"What happened to that one?"
"Your father caught me doing it, and asked me to stop," I answer, and her skin pales as much as it did nights ago.
"What?"
"He asked me to stay away from you and to stop watching you and drawing you, painting you, thinking about you.That was a few months before he died.I was planning to ask you out.He asked me to stay away from you because he didn't want you to live a life were there would be danger.He knew I was going to grow up to be a D'Agostino, and he knew what that meant." I draw in a breath as I watch shock fill her face."He wanted more for you. Regardless of what I did, I couldn't escape who I am.My name defined me. But you didn't have to be mixed up with a guy like me.You could choose a different path with someone safer."
She shakes her head. "I can't believe he did that.He would have known how I felt about you."
I nod. "Yeah, he did. Candace, he didn't mean to hurt you."
"I am hurt."
"Don't be. Come on Candace, look at me.I'm a fucking mobster. No one could control me when we were younger.I was always the rebel who was getting up to all kinds of shit.I was always in trouble for something.At school, they were just looking for me to fail because I'd cut class more than I attended, yet I aced everything.I was just a little bit more mature at M.I.T. And, fuck, your father knew what kind of family I came from.It didn't matter that he was friends with my father, he knew what our lives would be like.No father is going to want that for their daughter."
"But you were my choice," she says, and I wish this was a conversation we'd had years ago."It was your family who took care of me when he wasn't around.He got himself in that mess Dominic and it cost us everything."
"He wanted you to have the best, and I did too.He didn't know what was happening to you or your mother.I think that by itself would have killed him.It kills me to hear it, knowing that I had a feeling something was going on and I never checked it out.Two years ago when we were on Tristan's island, I broke that promise when I saw you holding the angel I made you.Everything was bad but I looked at you and I realized you were the only good thing in my life and my promise to your father was one I could no longer keep.Then look what happened days after I broke the promise.I shot you. The thing he feared happened to you, and I did it."
"Oh, Dominic..." she breathes, reaching up to touch my face."It was an accident. It was. I know it was."
"I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for what I did, Candace.I didn't just leave you because I didn't care, it's because I thought your father was right.And, I did write to you, I just never posted your letters."
Her eyes widen. When I step away and pick up the little box near the window I prepared this morning with her letters she blinks several times.
"These are yours," I tell her."I wrote to you every day."
She takes the box and holds it close to her heart.She looks at it, lifts the lid and a little smile tickles her face when she sees the stack of letters inside.When her gaze flicks back up to meet mine the twinkle I hadn't seen in years returns and it's like she's Candace Ricci again.It's like someone turned the light back on in her soul, and the flames of who she used to be reignite.
"Thank you, Dominic."
"You're welcome, Angel."
As I look at her, though, a mixture of emotions grip me.I have that out of control feeling again when I think of the past and the present, but realize that in this current situation my future is uncertain.
When I think of the future, I want her, and I don't want to prove her father right again.
That's why I can't rest until all of this shit is over.
We don't have answers yet.
This is just one more secret revealed.
I need to find out how everything else fits.
"Baby... I have to go out for a few hours."
"Can't you stay?"
I shake my head. "Not when I feel like this.Cory will be here. I'll be back in a little while."
Hope flickers inside me when she reaches for me and guides me to her lips for a kiss, and I allow myself to savor the feel of her.
She feels the way she did two years ago when she loved me.