Deep (Pagano Family #4)(71)
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I just wasn’t in the mood tonight, I guess. Sorry if I didn’t perform up to your expectations.” Her tone had a sneer in it. Where the hell had that come from? Why did she feel like this?
He was just as vexed by it as she was. “And now we have passive-aggressive bullshit, too. Beverly, no. I know you’re struggling, but speak to me like the woman you are, not like a pouting teenager.”
“Don’t condescend to me. If you don’t want to be around me, then go. That’s what I wanted anyway.”
Nick was quiet, his jaw twitching rhythmically, and Bev knew she’d made him angry. He never lost his temper, though. If anything, he spoke with more care, more quietly, the more furious he got.
“You won’t talk, so I will. The first time you wore the dress you’re wearing right now was the night I took you to Dominic’s. Do you remember?”
She nodded—it had been only a couple of nights before the diner. Despite the heightened security, or maybe in part because of it, she had experienced the same pseudo-celebrity feeling she’d had coming out of Neon. Nick was important, and at Dominic’s, like at Neon, he had a permanently reserved table. They had had an absolutely fantastic meal and had been waited on hand and foot. And then they’d come home, and Nick had tied her to her bed with scarves and f*cked her practically into a coma.
She shuddered as that happy image careened into an image of the next time she’d been bound.
Nick noticed, and she saw the hurt darken his beautiful eyes.
“That night, you wore the f*ck out of this dress. It hugged every beautiful curve. I could barely keep my hands off you. Now it looks like a sack. I’ve been worried about your weight, but I hadn’t realized how much you’ve really lost until tonight. I haven’t had my hands on you enough to know. Earlier, I thought things might be getting a little better, but they’re not. You’re fading away right in front of me. I’m not helping you at all.”
“That’s not true. You’re helping a lot. I’d—” she stopped, remembering what he’d said about his feelings about suicide, and then she decided to say it. “I’d probably have killed myself by now if not for you.”
They stared at each other. When it became clear that he wasn’t going to respond to that, and when she couldn’t read anything at all in his expression, she went on. “I know how you feel about quitters, so if that makes you want to go, I understand. I want you to stay, but I didn’t say it to make you feel like you had to.” She recognized the irony of telling him she wanted him to stay while they were arguing about her wanting him to leave, but that made about as much sense as anything else.
“I’m sorry I’m weak. But what happened that night—I can’t stop thinking about it. Even when sometimes I do for a second, it’s like my brain says, ‘Hey—wait! You forgot about the knife! How could you forget about the knife!’ Sometimes, I just want the pictures in my head to stop. I just want to stop. But you’re always there, being so gentle with me. Loving me. And I want to stay for that.”
He reached out and took her right hand. Turning it over, he caressed her tattoo. “You’re not weak, and I’m not going anywhere. It hasn’t even been two months. But I don’t understand what’s going on with you or me, lately. I’m barely in control of myself—and I don’t mean I want to jump you. I’m so f*cking angry. I thought making you safe would ease the rage in my chest, but it hasn’t. At all. Hearing what’s going on in your head—I want to kill someone, but there’s no one left to kill. When I picked you up for dinner, I saw how the dress fits you now, and realized how thin you are. The sweater, too, makes you look so grey.” He brushed a fingertip over the mark on her lips. “I let this happen to you. I have nowhere to go with that.”
It didn’t faze her at all that he had killed the men who’d hurt her, and Donnie, and Bruce. She was glad. It made accepting the things he did as his work all the easier knowing what he would do for her.
She smiled. “You told me you don’t have regrets.”
“But I do. I think I always have.”
“Il vero amore è senza rimpianti.”
His eyes widened, and the dark mood between them was broken as he smiled warmly. It wasn’t easy to surprise Nick, but she’d managed it. “Where’d you learn that?”
“The internet. I was trying to look up the thing you say about sunshine and I came across that. I liked it, so I tried to memorize it. How’d I do?”
“You did pretty well. Do you know what it means?”
She’d spent so much time trying to memorize the Italian words that she’d almost forgotten their meaning. “I think…it’s like, ‘love means never having to say you’re sorry.’ Or something like that.”
“Something like that, but not quite. It’s better. It’s ‘true love has no regrets.’ I think it’s more than just not saying you’re sorry.” He laced his fingers with hers. “So tell me, bella. Knowing what you know, experiencing what you’ve experienced, do you regret falling in love with me?”
She gave him the simple truth. “No. I should. I’m probably crazy not to, but I don’t. Do you regret loving me?”
“No. Sei tutto per me. You’re everything to me.” Smiling, he added, “It must be true love, then.” He leaned in, slowly, giving her a chance to turn away. She didn’t.