Louis-Cesare didn’t say anything for a long moment, although his eyes searched my face. That was good. I wanted him thinking.
Whether it would do any good, I honestly didn’t know.
“I don’t know how,” he finally said, and then stopped himself and thought some more. I waited. His eyes found the floor and he stared at it for a long time, before finally looking up at me. “I assume that you want complete honesty?”
“Yes.”
“Even if you won’t like it?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Very well, then. The truth is, that I don’t know how to be the partner you want. I have never been a partner—to anyone. I was a burden to my family; Christine was a burden to me.” He paused again, and then continued in a rush. “I try, but I tell you truly, if breaking up with you would keep you safe, if I knew that it would, I would do it. If locking you away would keep you safe, I would do it. If making you hate me was the only way—”
I stopped him with a hand on his cheek, because I already knew all this. His actions lately had made it more than apparent. I just didn’t know why.
“Where is all this coming from?”
“You have to ask?” His hand pushed up the bottom of my jeans enough to show the tell-tale scar on my calf. His finger traced it, the touch gentle, barely there. But I felt it down to my bones because of the expression on his face. “I did this to you—”
“You didn’t know—”
He quieted me with a look. He meant this, all the way from his soul. “I did this. I wasn’t strong enough to wrest back control, and keep you safe. Just as I wasn’t strong enough in that alley, or in that tomb. I know you say it was not my fault, but it was my hand on the sword, and my negligence the other times. I did this.”
He put a hand in his hair, pushing it up, looking slightly deranged. I’d known that this had been playing on his mind; I’d caught glimpses, here and there, and been paying enough attention to interpret half cut off words. But I hadn’t realized it was this bad.
He looked up at me, and the blue eyes were tortured. “But I also know that leaving would not keep you safe, either. I do not know what will, and it tears at me.”
I put a hand on his shoulder, and felt the strain there. It was like touching steel with a thin veneer of flesh on top. Everything I’d needed to know was in that one touch.
But I still didn’t have the words to make it better.
“I’ve been around a long time,” I finally said.
“Yes, as a dhampir assassin nobody knew. You’re playing on a different level now. You know this.”
“Yes, I know this. I know something else, too.”
He looked at me.
I struggled for words, and when they came, they weren’t particularly elegant or refined. But they were heartfelt. I meant every word, just as much as he had.
“I was alone for a long time. I didn’t know about Dorina, I thought my father hated and was ashamed of me, and the people that I did have relationships with were business contacts and those who wanted something from me. That was it. That was how I lived, year after year after long, lonely, pain-filled year. And, yeah, there were better times, once in a while. But there weren’t a hell of a lot of them.
“Some people make it through hard times by telling themselves that things will get better. But after so long, you begin to realize: they never will. That was as good as life got, as good as I thought it would ever get. A desert of pain with a few oases dotted here and there, just enough to keep me going. That was all, and wanting anything else, much less expecting it . . .
“Was a child’s foolish dream. Just wishful thinking.
“But then, I met you.”
I looked at him, and I still saw it, just as I had that first day, although I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself: the little girl’s dream of prince charming, complete with the stupid hair and the gorgeous body and the even more beautiful soul. And I still didn’t have the words. Because what do you say to a dream come true?
But something must have shown on my face, because his hands tightened.