are. Others are born out of certain needs—loneliness, friendship, mutual respect. That’s what I had with my wife. I made no pretenses. She knew. She told me I could have Àstrid, as long as I could make room for her. I made room, but no one has ever taken her place. Or ever will.”
“Do you regret it?” I sniffed, attempting to quell the panic. “What you did to her?”
“Almost always.” His eyes flicked to mine. “Unsettled stories have a habit of settling where they can. History has a way of repeating itself.”
Yes, and his history seemed to be directing ours.
“Scarlett.” Brando stood in the doorway, looking between Mr. Snow and me.
The sight of him unnerved me. The look on his face and what I felt from him almost stole the air from my lungs. Perhaps Mr. Snow didn’t catch it, but as calm and collected as Brando was on the surface, there was murderous intent hiding under the current.
He didn’t know what had happened and was rapidly filling in his own gaps with thoughts that were wrong.
I had never felt that from him before. Up until this point, he had never allowed me to feel that much anger. The power behind it came as a shock. The intensity of his feelings almost knocked me over. Though I had sensed it before. Those eyes might have been dark water to other people, but somehow I could see through them clearly.
He’d murder this man if he thought he had hurt me.
I hurriedly explained, before he could do anything rash. “I cut my hand on a cup, Brando. It was chipped. I hadn’t noticed.”
He threw the bag in his hands to the floor, making it to me in a few long strides. He removed the wounded hand from my pocket. He quickly assessed the cut, whispering out a firm expletive in response to whatever he saw.
I bit my lip. “What does that mean?” The words were shaky, reflecting the knock of my knees.
He wrapped my hand in a formulated way, applying a lot of pressure, making me feel even weaker. The burn became stronger. “It means you need stitches. You need to go to the hospital.”
A sob broke free from my throat that I couldn’t control, though no tears ran. Brando mistook my fear. He reassured me that it wasn’t that deep. I would be all right after a few stitches. But I wouldn’t be.
Life was pointing us in the wrong direction. His internal arrow was set. His convictions were strong. The moment forked into a two-lane road, neither one marked. We had to decide. Walk together, or take separate journeys. No good would come from us separating. All that I was screamed the truth.
Somewhere deep down, that same voice had been warning me, but I refused to listen. I was so lost in love.
One look at Brando’s face and I knew he had made this decision long before he reentered my life. He had always been set on letting me go.
A panic like none other seized me, as though high tide had reached my throat and I was losing my grip. The hero who came to save me sacrificed himself instead. For no effing reason!
“Promise me,” I begged with no shame. “Promise me that you’ll never send me away.” The words were frantic, jumbled. A barrage of memories assaulted me. The feel of being sent away from my parents’ house when my sister would lie on me was the most prominent. But this was worse, so much worse. This was home. The only home I had ever known. With him. “Now. Say it. Please, Brando. Promise me.”
Please, please, please. Don’t send me away from wherever you are. Where you go, I go.
He shushed me, stroking my hair, but the direction of his gaze had settled on Emory Snow. I repeatedly begged him, up until the point that the panic inside of me caused me to fade to black.
I woke up in the hospital, my hand stitched, with no promise, and the ring on my left finger had been moved to one that was not symbolic of never-ending love. Brando’s face had turned harder than stone, and it seemed unmovable.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Scarlett
Young love is the strongest of its kind, but it’s also the stupidest.
Emory Snow
It was not subtle subterfuge, by any stretch of the imagination.
A week later I had to have the stitches removed, and my mother insisted that she was the only one who could take me. My mother had been acting more