I bark laughter, incredulous that he doesn’t know better. “To love is pain. Just look at us, here and now, only at the start of this infatuation—” I won’t dare call it love “—and it is already boring holes in us that can never be filled. And this is just the beginning. Soon it will be honeyed words that are poison in disguise. It will be obliviousness to the wounds we inflict on each other. It will be children, forgotten, locked in closets, and used like weapons against each other. And it will be that way until the day we die, driven into an early grave by the other, no doubt.”
He disrupts my tirade with another step forward; he’s now encroaching on my personal space. I should flee, but nervous energy has me frozen in place. I’m trembling all over but I don’t know why.
“None of that is love,” Davien says simply, sadly.
“My father loved Joyce. She loved him in return. And I watched as that love consumed him day after day, blinded him. I watched as my father became the husk of the man I knew. He stood by as Joyce and Helen abu—” The word sticks in my throat.
“As they what?” His voice is low, teeming with what I would dare say is anger. I shake my head. “As they what?” he repeats more firmly.
“As they abused me.” I’m truly trembling now. But I don’t think it’s fear. It is as if every year of my life I was ratcheted tighter and tighter by an unseen hand. By the world’s worst torture device that I never even realized was on me. There wasn’t a moment of relief. Wrenching. Tighter and tighter. Constant. Yet with that one word, the bonds that held me are fraying. It is if by acknowledging it, I can finally begin to find release. “My father loved me…but what good was that love in the wake of that woman?”
“None of that is love.” He scoops my face with both his hands. His thumbs run across my cheeks as angry tears spill over my lower lids. “To call it love is an insult to the greatest thing we have on this world—love, true love, is the only thing more powerful than magic itself.”
“Then why?” I ask even though there is no possible way he would know the answer. “Why would my father stand by, if not because he loved Joyce?”
Yet even as I ask I can hear the remnants of a conversation I tried to forget. One I was too young to have and that was too brief to seem important until now. We need her, Katria, she has the mines. The company is struggling…and she is the first thing to alleviate the darkness of your mother’s death. I draw a shuddering breath.
“I don’t know,” Davien admits.
“I wish I could ask him,” I whisper.
“I wish you could as well. But even if you had the time to ask all the questions you need answers to…only you will be able to come to terms with all you have endured. Only you can grant yourself peace now.” He presses his forehead lightly against mine. “And that peace will come from love—loving yourself.”
I push him away. “Enough with love!”
“What you’ve known has never been love.”
“You’re lying.” I shake my head.
“I’m not. You just want me to be because it’s been easier to explain away the horrors you’ve endured.” He sees right through me. My tears fall more freely, pain escaping as sobs. Davien closes the rest of the gap between us. I don’t push him away again. One hand cradles the back of my head as he presses my cheek to his chest. The other hand wraps around my waist, holding me firmly.
“Why?” I don’t know what I’m asking. There’s so much wrapped up in that single why. Why was my family the way it was? Why was I never good enough for tenderness?
“There’s no reason for cruelty, no excuse.” He shakes his head and kisses my hair. I’ve never felt more protected than in this moment and it only makes me cry harder. “But I swear to you, Katria, with all I am and all I will be…as long as I draw breath, I will never let them, or anyone, hurt you again. You will never have to go back to that house. And should you ever wish to, because you feel that confronting them in the cruelty they have wrought will bring you some peace, I swear I will stand by your side if you need me.”
His words are sweeter than a song. I’ve never heard anything so lovely. There’s not even the slightest hint of smoke in the air around him. I pull my face away from his body to look up at him, tilting my head back as far as it will go to meet his eyes. His hair curtains around me like it did the first night I fell into his bed.
“Why would you do all that for me?” I whisper.
“You know why.” A sly smile plays at the corners of his mouth. “Because I love you, truly. I love you in a way that makes me want to sacrifice for you. That makes me want to move the mountains, or oceans, or stars, to merely see you smile.” He strokes my cheek again, looking down at me with all the wonder in the world. “That is what love is, Katria—what it should be. You are worthy of that love, from me, from others, and from yourself.”
I open my mouth, but words don’t come. I want to tell him I love him. I want to so badly that my entire chest gets so tight that I can’t breathe. Yet wanting to tell him isn’t enough. There is still a block that I can’t overcome with words.
But maybe…
Maybe I can show him.
My hands slide up his sides, his chest, and wrap around his neck. I know his movements by now. I know the look of admiration and lust that he gives me as he stares through his lashes. It is always accompanied by kisses that taste of promises yet to be fulfilled.
Tonight, I will make good on those promises.
For one night, I will stop worrying about tomorrow. I will put aside all of the terrible ways that we might be hurt by this. I will ignore the oncoming fall from grace that we are destined for.
And instead, I will kiss him. I will know him. And I will regret nothing.
