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I can barely stand it, even for a little while.
“I don’t have a ring,” Gabriel says quietly. “This happened suddenly. I got the call from Gio, telling me what happened, just last night. But?—”
He reaches into his pocket, and I stare at him for a moment, unsure of what he’s doing. He takes out a small, flat box, and hands it to me. “I have this.”
I blink, taking it numbly from his hand. “What is it?” I ask softly, and the smallest of smiles quirks the very corner of his mouth.
“Open it.”
Slowly, I open the lid of the box. On the black velvet inside, there’s a bracelet—a series of linked daisies, a pearl in the center of each flower. I feel my eyes start to burn as I look at it, and I wonder when Gabriel bought it. How long he’s had it—and why.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper as he reaches to take it out of the box, moving to clasp it around my wrist.
“That day—” His voice catches, and he stops for a moment. “The morning after we—after the first time, I wanted to do something for you. To let you know that it meant something to me. I wanted you to have something to remember it by, a tangible thing, because I knew—” He lets out a slow breath. “I knew it was only supposed to be that once. So, I decided to come home early, and I stopped at a jewelry store. I bought this, and on the way out?—”
He looks up at me, and he doesn’t have to tell me the rest for me to know what happened. “Igor’s men ambushed me in the parking lot. They forced me back to the mansion, where I found you and—” His jaw tightens, and I wrap my hand around his, all my conflicting feelings about the marriage I’ve just agreed to fading briefly with the overwhelming need to comfort him.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and he shakes his head.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have stopped. If I’d come straight home?—”
“Igor was already there. His men already had us. It wouldn’t have changed anything,” I tell him firmly. “You need me to believe that you can protect me, Gabriel—I need you to believe that. Nothing about that day was your fault.”’
“It wasn’t yours, either.”
I give him a small smile, but I know how it looks. There’s no joy in my face, only fear and sadness. None of the things I should be feeling just after a proposal. “Maybe someday I’ll believe that.”
“We need to do this soon.” Gabriel lets go of my hand, as if he knows how that will make me feel—the impending dread of knowing that something I didn’t choose is bearing down on me. “A week, at most. Less, if I can manage it. I’ll talk to the priest in town, figure out how to make sure it can be done quickly.”
I nod. “Okay,” I whisper. I can feel the fight draining out of me, because I know there’s no point in it. Gabriel is right that this is the best choice. That it will potentially help more than it could possibly hurt.
Except in one way. I know he’ll never hurt me intentionally. I know he would never want to.
But without meaning to, without knowing—he has. And it feels like my heart is breaking.
14
GABRIEL
The next morning, I head into town alone to buy Bella a ring.
I know there’s technically no need to. I know that she’s agreed, and that she won’t go back on her promise, now that it’s given. I know that she understands why I think this is what’s necessary to keep her safe—all of the reasons why this is a better choice than any other that we have.
I tell myself that’s the only reason that I’m doing this. That it’s selfless, that her safety, her protection, is all the motive I have. That I’m not marrying her because it could lead to me having exactly what I’ve felt that I wanted so many times since we’ve been here in Italy—Bella here, with us, forever. A part of this family.
I try to tell myself that it has nothing to do with the possessive desire to make sure no other man ever touches her. Nothing to do with the fact that when she’s near, all I can think is mine, even though she never has been. I’m not tricking her into giving me exactly what I want by talking her into doing something that I know she doesn’t want.
She wants me. That much was evident yesterday—abundantly so. I felt it in the way she kissed me, in the way she was so fucking wet, wet and hot, and tightening around me from the moment I slipped inside of her, as if she never wanted to let me go. But what she doesn’t want—what she has made crystal clear from the very beginning that she wants to avoid at all costs—is an arranged marriage.
No amount of desire, no ring, no promises, no justifications can change that that’s what this is. A marriage arranged for a specific reason, with no words of love. A marriage that she’s agreeing to out of necessity.
Everything that I tried to make sure she’d never have to agree to again.
I know it’s that guilt that partially sends me into town to the jewelry store. It’s also the fact that Bella deserves this. I’m not sure if she’ll want a visible symbol of this arrangement that we’ve agreed to or not, if it will make her feel cared for, or just constantly reminds her of what she’s once again been forced into with her back against the wall—but I have to try. I have to try to make this as normal, as real for her as possible.
A ring seems like the obvious way to do that.
The man behind the counter is older, with greying hair and an easy smile. He looks up as the bell chimes above the door and I walk in, raising a hand in greeting.
