Unraveled (Guzzi Duet Book 1)(59)

Gian shrugged. “I never asked for an explanation.”

“No, you didn’t,” she agreed quietly. “Don’t you think it’s a little sad that you love someone who is just waiting for the other shoe to drop?”

“I think it’s sad that the woman I love feels like she has to wait on that at all.”

Well, then …

“What about all the shit I don’t like?” Cara asked. “The business you do, the things that life has taken from me, and how it hurts me? What if that bitterness I feel and the distrust that’s settled deep inside of me never goes away? Doesn’t that—in a way—reflect on us? Doesn’t that make us doomed?”

“There are a million things that could doom us, Cara,” Gian said, stepping forward to stroke her cheek and push a stray curl behind her ear. She smiled at his touch, feeling that familiar shiver race down her spine at his contact. “You know what else could doom us? That instead of taking that risk with me—jumping off the cliff that scares you—you want to debate how and why I love you inside of a liquor store at ten at night. Because that’s what you’ll keep doing, about everything, on all the little details about us, instead of just being.”

Cara frowned. “You don’t know that.”

“I know you worry about details all the time. Right now, you’re worried about the details of us, of something like love. That should be the easiest, most honest thing you can feel. And your very nature is to question it, Cara, and to question me.”

“I don’t want to.”

“But you do. And you know what, that’s okay, too. As long as you be with me, I don’t care about the rest. I don’t care about those details and the nonsense. I don’t hear the noise of everyone else telling me what I should or shouldn’t be doing with you. I don’t give a single fuck about any of that, because I love you. Nothing else matters. The rest will figure itself out on its own. I believe that entirely.”

“Why would anyone tell you not to be with me, Gian?”

That time, he was the one to look away.

Cara didn’t miss it.

“Like I said, it doesn’t matter.”

She wondered if it should, though.

“Say it, again,” Cara demanded.

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

It became easier to hear each time he said it.

It became easier to believe.

It became easier to understand.

“I want you to say it back,” he told her, “but I don’t need you to say it because I want you to. I don’t need you to say something that scares you enough to send you running away from me for three weeks, only to call me when you can’t take it anymore. I don’t need you to justify what I already know, amore.”

“But?”

“But I do need you to be with me, Cara. That’s all.”

An older gentleman slipped down the aisle, making Cara move closer to Gian to avoid being bumped into by the guy’s shoulder. She didn’t mind.

She liked it there.

“I do, though,” she said.

“Hmm?”

“Love you, Gian.”

His smile grew and he kissed her quickly before pulling her into his side. Heading toward the cash with a six-pack under his arm, and a bottle of wine in her hand, Cara felt … settled. For the first time in weeks, she was okay.

“Now do we go back to pretending like we’re good and the last few weeks didn’t happen?” Cara asked.

“There’s no need to pretend. We’re perfect, mon ange. We always were.”

“In a crazy way, maybe.”

“In our way,” Gian murmured before he kissed the top of her head.

So, maybe loving this man wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

Maybe.

“Now, we’re going to go to your place, put one of those ugly fucking rom-com things on you like, get drunk, and then fuck tomorrow morning away,” he told her as he sat the liquor down on the counter.

The cashier’s eyes widened, and her cheeks pinked as she reached for the wine first to ring it through. “Usually, I’m supposed to greet customers, but I’m not sure what to say right now, so excuse me for saying nothing.”

Gian flashed the girl a smile. “Just tell me what I owe.”

“Thirty-five, twenty-two,” the girl said faintly.

Cara couldn’t even bother to feel embarrassed as she shook her head. “You are awful, Gian.”

“Yes, and you love it.”

They did exactly as he said they would—shitty movie, liquor, and all. But even when the morning came, and Cara was sure she was going to die from the way Gian’s tongue fucked her senseless, she still wanted to hear him say it.

Again and again.

Over and over.

“Say it again,” Cara demanded in a whisper.

Gian’s chuckles rocked against her inner thigh, and then higher as his lips kissed a path from her pubic bone to below her right breast. “Again?”

“Again.”

“Ti amo. Je t'aime. I love you. I can say it in three languages, donna, what more do you want?”

Cara wasn’t sure what she wanted, really.

Not entirely.

More mornings like this, definitely.