Page 124 of Mine Again
I close my eyes, but it doesn’t help. The grief is still there, low beneath my ribs. The rage too. And the longing, God, the longing I carried like a second skin for so long.
I open my eyes and stare at him.
“You should’ve taken me with you. Like I begged you to.”
My voice cracks at the edges, but I push through.
“We could’ve had five years together. Five years of something real, and none of this heartbreak.”
Chapter Forty-Five
Isabella
Luca’s face tightens. He drags a hand through his hair, his jaw clenching.
“I’m glad we didn’t take you along,” he says finally, his voice raw, as if the memories of the night it all broke apart still choke him from the inside out.
Still, the words hit me like a stab to the heart, and I lean back, needing space. Distance. Anything to stop the sting from settling deeper.
He takes a step toward me, but I shake my head, my body stiff, my eyes warning him to stay where he is.
He stops. Sighs. A quiet, resigned sound that somehow makes it worse.
“I didn’t agree with my father often, but on that one point, he was right. It would have been too dangerous.” His tone is urgent, like he needs me to understand. “We barely made it out of Sicily as it was. Twice, De Marco’s men nearly caught us. We had nothing. No safe house. No allies. We were ghosts, Isa.”
His voice lowers.
“I didn’t want you hunted. I didn’t want you afraid.”
“But Iwasafraid, Luca. For you.” I take a breath, but it doesn’t steady me.
“Every single day, I wondered if you were still alive. If that day would be the day I got news you were dead… or the day you’d sneak in through the tunnel to come for me like you promised.”
He doesn’t move. He just watches me.
“I’d rather have faced it all with you. The trials, the fear, the unknown. Anything, instead of suffering the pain of being apart, wondering every day where you were, what you were doing… and why you wouldn’t come back.”
“Isa. I…” He stops himself, his lips pressing into a hard line.
His gaze shifts away from me and locks onto the sea below, where whitecaps churn and crash like a mirror of everything swirling between us. His jaw flexes, a muscle twitching in his cheek. For a second, he looks like he might speak, but then he shakes his head.
I don’t fill the silence. Too many emotions are warring inside me, each louder than the last.
“You were on my mind all the time,” he says eventually. “You never left me.”
He swallows hard, and when he speaks again, his voice is strained. “I wanted to come back to you so badly. It’s what kept me going all this time—”
“All this time?” I interrupt him. “Luca, it’s been five fricking years.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” His tone is raw with anger now.
“Then why? Why did you wait so long?”
He exhales, the breath long and weary. Without answering, he walks over to the bench and sinks down beside me. His proximity makes my pulse skip, but I stay where I am. He sets the backpack between his feet and rummages inside.
“At first, it was about getting my parents and me somewhere safe. Making sure we couldn’t be found.”
“Well, you succeeded with that. Not even Uberto could find you.”
