Unraveled (Guzzi Duet Book 1)(58)

Gian cleared his throat, glancing at a customer in the next aisle who looked their way. A simple glare from him sent the patron heading in another direction, fast. Then, his gaze was back on hers, the intensity pinning her in place.

“You know that’s not true,” Gian muttered.

“What—that all we do is fuck? It’s very true.”

“Wrong. We do a hell of a lot more than that. I can’t help that all of the things we do happen to get mixed up in the fact we like to fuck a lot, Cara.”

“Well—”

“So I’ll never read to you in bed again, or in the bath, or anywhere else. We won’t stay in bed, talking and talking and fucking talking, about everything and anything that comes to your mind. I’ll act like you don’t enjoy being quiet, and that you smile even when you’re sleeping. You don’t need to tell me shit about your mother and father, or your brother, and never mind even thinking about saying something when it comes to your dead sister. I’ll pretend like I don’t know shit about what you like, the things you do, or who you want to be when you graduate in a year. And—”

“I get it,” Cara interjected softly. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Be more specific.”

“I’m being difficult, Gian.”

“Clearly,” he responded dryly.

“Say it to me again.”

“Say what?”

“What you told me in the car earlier.”

“That I love you?”

“Yes, that,” Cara said.

Gian didn’t hesitate. “I love you, Cara.”

His inflection didn’t change a bit. Neither did his expression. He said those three little words so easily, as though it should be obvious to her, him, and the world that he felt for her in that way. He felt so deeply, so intensely, that he could tell her he loved her privately in a Mercedes, where no one could hear or in a liquor store, where a cashier waited for them to pay and customers milled around.

He said it.

He said it like he meant it.

He said words Cara didn’t understand.

Oh, she got the love bit—that she understood well. Too well, probably. She understood that he did love her, because she felt that way, too. She felt alone when he wasn’t there, she heard his voice in her dreams, and she felt him all around her when he was gone. She missed him constantly, she worried where he was when he wasn’t with her, and her best moments had been spent in comfortable silence and sweet whispers with this man.

Of course, she loved him.

It was all the hows that made her pause.

It was the how did this happen that stopped her from saying it back.

“Why are you staring at me like that?” Gian asked.

“Why don’t you ask me to say it back?”

“I don’t need you to.”

Cara glanced away from the honesty in his gaze. “But you want me to.”

“That’s not what you asked. You asked why. I don’t need to hear you say something that I already know, Cara. And do you know how I know?”

“I’m listening.”

“I know you love me because I can count on one hand the times you’ve asked me for something, or needed something from me, or wanted just me until tonight. I can count on one hand, but I’d only need one finger to do it. Just tonight—that’s the only time you’ve ever taken something from me that you wanted. You called, you wanted me with you, and that says more than anything else you ever say possibly could.”

“And why is that?”

She didn’t mean to be so goddamn defensive, but it was hard. Her walls were her go-to defense for anything that seemed like it might reach too far inside her emotions or cut her too deeply, when it was all said and done.

Gian was definitely one of those things for Cara.

On both accounts.

“Because you don’t need me,” Gian said, his tone lowering an octave with the frankness his words took on. “Not in the grand scheme of your life, you really don’t. It might fuck you up for a while to send me on my way, but you would come out fine in the end. That’s what women like you do, right? You get hurt, brush yourself off, and get on with it—with life. Everybody fails you in one way or another, that’s what you’ve been taught.”

“Gian—”

“It’s true. Even if they don’t mean to, or it’s a by-product of someone else’s actions, they hurt you. Your parents, your siblings, or friends. And so you prep for the next person you let in to hurt you, too, and when they do, you get to fall, dust it off, and keep going with a few more bruises on your soul.”

She almost hated how he saw those things.

She wanted to hate that she had never needed to tell him those things.

“But what’s more amazing,” Gian continued, “is that you let me in. And that, in some crazy way, you still lower your walls enough to let someone climb over for a time. So here we are, you waiting for me to fuck up, even if I do love you, and even if you do love me, because it always happens, regardless. And you’ll be fine when it does—if it does—because that’s who you are, Cara Rossi. And we don’t get to be anything but exactly who we are.”

Cara’s exhale felt painful as it rushed out, but with that pain came a sense of relief. “Saves me the trouble of explaining all of that to you.”