Page 170 of The Ache That Stayed

My eyes lifted back to his.

“That doesn’t take anything away from you. It just means I’m… not as simple as I thought I was.”

And in that stillness, I felt it—the weight of everything I had just said, everything I hadn’t been able to say before.

For a second, I thought I had lost him. And then—his forehead dropped to mine again, slower this time.

“I know,” he said. “And I’m still here.”

He said it in absolution, without argument or punishment. His hand tightened at my jaw slightly.

“Loving you was never about control,” he said.

His thumb brushed slowly along my jaw. Grounding.

“It was about knowing you were mine… even when I wasn’t in the room. That hasn’t changed.”

Then his expression softened.

“But I’ve learned something since then. You don’t love in straight lines, Roxanne. And I’m not going to pretend you do. Or punish you for loving differently than I do, just so I can feel in control.”

My chest tightened painfully.

“I’m not sharing you,” he added, quieter now.

That made me still.

“I’m choosing not to cage you.”

The distinction hit deeper than anything else he had said. His jaw tightened slightly.

“Because if loving you means I have to make you smaller to keep you…”

He exhaled slowly.

“Then that isn’t love. That’s possession. And I don’t need to own you to know you’re mine.”

My breath broke, and something in me finally gave way completely. I leaned into him, closing the last space that had existed between us, my hands tightening around his neck as though I needed to feel him, anchor myself to the reality of him.

He kissed me again—slower this time, deeper, like he wasn’t trying to prove anything anymore. Like he already had. And I let myself fall into it. Into the certainty of him when everything inside me still felt fractured.

Because for the first time since everything had shattered—I didn’t feel like I was standing outside my own life. I felt pulled back into it. Held inside it. Exactly where I belonged.

And I believed it might finally not break again.

CHAPTER 46

Marcello

Roxanne was still asleep when I woke. Curled into me like there was nowhere else her body instinctively reached for anymore. The sheets were tangled around her legs, her hair spilling across my arm, her breath warm against my neck, and her breasts pressed against my bare chest. There was a dangerous vulnerability in the way she lay there—boneless beneath the sheets. Exhaustion had finally pried her fingers loose from the careful control she’d clung to for weeks.

Slowly, I shifted, not wanting to wake her.

My fingers traced slow, absent circles from her shoulder to the hollow of her waist, feeling the warmth of her skin beneath my hand. She stirred slightly, her brows knitting for a second before smoothing again when I leaned down and pressed a kiss to her temple. She didn’t wake. She needed the sleep. Last night had wrung something out of her I wasn’t sure she knew how to name yet. It hadn’t been gentle or restrained. It had been desperate. A collision between everything we’d nearly lost and everything we’d chosen to keep.

I had never been subtle about her. Not because I needed an audience. Because some instincts in me refused restraint where she was concerned.

Roxanne walked into a room, and my attention followed automatically. A hand at her waist. Fingers at the back of her neck. My mouth on hers before anyone else got too comfortable looking at what belonged to me.