family.
* * *
This time, when that same hard knock sounded on her door after dark, Anais told herself it couldn’t possibly be Dario. She’d been very clear with him. She and Damian had come home and settled right back into the perfectly decent life they’d been living before Dario had made his reappearance. Everything was exactly as it had been before.
Save that Damian now had a lot more to say to the photograph by his bed, and Anais found herself curled up in her own empty bed with nothing but her broken heart. Broken even harder this time, because she’d been the one to leave.
The knock came again, even louder.
Anais took her time getting to her feet, and longer still crossing to the door. And maybe some part of her had been expecting an impromptu visit one of these days, because she hadn’t changed into her usual postwork clothes. Not a single one of the nights since they’d come home from New York.
Had she been hoping he’d show up? Had she imagined that if he did, she’d really feel safer in a pencil skirt and a sleeveless blouse?
She swung open the door and there he was, and her whole body hummed to life, as if she’d locked herself away in a deep freeze here in the tropics. As if Dario was all the heat in the world.
He looked gorgeous and intent, in the kind of sleek, expensive T-shirt that only very rich men thought looked casual and a pair of jeans. He looked rugged and rumpled, his dark hair shoved back from his face at an angle that suggested he’d been raking his hands through it all day. His blue eyes met hers and held.
“This time,” he said in that low voice that connected to every part of her that longed for him and lit it all up like fireworks against a dark night, “you need to let me in.”
Anais didn’t move. She didn’t step toward him and she didn’t step back. And she was terribly afraid that he could hear how hard her heart was beating in her chest, that he could see how little it would take for her to simply throw herself in his arms and wave away the past...
But she refused to do that. Damian deserved better than that.
And so did she.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Anais said, and it was one of the hardest things she’d ever done in her life. She’d thought that morning in New York had been difficult. She’d had to fight to keep herself from sobbing in front of her five-year-old on that endless flight home. But this was harder.
Because he was here. He’d come after her.
She wanted that to mean a lot more than she suspected it could.
“I meant what I said in New York,” she made herself tell him, because she didn’t want to say anything of the kind. She wanted to stop gripping the doorjamb. She wanted to launch herself at him. But that was always the trouble, wasn’t it? She wanted things she couldn’t have, and Dario was at the top of that list. “This can’t work.”
She expected his eyes to flash dark, for him to argue. She expected threats, harsh words.
Instead, he smiled.
That beautiful smile of his. It was like a perfect sunrise. It was entirely too much like joy, and she didn’t understand it at all.
“I’m not going anywhere, Anais,” he told her, as if he was reciting a vow. “I’m not walking away again. I’ll stay right here on the doorstep for as long as it takes.”
“You’re not going to stay on the doorstep. Don’t be ridiculous.”
That smile of his widened. “Maybe not literally.”
And she told herself she had no choice. That her heart was a terrible judge of character, or none of this would have happened, would it? She made herself step back.
“Goodbye, Dare,” she said.
That smile of his didn’t fade. And it hurt her—physically hurt her—to close the front door. Then force herself to walk back into her house and carry on with her life somehow.
She couldn’t say she did a good job. She sat there on her sofa and stared across the room at the bookcase where her single photo album of their time together was stored, and she ordered herself not to cry.
Over and over and over. Until she fell asleep slumped sideways on the couch and stayed there until morning.
It was a new day, she told herself when she woke up, cranky and sore. Dario had been seized with something highly uncharacteristic to come all this way and make declarations, but she imagined it was like a tropical sunburn. Painful, but it would peel eventually. Then disappear.
But he came back again that night. And the night after.
And every night that week.
Always after dark, when Damian was already in bed, so there could be no chance of using their son’s feelings as any kind of bargaining chip. And he always left with that same smile on his face, as if he really could do this forever.
“I think you have issues,” she told him when it continued into a second week. “I never should have gone out to coffee with you in the first place all those years ago. It set a terrible precedent. You think you can wear me down with persistence and a smile.”
The scary part was that they both knew he could. She expected him to laugh, but he didn’t. He stared at her, the thick dark all around him and his blue gaze serious.
“I don’t want to wear you down, Anais,” he told her. “You already know that I can walk away when things get tough. Now you know that I can stick around when things don’t go my way.”
“What if I want you to go away?” Her voice was so hoarse, so soft. She might have thought she hadn’t said anything out loud, but she could see that she had in the way he went still.
“Then you have to say that,” he said. “You have to tell me there’s no hope and that this is never going to change. As long as there’s hope, I can do this forever. Tell me that’s gone and I’ll never bother you again.”
And she stood there for a shuddering beat of her heart. Then another. She felt the soft breeze on her face, and curled her bare toes into the cool concrete of her front step. Everything else was the blue of his eyes, the starkness of his expression. The way he held himself, as if braced for the worst.
She should open her mouth right now and tell him there was no hope. It was the kind thing to do—the safe and smart thing to do, for everyone.
“Good night, Dare” was what she said instead, stepping back inside and closing the door.
She could feel him there on the other side. She slumped against the closed door, squeezing her eyes shut, and she could feel him there, only that flimsy bit of wood and her own determination separating them.
Anais didn’t know how long they stood there. She’d never know how long it was before she heard him turn around and go. Or how much longer she stayed where she was, before she forced her stiff, protesting muscles into a hot shower in the hopes that might stave off insomnia. It didn’t help at all.
And two nights later, she
