Chapter 8: Her Choice

Bruna put a toothbrush on my pillow at ten that night.

"Everyone leaves a room sometime," she said. "Go and choose one."

She winked and shut the door.

It didn't lock.

I stood in the hall in a borrowed silk robe and my own bare feet.

I had walked out of the front door at dawn and sat in my father's chair.

Then I had come back of my own free will.

I could go anywhere.

I knew where I was going.

Emanuele's room was at the end of the second floor, behind a door he hadn't bothered to close.

A single lamp burned.

He sat on the edge of a huge bed with his back to me.

A book lay open in his hands, and he wasn't reading it.

He heard me and went still.

"I walked out this morning," I said.

"I know."

"I walked out, and I came back."

"I know that too."

"So I'm asking again."

He set the book down and turned around.

The green eyes went over me, the robe, the bare feet, the curls I'd given up pinning.

"Raffaella."

"Don't say my name like it's a warning."

I crossed the room.

I stopped between his knees, and he looked up at me.

His hands stayed flat on the blanket.

"Tell me no," I said, "and I'll go to bed. Otherwise lie back."

"My ribs."

"I'll be careful of your ribs. I won't be careful of you."

A sound came out of him, half a laugh, half a groan.

"God help me."

He lay back.

I untied the robe and let it drop.

His eyes went dark, and his chest rose and fell, and I watched his hands close in the sheets.

I had never been looked at like that.

Not like a thing someone had decided.

He looked at me as if I were what he wanted most and didn't think he deserved.

I climbed onto the bed and knelt over his hips.

I undid his shirt button by button, slowly, and he let me.

The stitches I'd sewn lay dark and neat across his ribs.

I bent and kissed beside them, and his stomach clenched under my mouth.

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