Page 43 of When She Tempts (The Fallen)
He’s engulfed me.
I take tiny breaths through my mouth as I try to calm down. He drags his palm up and down my arm, and it takes me a moment to realize he’s still trying to warm me up.
I’m already warm. It’s official. Giorgio is the world’s most effective heater.
“Better?” he asks after some time passes.
“Yes.”
He doesn’t move away. Doesn’t stop his gentle caresses along my arm. Eventually, my pulse starts to slow down, and I feel safe enough to close my eyes.
Giorgio adjusts his position, and I feel his next words drift over the back of my neck. “Tell me why.”
I swallow. It’s easier to talk when I’m not looking at his face. “It rained the day it happened. The day Imogen died.”
The movement of his hand slows. “Your friend.”
“Yes. Now, whenever it rains like this, I have a reaction. I can’t control it.”
“Flashbacks?”
“I see it like a movie inside my head. The sequence of events from the moment we stood in the lobby to the second she died. I think she knew something was wrong when she saw Lazaro in the car. She took my hand and held it firmly. Right before he shot her, she squeezed my fingers very hard, and then the pressure was just gone. Her death was tactile. One moment, she was so alive, and the next she was dead.”
A low sob escapes me. Giorgio pulls me closer, like he wants to take me inside his body, and his lips brush against my nape. “Breathe. I’ve got you. It’s all just ghosts. One day, they’ll leave.”
His chest expands and then contracts. I model the pace of my own breaths on the rhythm he sets, and soon we’re moving in tandem. It’s shocking how comforting it is to be held like this. I’ve dealt with all of my previous panic attacks on my own.
“Do you have ghosts?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says.
“Have yours left?”
His voice drifts down my spine as he says, “Some. Some still come from time to time.”
“Sometimes, I see Imogen in the shadows at night,” I confess.
“What does she do?”
“Nothing. She just stares at me with a bullet wound in her head. I wish she’d say something, but she never does. I try talking to her, but all I get back is silence.” A silence that rings with accusation.
I hear him release a long breath.
“You’ve killed men, haven’t you?”
“I have.”
“A lot?”
“I’m a Casalesi,” he says by way of an answer, and I don’t press him for specifics. It’s all relative, I suppose.
“Are they your ghosts?”
“No. My conscience is clear with most of them. It’s the ones that never should have died that haunt me.”
“Me too. There was no reason for Imogen to die. It feels like a cruel fluke.”
“It was. But sometimes life is reduced to just that.”
