Page 61 of Contempt

“You could say that, I guess. He’s not entirely wrong.”

“So, that’s what … you are, right?”

He let out a quiet chuckle. “I am whatever I need to be … or whatever my boss needs me to be, Lucia.”

“Do you just not like to put a title on your job, then?”

Renzo spun around fast, and cocked his head to the side. “No, I don’t call myself anything because despite being something … I don’t know what I am. I know I’m alone, all the fucking time. I know I’m a prisoner who only seems like he’s free. I know I am capable of amazing things, and horrible ones, too. I know I can be feared as much as I am respected. And I know I love a woman who I would die for, but I can’t have her yet, either. These are all things that I know about myself, but because I don’t have the one thing I want—you—I still feel like nothing. A nobody, Lucia.”

He shrugged, adding, “So when you ask me what I am, I don’t have a good answer. I don’t have any answer at all.”

Strange …

That hurt her, too.

Not for her, but for him.

“And what about you, huh?” he asked.

Lucia found him staring at her in that way of his again—like she was the only thing in the world that mattered to him. “What about me?”

“Did you stop loving me?”

It seemed like such an obvious question.

He asked it so easily.

The answer was difficult.

Complex.

And yet, still obvious, too.

“Never,” she admitted. “Not even when I wanted to. I couldn’t.”

Her heart wouldn’t let him go.

Lucia blinked, and felt the tear escape from the corner of her eye. She quickly wiped it away, but not before Renzo saw it. He crossed the room quickly, already reaching for her though she wasn’t sure if she wanted him touching her at all.

And then he was.

Suddenly, that was all she wanted.

Fuck it all.

His hand cupped the side of her face, and she swore it was instinct for her to just turn her head into his touch. To kiss the center of his rough palm because she needed to do it—needed that taste of his soft touch, and wanted the warmth of his skin against her lips. His thumb swiped away the tears that had streaked down her cheeks.

“Don’t cry,” he muttered. “Don’t cry, baby.”

“I just—”

“Loving someone shouldn’t make you want to cry, Lucia.”

“You’re telling me?” She let out a sad, bitter laugh. “Love shouldn’t hurt, either, but that’s what it’s always done to me when it comes to you. That’s not what I want.”

“Me, either. Never, you know?”

She didn’t.