. The last of that rusty sound dies in his chest, but the corner of his mouth stays up. "I'm laughing because you asked what took me so long like it's a thing I could've fixed by trying harder."

"You could have."

"No." He shakes his head. "When, bella? Tell me the day. We've been in the same room maybe ten times in five years, and every one of them you were across it. Vittoria on one side of you. Some man you'd brought along." His thumb moves over my pulse, like he doesn't know he's doing it. "There was never this. You, three feet from me, no one watching. It took five years because we never had five minutes."

"So if I hadn't kissed you first," I say, "you would've let this go on forever."

He doesn't answer.

Which is its own answer.

After everything that's happened, this shouldn't be what hurts.

It does.

"Oh," I say. "Okay." I look down at my own knees. "That's... yeah. Okay."

His hand leaves my wrist. For half a second I think he's pulling back, and the disappointment hits before I can stop it.

Then his fingers close around my chin and tip my face back up. His jaw is tight, his eyes fixed on mine.

"No," he says. "Not okay. Don't make this mean I didn't want you."

My face burns. I try to look down again, but his hand stays at my chin.

"Listen to me. You're twenty-five, and I'm thirty-eight. You're my little cousin's best friend, and Vittoria would skin me if I touched you. She'd be right to. You walk into rooms like sunlight, and I walk into them like pure darkness."

His fingers tighten on my chin. It isn't hard. It doesn't hurt. But it pins my attention in place, pulls every scattered thought in my head back to him.

"Those were good reasons. For five years, they were good reasons. But they don't mean a goddamn thing anymore, because you're so tangled up in me that if you tried to walk out that door, I'd find a reason to drag you back. Every time. I'd lie about the road. I'd lie about the Basiles. I'd invent a threat that doesn't exist just to keep you in a room with me." His jaw works. "It was never because I didn't want you, bella. It's because I knew wanting you wouldn't stop at one kiss."

I have stopped breathing. Heat crawls up my throat and into my face. I should be horrified. Maybe part of me is.