Take Your Time (Boston Love #4)(46)
“Delilah—”
“No! No. Don’t Delilah me in that soft voice that says everything is going to be all right. Don’t come in here and tell me that everything is fixable. It’s not true!”
The sane part of me recognizes that this rant has nothing to do with Luca, that it’s entirely about my shithead big brother, that I’m lashing out at the wrong man for no sensible reason at all… but I can’t seem to stop. It’s as though I am a bystander in my own body, watching the chaos unfold but unable to do anything about it.
“I mean, how is it all right he left me with a dog?! A freaking puppy. What do I feed it? How often does it have to pee? What do I do if it gets sick? How am I going to take care of it when I can’t even take care of my damn self? Do I have to get it tennis balls? Where do you even buy tennis balls? And why is it always looking at me with those damn puppy eyes!?” I glare at the dog in Luca’s arms. “Yes, boy, I’m talking to you! You are a boy, right? I don’t even know, not for sure. How would I? He just left you here. Left me here. No money, no options. We’re gonna be homeless, pup, sorry to inform you! Maybe we can share a cardboard box in the alley out back, what do you say to that? Huh, Fido?”
Something wet falls onto my bare foot. I flinch at the impact and glance down, surprised to see a tiny droplet of water on my skin. For a ludicrous moment, I consider the possibility that it’s actually started raining inside my apartment… before I realize I’m crying.
Huge, ugly, unstoppable tears are rolling down my cheeks.
I don’t know when they started but now that they have, there’s no stopping them. All the fear and frustration and sadness and desperation I’ve spent weeks pushing down, compartmentalizing into a tiny box in the back of my mind so I don’t go crazy from the stress of it all, have burst forth in an incontrovertible flood.
Horrified, I glance up at Luca, prepared to apologize for my outburst, attempting to think up some way to explain myself without sounding like a total nutcase. The look in his eyes stops me cold.
There’s a soft, sad expression on his face. Tenderness mixed with sympathy, tempered by that familiar Buchanan determination that says the rules governing average men don’t apply to him. It’s the kind of face you might make if you saw an animal hit by a car, bleeding out in the street… wanting to help but not knowing how, or whether any of your efforts would even matter, since the poor creature is already so far gone. And yet, attempting regardless, because you can’t leave it there to die alone.
I can read his eyes as clearly as a billboard.
Let me save you.
Let me at least try.
Even if it’s a lost cause.
That expression, on Luca’s face? It’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen. More frightening than watching him pummel a man into mincemeat in a sweaty gym; infinitely more terrifying than the look of molten desire he gave me earlier, the one that told me in no uncertain terms what he’d like to do with me after catching sight of my lingerie.
“Luca…” My whisper is so fractured by mortification, I can barely form the word. “I’m sorry. This wasn’t about you. None of it. I just…”
“Shhh,” he breathes, giving a slight shake of his head. “I know.”
Moving slower than I’ve ever seen him, with a kind of measured deliberateness that makes my insides quake and my tears flow faster, he sets the dog down by our feet with a gentle plop, then takes three steps and closes the distance between us. I’m rooted to the ground, stiller than a statue as he reaches up with those big, powerful hands and slides them into the thick mane of hair at the nape of my neck.
Such a simple gesture, to stir so many complicated feelings into life.
I suck in a breath as soon as he touches me — I can’t help it. It’s an involuntary reaction to his hands on my skin, like sticking a fork inside a socket and getting zapped by an electrical charge that singes your very bones.
Eyes never shifting from mine, he exerts a tiny amount of pressure on my neck — not even enough to move me. A slight, tactile message that requires no words.
Come here.
His hold is so light, I could easily shrug him off if I wanted. I could fight his grip, could walk away, could throw up that wall I always erect between us, whenever things get too close for comfort, as I’ve always in the past.
But I don’t have any fight left in me.
I fall into his chest like water into paper; he absorbs me effortlessly, taking on my physical weight as well as the emotional burden of my meltdown. As soon as my forehead finds the hollow of his throat, where his pulse beats strong and steady as a battle drum, I feel myself let go. Of everything. All the rage and hopelessness. All the sleepless nights and quick-bitten fingernails. All the sold-off treasures and dead-end interviews.
My defenses fall one by one, obliterated by the weight of my own exhaustion.
No retreat.
No recalculation.
No retaliation.
Nothing except complete, total, irreversible…
Surrender.
A white flag waving on the battlefield of my heart.
My tears flow into Luca’s shirt and his arms come up around me, holding me so close, so warm, so safe, I can barely remember why I’m crying in the first place.
I’ve always had a certain reputation.
I think it comes with the territory — the rich family, the red hair, the unchangeable case of resting bitch face I’ve been plagued with since kindergarten.