Page 105 of Beautiful Devil

And with that, the dam has broken once again, and I’m a crying mess. He reaches up and runs his thumbs under my eyes, collecting my tears and attempting to wipe them away, but there are just too many of them and they won’t stop. Fabi carefully takes a seat on the side of my bed and cups my face while still trying to dry my tears with his thumbs.

“I know what I said hurt you, and had I known you were listening in, I would have set the record straight sooner. But everything you heard me saying was all lies. It pained me to say such things, and I thought that maybe if I said them, I would actually start to believe it and feel it. We were in a fragile place, and although that’s not an excuse, I didn’t understand what I was feeling because I’ve never felt this way before.” His thumb runs slowly over my damp cheek as he stares at me with what I’m now almost positive is love in his eyes. “I love you, Gia Moretti, and I can’t live without you. If I have to grovel every day for your forgiveness for the rest of my life, I will. I just can’t be without you. You’remine,and I will kill anyone whoever tries to take you away from me again. I need you. Please forgive me and give me a second chance?”

I can't help but feel how real his love for me is. I can’t imagine my life without him. I was fooling myself for thinking I could ever live without him now. I wish I could blame the drugs the hospital has me on for the amount of tears I’ve cried in the last ten minutes, but I can’t. They’re all due to this beautiful devil who’s waiting anxiously for my answer. I pretend to mull it over to make him sweat a little bit, but something tells me that if I were to tell him I needed time to think about it, he would give me all the time in the world.

“Say it again.”

Confusion crosses his face until he registers what I’m asking him. “I love you, Gia, and I’ll spend the rest of my life proving to you just how much I love you.”

“Okay,” I say.

“Okay?” he asks hopefully.

I nod my head a couple of times before his lips slam against mine in a long, passionate kiss filled with so many promises for our future to come. When we break apart, we’re both breathing heavily, and he rests his forehead against mine while we catch our breath.

“Fabi?”

“Yes,amore mio?”

“What happened to me? You said I was shot and was in a coma for six days?”

“Yes, but that's not important. What’s important is that I have my wife back and I’m never letting you go.” He ends by peppering my face with kisses, and I begin to laugh until it starts to hurt.

I must have made a face because Fabi pulls back and says, “Fuck!” before jumping from the bed with an ashamed look on his face.

“I’m so sorry,dolcezza. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I got carried away. I’ll go get the nurse so she can give you more pain meds.”

“NO!” I yell, a little too loudly. “Sorry. I just meant those will probably make me sleepy, and if I was in a coma for six days, then I have a lot to catch up on and I don’t want to miss a second of being with you.”

He leans forward and kisses my forehead before grabbing my hand and taking a seat in the chair next to my bed.

“Don’t worry, baby. You won’t ever miss another second without me,” he says with a wink.

“Alright, hotshot, start talking, and don’t leave anything out.”

And he doesn’t. He fills me in on how he first discovered I was missing, the GPS he had installed in my wedding ring just in case something like this happened so he could track me down. How just before he went in search of me, he found out about me being adopted and Dante’s brother being my biological father.

I make a mental note to call my parents and talk to them about all of this.

The shooting, the takedown, and how he extracted me and threatened the doctor and his team who worked on me and saved my life. All of my injuries and how I may need to get lung surgery in the future and my long recovery with the GSW I took to my shoulder. He finishes up with how the past six days have been hell and how he was terrified I would never wake up and he would never be able to look into my beautiful eyes ever again.

I can feel my eyes getting heavy and wanting to close, but I try to keep them open because I like the sound of his voice. It’s calming.

“Fabi, can you hold me? I just need to feel your warmth.”

“Of course,amore mio.”

He climbs up on my bed very carefully so as to not hurt me or to disturb anything. He positions his body so I can rest my good side on his chest, and he wraps his arm around my waist. Laying my head on his chest, I close my eyes and take a deep breath. My nostrils are filled with his signature scent of cinnamon and cedarwood, and it feels likehome. I can hear his steady heartbeat underneath my ear, and it starts to lull me to sleep.

I remember something he said to me in Italian, and I need him to confirm the meaning. Half asleep, I ask, “What does 'ti amo’ mean?”

He kisses my forehead and gently squeezes my waist before he answers. “It means ‘I love you.’”

Snuggling closer to him because I can’t get enough of his scent or his body heat, I say in a sleepy voice, “Ti amo, Fabi.”

He leans down to kiss the top of my head and as I drift off to sleep I hear him say, “Ti amo, Gia. Sempre.”I love you, Gia. Always.

EPILOGUE

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