Page 144 of I Promise You
“Do you accept my apology?” he asks, smirking.
I chew the inside of my lip.
“Of course. Just don’t bite me again, or I’ll kick your ass,” I threaten.
“Is that a promise?” he teases.
I roll my eyes playfully before laughing. I point to the door to my room, ordering him out.
“All right, get out, Mr. Slaughter.”
He chuckles before pushing himself out of the chair, surrendering.
“Fine.” He sighs sarcastically. He knows this will be the last time we’ll ever be alone again together. He reaches for the door, and I grab my book, tempted to dive back in. It’s nearing the end of the book, and I can feel a plot twist coming.
“Goodbye, Ari Alvarez.” His soft voice flows like an airy rose, and I meet his dark cobalt blue pools.
His eyes are sad, but his smile is sunshine like it always is. He holds onto the doorknob, one foot in and one foot out of the exit to my room.
Nurses and doctors pass by him in the background, giving me a bit of déjà vu.
“Goodbye, Kane Slaughter,” I tell him, returning his sunshine with my own.
My fingers track the edges of his hourglass tattoo. A skull sits at the bottom, and I repeat the Latin words repeatedly in my head, and a part of me feels like I’m back in Iraq with him the first time I saw it.
His fireplace continues to crackle. I’m finally at peace, and I didn’t have to sleep or drink countless wine bottles to achieve it. I’m warm.
Danny is the fire I constantly keep burning myself with.
Usually, when you play with fire, you get burned and don’t do it again. But Danny makes the pain feel good and normalized.
He holds me like I’ll never shatter again, and if I do, he’ll be there to find every piece and put me back together.
“You have a thing for cherries, don’t you?” My eyebrows raise when I realize there’s more to his first nickname for me.
“You caught that?”
“Tell me why.”
He clears his throat, his hand palms the edges of his beard, and looks at the fire behind me as he continues to massage my shoulder blades.
“I had a v-very lonely childhood. No siblings. No cousins. Work on my dad’s properties, mixed martial arts, and shooting ranges was all I knew growing up.” He stops drawing circles on my shoulder blades, and I glance at him.
“My maternal grandmother was the only person that would make me feel...normal. Like it was okay to be a child and not grow up so fast. She passed away when I was in high school.”
He sighs.
“Once a year, we would visit her. Every January, we would drive up to her house on the lake, and she would always have freshly baked cherry pie. She said it was for her favorite grandson. Granted, I was her only grandchild, but...it was the only glimpse of normalcy I had in my entire life... a cherry pie was the one thing that made me feel like I was deserving of love.”
My throat constricts when he lifts my chin to meet his ocean eyes.
“Until you came along. You make me feel like I deserve more.”
I blink fast, trying hard not to fall apart. “I wish I could have met her.”
He pushes my hair back, stroking the side of my head repeatedly. “You were always there all these years...”
I reach over and tangle my hands in his hair, kissing him and he kisses me back softly while gripping my jaw hard.
