Page 114 of Fierce

“Did I mean what?”

She was sitting, collapsing onto the bed as if she couldn’t stand up anymore, and I sat beside her and took her hand, because I needed to touch her. My heart was galloping, and her pulse, I realized, was racing just as fast. Something had gone very wrong, but it wasn’t going to stay wrong. We were going to fix it. I knew it. I could feel it, and just like that, the emotions had shifted directions yet again, leaving me gasping in their wake.

“Give me a...a second to explain,” she said, not sounding any steadier than I felt. “It’s sort of a...it’s a long story. It was Martine. Well, at first it was.”

“Martine?”Of all the things I’d expected to hear, that was the last.

“She came to see me yesterday. Well, you know that. And she said…she said that you gave her that necklace she wears all the time, and that when that extravagant present came for a...a woman, it was the…” Her voice wobbled on the words. “The end. That that was goodbye. And I thought that you’d had me working for your old mistress. I couldn’t believe you’d do that, though. I couldn’t. I told myself I was going to wait to talk to you. But when the bracelet came after all…” Another breath. “I just...I snapped. I’d been up and down so much, and I know that’s an excuse. I know I should have waited for you to explain. I knew it a couple hours later. I had the most horrible feeling that I’d gotten it all wrong. And then I couldn’t reach you, and you didn’t answer, and I thought again...I thought I must have been right. And the longer it went on, that I didn’t hear anything, that you didn’t call...”

“Because I was on my way back to you.” She’d been up and down? That made two of us. “I was on the plane. Thinking the same thing. Thinking I’d stuffed up somehow, not knowing how to make it right. But Martine? No.” There was rage there now, but not at Hope. At Martine, and at myself. I should’ve seen this. I should’ve known it. “I gave her that necklace to say ‘thank you’ after our very first Milan show. She worked bloody hard, and she did well, and that’s why she’s where she is, but after today, she won’t be. She’s going to be gone. Because I never slept with her. Never. And I guess she was bitter about that. And hard work or no, she’s gone. Today.”

“No.” Hope was looking up at me, the urgency clear to see, and something else, too. Distress? Why? “No, don’t. Please. I don’t want to work for her anymore, but I don’t think you should fire her. I think it just burned her too much, having me foisted on you. I think, on some level, she might even have been trying to...trying to help. She was jealous, but I don’t think that was all. I think she thought she was telling the truth. Not the truth about that, but the truth about you. Except it’s not the truth. You know what I realized? Last night, when I was thinking? When I was so sure of how I’d screwed up, and so worried that you’d never forgive me?”

She’d left me behind again, but that was nothing new. “What?”

She passed that by. “I realized I was the one being the king. I was the one letting you burn, the one without any loyalty, without any faith. I’ve always read that swan story and thought, how could he do that? And then I did it. Me. I heard something from somebody else, somebody who was jealous, and I believed it. I believed in that person instead of believing in the person who’s proven to me, again and again, that he’s real, and he’s trustworthy, and he’s honest, and he’s good. I didn’t believe in you, and I was wrong. And I thought, No. I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to let that fire get lit. I’m not going to let you burn. I’m going to wait and ask you. But I didn’t want to be in the hotel to do it. I wanted to be here, at home, where I was...where I could be strong.”

“Sweetheart.” My arm had gone around her, because I could no more keep from holding her than I could have let her burn. “You’ll never be the person without faith. Never. And you can be strong anywhere. And much as I’d like to say that I can’t believe you didn’t trust me, I know exactly why you didn’t. I haven’t been a man a woman could count on, and I may have given some women jewelry, too. Martine was right about that. But with you, it was different. This wasn’t goodbye. This was…this was ‘I love you.’”

I’d never said the words before, and now, I couldn’t believe it. They didn’t feel scary. They felt right. They felt necessary.

“Oh.” She was trembling again, but maybe for a different reason this time. “Oh. I’m so…Oh, Hemi. I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I doubted you. I kept telling myself that I knew you, that this wasn’t you, but I let the past take hold of me all the same, and I’m so sorry. But there was no note, and...”

The tears were pooling in her eyes, running down her cheeks. And she didn’t even try to hide it. The second time she’d let me see her like that, that she’d let me know her, and I was never going to let myself forget what a gift that was.

“No, sweetheart,” I managed to say. The tenderness was doing its best to overpower me, my chest swelling with it as if my heart had grown. Because it had. Because she’d made it happen. “I’m the one who’s sorry. There wasn’t a note because I wasn’t man enough to say the words, even to somebody else, so they could write it down for you to read. I’m sorry that it’s taken me all this time to say it, and to let you know it, and to be the man you need. But I’m going to do my best to be that man now.”

“You’ve always been the man I need.” She wasn’t trembling anymore. She’d pulled herself together, because that was Hope. So strong and fierce in her love, so gentle in her touch. The tears were still there, but she was smiling through them. Her eyes were steady, her hand was on my face, and everything I needed was in that hand, in those eyes. “And I love you, too. Of course I do. I love you so much.”

“Then…” I pulled the velvet case out of my pocket, the one I’d stopped to collect on the way here, because I’d been determined that I was going to put it around her wrist, even if it was the last thing I did before she said goodbye to me forever.

I opened the box and pulled out the circlet of sapphires and diamonds, the dingy surroundings and dim winter light of Hope’s bedroom unable to diminish their flash. “Then, please. My Hope. Please let me put this on you. Please tell me that I get to keep you. Please let me love you.”

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