“You know I’m super excited for you, and I’ll definitely be front and center at opening night, but I don’t think I’m up for a night out just yet, ’kay?”
Her face pulls into a sympathetic squint. “Yeah, okay. We’ll celebrate, just the two of us, when you get that part.”
“Definitely.” I turn to Hailey, who’s standing near the couch. “Thank you so much for hooking me up with Terry. She’s amazing.” I’ve already told her this a thousand times, but I can’t help saying it again.
She smiles. “My pleasure. I’m sure she’ll come through for you.”
“You ready?” Jess asks her, shrugging into her coat.
Hailey grabs her coat and tugs it on.
“Last rehearsal,” Jess says, pretending to both shake in her boots and bite her nails.
“Break a leg.”
She pecks me on the cheek and pulls the door open. “Love ya!”
“Bye,” I say as she closes it behind them.
I settle onto the couch, picking up the remote to start the movie over again. I’m thumbing through the mail during the previews when someone knocks on the door. Jess probably forgot her keys again.
“Coming!” I call, dropping the mail on my coffee table. But when I haul myself up and pull it open, it’s not Jess.
“Alessandro,” I breathe, unable to find air.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“HILARY.”
As my heart shatters into a million pieces, it’s everything I can do to not break down into a weepy mess right on the spot.
“May I come in?” he asks when all I can manage to do is stand here, gaping.
“Yeah . . . sorry.” I back away from the opening and let him pass. I close the door and stand facing it for several beats of my racing heart, struggling to collect my thoughts. “You got my messages?”
“I did. And your letter. You’re a hard person to ignore.”
Finally, I find the strength to turn to face him. “So, you’re back?”
“All I can offer you are painful memories and my broken soul, but I love you, and if you’ll allow it, I promise to always love you. If that’s enough for you, then, yes, I’m back.”
Oh, God.
I work to keep my breathing even. “You know what I said about Lorenzo being Henri’s father . . . that was just because you were scaring me and I—”
He steps forward and stops me with a finger on my lips. “I don’t blame you. I was scaring myself.” His face pinches a little as he lowers his hand, but he holds my gaze. “I feel like half a man when you deserve someone whole. Letting you see what I really am scares me, but I will, if that’s what you want. And after you know the real me, I won’t hold you to any promises if you want to leave.”
“I want to earn your trust back, Alessandro. I want you to feel like you can open up to me and know you could never scare me away.”
His eyes are on fireas he cups my chin in his palm and runs a thumb along my bottom lip, liquefying my insides with his touch. I launch myself into his arms, and he holds me tight and kisses me hard. He finally breaks the kiss, his lips skimming across my cheek, his soft breath raising goose bumps all over my body as he whispers, “I trust you with my life.”
I kiss him again and put every ounce of myself into it, peeling off his jacket and letting it drop to the floor. His fingers twist into my hair as I slide my hands under the tails of his button-down onto warm skin at the waist of his jeans. “Make love to me,” I whisper against his lips.
His gaze burns into mine as he takes my hand and tows me to my bedroom at the end of the hall. The early evening sun is just breaking through the gray sky, casting a golden glow over my white walls. My bed is unmade, the sheets in a pool at the bottom.
I close the door and we just stare at each other for a long minute, but all it takes is for him to reach for the hem of my sweater before we’re both tearing at each other’s clothes. Once we’re both undressed, I pull him onto the bed with me. We touch and caress, and he takes his time getting familiar with my body again, finding all of my most sensitive places with his hands and his mouth. But the physical sensations can’t compare with what’s happening inside me as the walls come crashing down.
My heart opens and lets him in, and suddenly, I need him inside me in every way.
I find a condom in the egg crate that passes for my nightstand, and he shudders as I roll it on. He lies back and I lift my hips and sigh as I sink onto him, taking him inside me to the root. He’s everything I need—the only one who’s ever been able to make me feel. And I want to feel this forever.
My heart swells to absorb the converging flood of physical and emotional sensations, and it’s almost too much. It trickles out of me in tears that course over my cheeks and drop onto his chest.
He flips us so I’m under him and kisses them off my face. “I love you,” he whispers.
I pull him tighter to me, needing to find a way to become part of the same being.
His movements become long, slow strokes as he kisses me, his tongue mingling with mine and bringing us that much closer.
“Don’t stop,” I whimper when his lips move to my jawline.
He props himself on his elbows above me. “I have no intention of stopping,” he says, his voice rough and thick with emotion. “If this lasts forever, it will still be over too soon.”
He kneels between my legs and lifts me off the mattress, lowering me slowly onto his length, until he’s so deep inside me I can feel him in my soul. He guides my hips up and down to his agonizing rhythm, and I feel myself spiraling out of control again. His thickness filling me is the center of my universe, and my whole body pulses with the throbbing ache in my heart and between my legs.
A low groan rolls up from his chest and becomes a growl with his last few thrusts. I gasp for breath and his name escapes on a sob as the most intense climax I’ve ever experiences shakes me from the inside out.
He lays us back on the mattress and holds me until my tears slow. Goose bumps skate over me as he traces the lines of my face with the tip of his index finger.
“You are amazing,” I say when I can breathe.
He kisses me. “It’s all in who your teacher is.”
I smile as another shuddering aftershock pulses through me. “Then you must have had some incredible teachers.”
His fingertips moves down the hollow of my throat and trace the lines of my ribs, finding my nipple and teasing it to a hard nub. “Only you.”
I freeze. I can’t have heard him right. “What do you mean, only me?”
“I’ve never been with anyone else.”
He’s lying. He has to be. He’s twenty-five years old. How can there only have been me? “I don’t believe you.”
He shifts off my body and lies on the bed next to me, propping himself over me on an elbow. “Hilary, I almost became a priest.”
“But after that?” When I think of the girl he loved—the one he left the priesthood for—I see someone smart and confident and strong and funny. All the things I’ve been pretending to be, but am not.
“You loved her.” The thought sits like a stone in my gut.
His expression grows wary. “Who are we talking about?”
“The girl . . . the woman you gave the priesthood up for.”
“I did,” he says, pensively, catching the corner of his lower lip between his teeth. “She made me feel things I hadn’t felt in a very long time . . . things I never thought I’d feel again.”
“But you never slept with her,” I say, still trying to absorb what he said.
He shakes his head slowly, keeping his gaze locked with mine. “No.”
“Do you still love her?”
“She holds a special place in my heart.” When I lower my gaze, he trails his fingers, which had been playing with my nipple, up my throat to my chin, lifting it so I’m looking at him. “As a friend, Hilary. She’ll always be a friend.”