Page 124 of High Stakes and Soulmates
“Yeah, let’s do that,” I say,reallyhappy I’ve had a few more years of experience so he’ll have no idea how much I fumbled that first time.
“Let’s take a shower first, yeah? You are quite… filthy. And are you even fully healed? Can you see alright?”
“I see the most beautiful man I’ve ever met sitting in front of me right now.”
“Evidently, you can’t,” he says. “Can you see out of your right eye?”
“It’s fine.”
“I’m not sure it is.”
“It’s healing.”
“You promise?”
“Let’s get that shower,” I say while I pick him up. “I’m never letting go of you again.”
“Never? It sure sounds like we’re going to have a lot of time left together.”
“Never.”
“Okay,” he agrees as he squeezes me back.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CYRUS
I’m not quite sure how this shower is even going to work. Ezio won’t even let go of me long enough for me to undress. He just keeps holding me like if he lets go I’m just going to evaporate.
“You know…” I begin as we stand in the bathroom. “If you let go just a little, you could hold menaked.”
“I’m afraid to let go,” he whispers. “I’m afraid that the moment I let go, I’m going to wake up and realize that this was all a dream. It has to be a dream. There’s no way this is real. There’s no way I just…” His grip tightens.
I rub his back as I close my eyes and try to see what I remember, but every time I do, I just find myself back on that boat screaming for the man I lost.
My fingers dig into his back. I want to remember something else. “Tell me again how we met.”
“I was fleeing from a house, and I ran into you. Literally. Best meet-cute ever. Me having just murdered someone and falling into a panic attack and you just being your delightful self,” he says.
“Was there a tree?” I ask.
Ezio jerks back enough to look at me, of course without letting go. “There was. Do you remember more?”
“I don’t know. It’s so fuzzy. I’m confused. Like… I remember playing with my brother. I remember picking flowers for our mother. I remember Joaquin… but it wasn’t Joaquin… I can’t believe I just… like I know now that he’s not my brother, but it just… it feels like my brother, you know?”
“You’re remembering your life from before,” he says. “You told me about it. About how your mother was poor, so you and your brother would sneak into fields of flowers, and then your mother would spend all night making little arrangements she’d sell at the market.”
I tuck my head against his shoulder while I think about it. As I think about my brother… but it seems so dark. It would be very strange to look for flowers in the dark. Is that why I thought it was Joaquin? Because the darkness hid his features, my mind just painted over it? Or because Louis really was such a big part of my life?
“You said you met my brother?”
“The man who attacked Louis claimed to be your brother.”
That was the man whose throat had been slit, the man I’d gone to, hoping to comfort him. “So he’s like…mybrother or Cyrus’s brother?”
“I don’t know.”
“He was really hurt, so the people from the club were going to get him some help…”
