His heart twisted, buckled. He had seen her angry, proud, and flustered. But this? This raw, unguarded pain? It undid him.
“I would understand,” she said brokenly between sobs. “I would understand if you wanted me to leave. If you wanted to end it. I would—I would understand.”
Valentine stood motionless, the air around them thick. He had braced himself for many things when this conversation began, but not this. Not her feeling sorry for him. Not her carrying guilt like a chain around her neck, as though she had been the one to wrong him, when he had been the one to barge into her life, and make her the mother of his child without asking her permission. When he had been the one to close his heart, to keep her at a distance.
Unable to stand her tears, Valentine felt something shift deep within him like the first breath after nearly drowning. Every sob that escaped her lips was a vice around his chest, a relentless pressure that made it hard to think, harder still to breathe. He wanted to comfort her, to gather her into his arms and promise that none of it was her fault.
“I need to tell you something, Valentine,” she said hoarsely. “Something I should have said long before now–”
“No,” he said roughly, voice strained and unrecognizable to his own ears. He crossed the room in a heartbeat.
He reached for her without thinking, his hands lifting to cup her face. Her cheeks were warm, damp with tears, and her eyes widened as his touch stilled her. Then in a second, he pulled her face to his and shut her mouth with his lips.
It was hungry, certain. His lips claimed hers with startling gentleness at first, like an apology in the shape of a kiss. But when she gasped, just the tiniest sound, like a breath caught between longing and surprise, her lips parted, and he tasted her surrender.
She kissed him back.
Her hands clutched at his coat, tugging him closer, and his own slid down, leaving her face, trailing down her neck, her sides, until they found her waist. He gripped her there, pulled her body against him, and his breath caught in his throat at the feel of her.
A soft, helpless moan escaped him. He didn’t recognize the sound as his own. He stepped forward, guiding her with the insistence of his body. She followed without hesitation, backward, until her spine met the cool wood-paneled wall. He pressed her there gently, but without question. His palm flat against her waist, anchoring her.
His other hand slid to the small of her back, holding her steady as he deepened the kiss. It was no longer gentle. It was desperate and slow and maddeningly thorough.
He didn’t know how long they stood like that with her back pressed to the wall, his mouth consuming every breath she gave him. But the fire was too much, too fast, and it terrified him. He tore himself away for a breath, for sanity, for anything that might feel like control.
But one look in her eyes, dark with feeling, chest rising and falling in rhythm with his own, and he was lost again. “Cecilia…” he whispered, but the word broke apart in his mouth.
His hand rose to her neck, just enough pressure to anchor her there, to tilt her head back, to hold her steady for him. His thumb rested just beneath her jaw, feeling the rapid flutter of her pulse, as his gaze devoured her face like a man starved.
Then he kissed her again.
Only this time, there was nothing careful about it. Deep, consuming, relentless. As if he meant to lose himself in her mouth and never come back. His mouth slanted over hers again and again, and still it wasn’t enough. Cecilia made a sound, half sigh, half surrender, and he answered with a growl low in his throat, pressing her harder into the wall, as though he could fuse their bodies together and never let go.
He kissed her like she was the only real thing in his world. Like she was breath and salvation. Like he wanted to ruin her for anyone else and be ruined in turn.
The thought jolted him. He froze.
Never had such madness gripped him before, not even in the darkest corners of his past. Never had he wanted someone with such a desperate, consuming need. Not just her touch, but her everything. It terrified him so much that he stopped.
He broke the kiss abruptly, staggering back as though her mouth had burned him. His breath came hard and uneven, his gaze wild with disbelief, at her, at himself.
Her lips were still parted, her chest heaving as if she, too, had forgotten how to breathe. His hands ached to return to her waist, to draw her close again, but he stepped back instead, one long, shuddering breath between them.
He should never have touched her.
“You should leave,” he said quietly. “And not come back.”
She didn’t react at first. Just blinked, stunned, like she hadn't heard him properly. He couldn’t look at her. He couldn’t afford to. Not now. Not when his resolve was hanging by the barest thread.
He told himself again that he was doing the right thing.
Even if she had entered this marriage to escape ruin, even if he hadn’t exactly given her a choice, he was saving her now. From him. From a life with a man who didn’t know how to love in the way she deserved. A man who would never be able to give her light, because he hadn’t seen the sun in years.
She wanted a home. Warmth. Companionship. He would only give her silence, shadow, and eventual regret. It was better this way. Even if her tears haunted him, she would have been miserable with him. Just as he was miserable in himself. Hecould not keep pretending otherwise. He would not bind her to a lifetime of trying to rescue a man too far gone to be saved.
“I thought we ’d–we just ki–” She faltered, searching his face, even though he refused to meet her eyes. “I thought we had gone past this, whatever this was. I thought we were no longer strangers in our marriage.”
A breath escaped him. She was making this harder than he’d prepared for.
