Page 118 of Vow

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “She …”

“Loves you beyond words,” Haven said. “She really does.”

Andino settled on a nod. “Maybe too much? That’s kind of the thing with Italian mothers. They love their boys entirely too much.”

“I don’t know … I think you love her just as much.”

“That’s fair.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, and leaned against the doorjamb. “You can go, by the way. If you want to, I can call a car for you right now to take you wherever you want to go. That’s your call, Haven.”

She stood from the chair she’d been sitting in as Kim regaled her with stories of Andino, and his family. “Is that what you want?”

Andino gave her a look that heated her up, and yet turned her into stone at the same fucking time. So intense, like fire slipping over her skin and promising love and sin and forever. It was all in his eyes. It had always been in his eyes when she cared to look, she thought.

“You know what I want,” he said. “You have always known, Haven.”

“But is it what you want right now?”

“I want you to stay. I want to take you down the hall, and feed you the best food you’re ever going to taste because my aunts and mother helped my grandmother make it. I want you to laugh when they tell you stories about me, and I want them to know you like I do. Because how can they not absolutely love you once they know who you are? That’s what I want.”

“So, after that, then,” Haven whispered, inching closer to him with every word, “what happens?”

Even as she came closer, he remained still. Like he was letting her do what she needed or wanted to do. He wasn’t trying to influence her, and she appreciated that. The problem was—this man never needed to do anything to influence her. He just needed to be. That was the kind of hold Andino Marcello had on Haven’s heart and soul.

Why ignore it?

Why pretend like it didn’t exist?

That was impossible.

“What happens if you stay after dinner?” he asked.

She was only a few inches away, now. Less than a foot. If she leaned in close, she would be able to kiss him.

She wanted to.

Badly.

Haven waited …

Andino’s green eyes lifted to meet hers, and he smiled in that way. The way that made her heart skip beats, and her stomach flip. Like she was the only thing in the world that he cared to see for the rest of his life. She didn’t know how he managed to do that.

“If you stay,” he murmured, “what happens is that I get to spend the rest of my life explaining why I did what I did, and showing you every single day how much I love you. That you are the first thing I think about in the morning when I open my eyes, and the last thing to grace my mind before I fall asleep. You are in my dreams. My fucking blood. There’s no getting you out now. I see you everywhere, Haven. Even when you’re not here, you’re all around me.”

Why did she like that so much?

Haven glanced away. “You almost got married today.”

“It was never going to happen.”

“Still—”

“Still nothing,” he interrupted softly, finally moving away from the doorway to close the distance between them. Before Haven even understood what had happened, he was right there in front of her, and his lips were seeking hers. The kiss was gentle at first—a soft hello, and a gentle I missed you. A kiss like he’d never given her before. And yet, it still burned her all over, and turned her world upside down. “I’m sorry that I’m such a selfish fuck, Haven. I’m sorry that I was willing to hurt you, and whoever else I needed to, so that I could keep you. But I’m not sorry that I got what I wanted because that means I get you.”

His words whispered against her lips like their own soft kiss.

She shivered even as he kissed her again, and drifted the tips of his fingers over her cheeks and jaw. The sliver of a tear escaped the corner of her eye, but he was quick to wipe it away like it hadn’t even existed in the first place.

“Is that what they meant?” Haven asked, meeting his gaze. “At the church—when people were talking about what was going to happen now. When they said what you did meant war? Is that what it means? Keeping me means war?”