Page 84 of Taboo Flames

“I watched him die, and the only thing I felt was relief that my mother was finally free. We could start a new life without him. I thought everything was going to be good for me.” He shakes his head and scoffs. “Well, it was nothing but another pipe dream.”

“We’re all permitted to dream,” I whisper.

“For some of us, the only thing we’re capable of living is a nightmare.”

“That’s not true,” I retort.

He smiles at me. “I know that now. Every moment with you has been a beautiful dream.”

The tear that has been threatening to spill over finally falls from my eye. “You’re not going to distract me from hearing the rest of your story.”

He chuckles. "As you can probably tell, my hopes for a better life didn’t end well. Almost a week after my father died, I came home to an empty house."

I have a feeling I know where this is going.

“She left,” he says in a broken voice. “I sat at the front steps for days, waiting for her to come back. I thought if I moved, she might come back, and I’ll miss her return, so I sat right there and waited.”

“She didn’t come back,” I croak.

“She didn’t come back,” he confirms, echoing my statement. “When they came to take the house and everything inside, they only let me leave with the clothes on my back. I managed to grab the chaplet, and that’s when I knew she wasn’t coming back.”

“What if something happened to her?” I ask. “Maybe?—”

“There’s no use considering or arguing about the maybes. It already happened,” he tells me. “I’m happy she got the freedom she wanted. I always thought she stayed for me.”

“You don’t know that,” I say stubbornly.

“I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering, Aurora,” he says as he cups my face with his hands. “I’m content with knowing she walked away.”

“But—”

He presses his thumb over my lips, silencing me. “It’s okay, princess. Sometimes, bad things happen, and there’s no good reason for it. Just more bad.”

“I hate that you went through all that,” I say, feeling sad.

“It all worked out in the end.”

I’m not sure it did, but I don’t say it. What happened to him broke a part of him that was open to letting people in, and I fear I’m always going to be standing at the gates of his heart, begging to be let in.

“Let me take you home,” he says.

I take a step back, hurt that he’s trying to get rid of me after what we just shared. “Aren’t we going back to your house?”

“Since I won’t be around while I dig into this, your house is the safest place for you right now,” he says.

“I don’t care. I want to be with you,” I say petulantly.

“Aurora, please.”

It’s the use of my name that gives me pause. He only ever uses my name when he’s being very serious.

I lean up and brush my mouth against his, and before I can move away, he drags me to him and deepens the kiss, making me moan into his mouth and clutch him tightly to me.

Somehow, it feels too much like a goodbye kiss to me, and I don’t like it.

“Gio—”

“Don’t say it.” His voice is a desperate breath against my mouth.

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