Page 105 of Fall Into Me

“There was nothing for you to fix, Fane!” My throat hurt from the way the words tore at it. Slicing through the same way they’d ripped me apart just from sitting in my chest. “I just neededyou.”

He shook his head vehemently, determined not to hear my words. Like he’d had this conversation in his own head a thousand times already.

“You know what ran through my head the moment you told me your mom was sick and you had to go? I thought, ‘Where will we live?’ I thought about how I was supposed to support us both so that you didn’t have to worry about me, about anything. How I was supposed to make sure that you didn’t have to think about a single thing so that you could be there for your family? And I came up with nothing.Nothing.Me being there only made everything heavier when I should have been able to take it all from you. That’s what youdofor the people you love. You share their burden, take it entirely if you can, fuckingfixit! Not add to it.”

A hand went through his hair, fingers unrelenting in the way they pulled at his chestnut strands while he kept talking. “Because I had more pride than any man ever should, and I was scared, and didn’t take the opportunities being handed to me because of some stupid idea that being the opposite of my dad would be a sure way into making sure I never ended up anything like him, even though IknowI’m nothing fucking like him. I know because you loved me.Youlovedme. This…this person who iseverything.Fuckingmorethan everything, andyou loved me. That’s all I needed, and instead, I didn’t believe it was enough.”

His chest was heaving now, and I was frozen, rooted to the spot as his words tore me apart.

“Without me, you would have been looked after. Cared for. Fuckingsupported.” He choked the words out because we both knew that’s not what had happened. That I had been alone, left to drive myself to the emergency room when I fell off a ladder trying to clean my own gutters forty minutes to the next town over so my parents wouldn’t find out. “That’s why I let you go. Because every other scenario was better than anything I could have given you.”

God, he was sowrong. So, devastatingly wrong.

“When I woke up and found you fuckinggone—”His voice broke, and I covered my mouth to stifle the sob that it pulled from me. “I panicked. I called you over and over and over again. I messaged you, and then finally I messaged your sister, and she said you were home. That your dad had just called her. She asked when I was joining you.”

He let out a choked laugh. “I told her soon. Then I hung up, got a tattoo, and went home to bed. I didn’t get up until Ash banged down my door. I just kept thinking about how you were gone. How I let you leave.”

Fane cleared his throat and then kept going. I’d never heard him talk so much before, but he always said he would speak when it was important.

“No one would give me work. I had no experience, no connections. My résumé was a joke—a bartending job I couldn’t even get a solid reference for. So, I walked into Mackenzie Co. and asked for a job. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I spent years trying to be the opposite of him, and the only thing it got me was losing you.”

His jaw clenched, his voice growing rougher. “He was so fucking happy to hire me it made me sick. I worked every day, taking overtime, training—anything to climb my way up. I finally started making good money. Great money. And then he wanted Darling.” His voice trailed off into a cracked sort of whisper, and it was like I was watching him rip his entire soul open for me, letting me see every part of him.

There was nothing I didn’t want. No matter what came next, I didn’t care. I wanted everything.

“And the first thing I thought was,No. Not Darling.YourDarling. I walked right into his office and told him I wanted it, and that’s all I needed to do. The project was mine, and finally, I was going to see you.” His hand dragged down his face, and he let out a choked laugh. “I refused to let myself see you again untilI was sure I could be the sort of man that was worthy of at least a tiny chance at giving you the life you deserved.”

Fane stood directly in front of me now, there was almost no space between us. Almost.

“And if I’d gotten married?” My voice was stronger than I felt.

“Then I would have made sure you were happy.”

“You would have turned around and walked away?”

“If that’s what you wanted.”

I just stared at him, realizing that I was wrong before. That my heart wasn’t breaking all over again. This was what it felt like to have someone help put it back together.

“Do you want me to walk away, Rose?”

He would, I realized. He’d grin and bear it. Turn on his heels and never come back if I asked him to.

“No,” I said. The very word that had once broken me turned into the very thing that made me whole again. “No, I don’t want you to walk away.”

“So, you’re saying—”

“I want you to kiss me, you infuriating man.”

32

Calista

After

Fane’s hands were trembling when he raised them between us, his chest rising and falling rapidly. His eyes were frantic, roaming over my face. My body.

“I don’t know where to touch you,” he admitted, sounding so lost.

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