Page 94 of Phantom Mine

“Yes.”

I growl at her. “Drop it, Valentina.”

She continues, undaunted. “You’re afraid of fire.”

I jerk to my feet. The door opens and the waiter appears. “Get out,” I explode. He pales and ducks back out, yanking the door closed behind him.

Valentina doesn’t turn or acknowledge the interruption. I’m pacing like a caged, feral animal, and she approaches, hardly cowed by the way I snarled at him.

“I’ve suspected it since I saw the way Rocco taunted you with the lighter when he forced me to dance. He was using it to keep you in check, to stop you from intervening when you wanted to. And when I auditioned, you told me specifically not to include pyrotechnics in my dancing,” she explains. “But it’s only nowwhen I saw just how much you were struggling that I realized it’s a true phobia, not an aversion.” She reaches for the hand I’m raking savagely through my hair and pulls it gently down between us. I stare at our joined hands, mystified by how her touch alone has the power to soothe me. “So, yeah. Fuck those candles.”

The realization that she did what she did to help me is slow to permeate my brain. I blame the still receding fog for how long it takes me to process the information.

She’s looking expectantly at me but I can’t bring myself to admit the truth.

“You could have hurt yourself,” I say slowly. “Don’t do that shit again.”

“No.”

My gaze shifts to hers. “No?”

“No,” she repeats, calmly.

“Leni–”

“If another shooting happens at the club, will you let me stand there without trying to save me again?”

The memory of her frozen and terrified in the middle of gunfire flashes viciously through my brain. Fresh anger curdles in my stomach.

“Of course not.”

“Then, no. So long as you’ll do that for me, I’ll do this for you.” My mouth opens to argue, but she cuts me off with quietly whispered words. “I wouldneverjudge any part of you, Matteo, especially not this, and I would never tell anyone.” Her hand comes up to rest over my heart, her gaze shifting back and forth between my eyes, drawing me into the concerned depths of hers. “Are you alright? Your heart is still beating so fast.”

I stare at her, taken in by her beauty. Not how beautiful she is on the surface, although it’s certainly there, but how magnificent she is on the inside.

“That’s because you’re touching me,cara.”

She smiles softly, then asks, “Do you know what triggered your phobia?”

There’s a guilelessness in her gaze that pushes me to tell her a secret only few know about.

Valentina’s eyes darken when I begin to unbutton my shirt, slowly revealing the muscled planes of my chest. She backs away and takes her seat at the table once more.

“I know I’m asking you to be open and honest with me when I haven’t been. That I’m asking you to share when I’ve refused to. It’s unfair, I admit it. You don’t have to answer me if you don’t want to, Matteo, but there’s no need to distract me with sex—”

“You wanted to know why I hate my brother?” I interrupt.

She blinks. “Yes.”

I pull my shirttails out of my trousers and rip my shirt off my shoulders. “Here’s another reason.”

I turn and show her my back for the first time.

There’s shocked silence.

It stretches for long, torturous seconds, and then there’s the sound of her chair scraping violently against the wooden floor, no doubt leaving deep indentations. I swallow thickly, wondering if she’s going to run away in disgust.

Seconds later, I feel her behind me, feel her fingers reach up tentatively to brush over the scarred, mangled flesh of my back. “What is this?” she asks softly, horror coating every word.

---