then there was nothing but flames, and smoke, and love.
Their twisted, stubborn, fierce love that nothing had managed to destroy. Not betrayal. Not distance. Not her own better judgment. Not his vast wealth and ability to pretend she didn’t exist. Nothing.
Here they still were, all these years later. No matter who walked away, the other one always opened the door. Eventually.
“Listen to me,” he said urgently.
He moved around the table then to take her shoulders in his hands, as if he thought she planned to reject him yet again. When the truth was, she didn’t know what she planned to do.
Don’t you? a voice inside of her asked.
“I know this is about trust,” he said, his hands so warm against her, sending heat spiraling down into her flesh. “And I know you have no reason to trust me. I can’t make you trust me or promise you I won’t let you down in the future. I can only tell you that I’m not the same man I was six years ago, or even a month ago. You changed me.” His hands moved to her upper arms, drawing her closer to him. “If you give me the chance, I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to prove myself to you. I’ll do whatever it takes.”
She couldn’t speak. She could only gaze up at him, almost as if she didn’t believe this was happening.
“I love you,” he said, and then he said it again, as if to make sure there could be no mistake. “And I love Damian. I want us to have the family we deserve, and I want to give him the family you and I never had. I want the whole package, Anais, if you’ll let me. If you’ll try.”
And life came down to leaps of faith. Running for the edge and jumping out into nothing, hoping something would come to break the fall before landing. Sometimes it did. Other times it didn’t, and that was a different lesson altogether. But no matter how many times she’d landed on her face, with Dario in particular, there was something that made Anais want to jump all over again.
Because even if she fell, the falling would be worth it.
She had to believe it.
There was a reason she hadn’t moved on. There was a reason she’d built a safe little life here, where she could pretend to be getting on with things when all she’d really been doing was waiting. There was a reason she’d never made a very good glacier. She’d made sure Damian loved his father before he’d ever met him. She’d been paving the way back to Dario since she’d left New York. How had she never realized it?
“There are no guarantees,” he told her, his hands tightening where he held her. “But I can promise you this. I’ll always come back to you. You’ll always be my home. I hope I’ll never give you reason to doubt that again.”
She swayed closer to him. She lifted her hands to cup his face, reveling in the scratch of his unshaven jaw against her palms. She gazed into the eyes of the only man she’d ever loved, just yards away from where the perfect little boy they’d made together slept soundly. Maybe there were more perfect things than this, than him, but not for her.
Anais had only and ever been destined to be right here.
“I love you,” she whispered, and she watched that go through him like a wave. “I’ve always loved you.” She went up on her toes and she wrapped her arms around his neck, getting her mouth so close to his she could almost taste him. “And we’ll try together, Dario. Again and again and again. Until we get it right.”
And then she started off their future with the perfect kiss, right there beneath the dark Hawaiian sky, with nothing left between them but love.
At last.
* * *
Love was the easy part, Dario thought a year later, as he stood outside that same villa at the luxury resort in Wailea and gazed at the beautiful woman who was not only his wife but the true light of his whole world.
Trust took time.
There were no boxes in this life they’d built together, day by day. There was a great deal more laughter. There were perfect nights and stolen moments they found when they could. They’d learned to split their time between New York and Hawaii. They’d learned to talk more and walk away less.
They taught each other how to try, every day. Sometimes they failed. More often, they got there. Wherever they were going, they got there. Together.
Today, Damian stood between them, all three of them with their bare feet in the sand of the private beach. They’d recited a few vows, though their child had declared that “weird.”
“It’s called renewing our vows,” Dario told him.
“Do all married people do that?” Damian asked.
“Only the lucky ones,” Anais told him, her dark eyes warm on Dario’s.
Damian seemed to accept that, grown-up six-year-old that he was, or perhaps his focus was on other things.
“I thought you said there was going to be a present.” He grinned angelically when both his parents frowned at him. “I like presents.”
“Holy terror,” Dario mouthed to Anais.
Her mouth twitched as she ran her hand over Damian’s head.
“What have you always said you wanted more than anything in the world?” she asked him.
“A brother,” Damian replied instantly, and when she smiled, he whooped. Then took off to run wild circles up and down the small beach, shouting out his excitement to the surf.
“I hope you’re ready for another one,” Anais murmured, wrapping her arms around Dario and tilting her head back to gaze up at him.
“I’ve never been more ready,” he promised her gruffly. “Trust me.”
And this time, when she gave birth to his son six months later, he was right there beside her. And the very first thing little Didier ever saw.
It got louder and it got messier, and the truth was, Dario loved it. He’d had no idea that he could love so much and so many. His brother was back in his life where he belonged, and better this time, since Dario appreciated what they shared—their twin bond—in a way he never had before. He’d had no idea how much he’d craved the kind of family bonds and deep intimacy he’d thought he’d wanted nothing to do with.
“I have something to tell you,” Anais said a couple of years later.
They’d come to Maui for Damian’s school vacation, and were sitting out on the lanai of the house where they’d met for the first time six years into their marriage, the house Dario had bought from the Fuginawa estate after the old man had passed on. The rolling hills of the Kaupo countryside gleamed beneath the stars and, far below, he still thought he could hear the sea.
“Because all good conversations start exactly like that,” Dario murmured, pushing his laptop aside and closing it. Focusing on Anais. He didn’t like the way she stood there, almost mimicking the same positions they’d taken all those years ago, so he hauled her into his lap and got his mouth on her neck.
The same fire roared between them.
