“You aren’t responsible.”
He shakes his head. “We got too confident. Dominic got too heavy-handed with power. I got too wrapped up in the business end, in searching for my father, and…” He gives me a pointed look.
“In me.”
He moves to kneel in front of me.
“You know, you were right in a way. We were a bunch of kids who built a fort together, but we didn’t know how to use it. We weren’t ready.”
And there it is, all of it, the truth. The truth I’ve been begging for, the truth I’ve blindly been living alongside him. The truth that sets him free and liberates him from me.
And it’s crippling. This knowledge. He studies me for a solid minute as I take it all in.
“Thank you.” I reach for him, and he jerks away, stands, and looks down at me expectantly. He held up his end of the deal. Though he’s not saying it, I know he wants me to hold up mine.
“Is this really what you want? You want me to leave? You want me out of your life?”
“Did you hear a word I said?”
“Every single one.”
“Then you shouldn’t be fighting to stay. You should be running.”
“I would, except you left the best part out of your story.”
He draws his brows and shakes his head. “Don’t.”
“Us. That’s the best part. Our part.” I move toward him, and he steps out of reach. “Tell me what to say, what to do.”
His voice is gravel when he speaks. “Give me my brother back.”
I sniff, my fight building even as he delivers precision blows. “That’s the one thing I can’t do.”
“Then keep your word and leave.”
“You do blame me.”
“No, Cecelia, I don’t. But I won’t make the same mistakes again.”
“It wasn’t a mistake.”
“It was, and you know it.”
“Tobias, I’ve been with you the whole time. None of my life from the time I left to this moment has been real. This is the most I’ve lived since that night. This moment, where I tell you I still love you and you tell me I’m a mistake. But I don’t believe you mean that.” I lift my chin. “I’m not running away because I know you don’t believe it, either. I’ll take any life with you over the one I have. Don’t throw me away. Don’t turn me away. Don’t do it again.”
He begins to pace in front of me as I call his bluff.
“I heard every word you spoke last night. You still love me.”
“Tu me rends tellement fou!” You make me so goddamn crazy!
He thrusts his hands into his hair and then cranes his neck to glare at me. “And just how do you see this playing out? You think I’ll what…marry you?!” He shakes his head as if it’s a ridiculous notion. His cruelty knows no bounds. “You think we’re just going to ride off into the sunset, that we both can forget? Too much has happened, you shouldn’t forgive me. You won’t forget the things I have done to you. I can’t forget the things I have done to you, and to my brothers. Everything got too fucked up, and everything has changed.” He takes a menacing step forward and looks down at me with resignation. “We don’t get a happy ending, Cecelia. We just get an ending.”
“And why does it have to be this one? We can—”
“You’re still fool hearted enough to think that love and sex are some sort of fucking answer. That’s your problem. You yourself said you were never objective enough to distinguish truth from the fiction in your head. Love and sex don’t help anything. My brother loved you. Was in love with you when he died to protect you, and so was Sean. What exactly did that help? Nothing. It solves nothing. It fixes nothing. It causes problems and complications. You’re blind if you think otherwise.”
“No, you are. Because they knew I loved them back. And I can love them for who they were to me and what we shared, just like any other woman with a past lover and friend. But time didn’t grant me the gift of separation. I got my experiences, my education, all at once. And it wrecked me. But I won’t regret it. I won’t regret any of it. I won’t apologize for it. Because it’s not nothing. And you’ll just have to fucking accept it. But that all fell away the first time you touched what wasn’t yours to touch, and you knew damn well what it was then and what it is now. And it’s not nothing!”