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She dipped her glance lower, finding it impossible to look into his face.
“I have never been more drawn to a person than I was to you that very first night. I have never wanted like I wanted you. And I have never felt like I felt when you ended things with me.” He pressed a finger to her chin, tilting her face back to his. “I didn’t understand what those feelings meant though, until you were talking to Jay, and you said you wanted to be a family with him. I know you were saying whatever you could just to keep Harper safe, but it was as though every word that came from your mouth was being drawn from my heart.”
She blinked quickly, the world slowing down to almost a complete stop. “What does that mean?”
“That I want us to be a family. That I want you in my life. That I want Harper in my life. That I love you. Both of you. That I want to be the father she deserves and the husband you deserve. That I want to rebuild your faith in love and happily ever after endings day by day, night by night, until you accept that fairy tales do exist, and you’ve walked right into one.”
She gasped softly.
“I have always known what I wanted in life. I have always known how I felt, what I needed, what I had to do. I have never known ambivalence or uncertainty. And then the adoption news came out and it was the worst possible timing to have met you, because in any other life, at any other time in my life, I would have grabbed you with both hands and never let go. I would never have left New York, not for one single night. Not for one single moment. But I was trying to wade through the discovery that my whole life was a lie, and I couldn’t see what was right in front of me. I couldn’t see how much you meant to me until I’d lost you. And when Harper was taken, all I could think was that it was my fault.”
“Your fault?”
“I should have been here. I love you, and I love her, and your place is with me. Her place is with me. I should never have left you, I should never have put you in a position of danger. I let you down.”
“No,” she shook her head quickly. “Jay did that. This was all Jay.”
“It will never happen again,” he promised. “If you will just let me back into your life, I promise, I will care for you both, I will live for you both, I will worship you both. You are each my everything, Skye. I wish I’d been able to say that sooner, but believe me, I have felt it for as long as I’ve known you. I just didn’t understand.”
“I didn’t understand either,” she rushed to reassure him. “I kept pushing you away because how much I felt for you scared the heck out of me. It never once occurred to me that it was okay to feel that. That it was okay to love you.”
“You had a lot to weigh up, between Jay and Harper and everything you’d been through.”
“But I am through it,” she said, eyes widening, because in her heart of hearts, she knew that was true. The shadow of Jay’s possessive control had gone; she was free. “And I think that’s largely because of you. I thought I needed to hear you say all those things, that I needed to hear you promise me your heart and tell me you loved me, but I realise now that you’ve been showing me how you feel this whole time. You’ve shown me how different you are from Jay, you’ve shown me that you’ll always be there for me. You’ve shown me in a thousand different and several big ways that you will do anything and everything for me. We were both just too blind to understand sooner.”
“But we see it now, don’t we?” he asked, urgently. “We see that we’re meant to be together?”
She laughed, nodding. “I definitely do.”
“Oh, thank Cristo.”
She tilted her head back and laughed, the happiness she felt unlike anything she’d ever known, unlike anything she’d ever thought she would experience. It was euphoric and it was perfect, because it was real.
“Ti amo, cara, bella, Perfetto Skye.”
“I love you, too,” she said against his mouth. And never had truer words been spoken.
When they’d finally broken apart, hours later, and remembered to eat dinner, Leandro brought Skye, both now dressed in fluffy robes, towards the bedroom Harper had used when she’d stayed with him last time.
“I want to show you something.”
“Okay,” Skye murmured, blissfully content.
He pushed the bedroom door inwards and flicked on the light.
Skye gasped, lifting one hand to her mouth. Far from being a generic children’s room, the space was now kitted out with a perfect princess bed, shelves of books and toys, and a wardrobe bursting at the seams with princess clothes.
“I was hopeful,” he said with a shrug. “And if you said yes, I wanted our new life to begin immediately. No more waiting. You will move in with me?”
A laugh bubbled up inside Skye. “Of course.”
He looked relieved though.
“Any more surprises, or can we go back to bed now?”
He looked a little sheepish. “Just a couple of surprises.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widened. “What now?”
