Page 6 of The Ache That Stayed

“Of course.”

He studied my face like he was trying to read something written beneath my skin.

Sometimes I wondered if he could. Sometimes I was terrified he might.

“Stop worrying,” I said.

“I’m not worried.”

He was lying. Marcello always worried. He just hid it better than most men. He pulled me closer and held me there, kissing the top of my head like a promise. Like protection. Something I still wasn’t sure I deserved.

A month away in Ireland. A different house. A different life for a while. Maybe distance would calm the noise in my head. Maybe not. Who knew.

I listened to the steady thumping of Marcello’s heart as I hugged him and wondered if Julian was right.

Some wounds didn’t disappear.

They stayed hidden until something dragged them back to life.

Marcello

I watched her sleep, chest rising and falling beneath the sheets, dark lashes resting against her cheeks, mouth parted in sleep like she had forgotten to guard herself. She never looked fragile when she was awake. Only here. Only with me.

Everywhere else, she moved through the world with her guard sharpened beneath her skin. I knew that too well.

Men like me built empires around it.

I slid my hand down her back to the delicate hollow above her hip, drawing her closer until her body settled against mine with instinctive familiarity. She sighed, seeking warmth, her forehead brushing my collarbone, pressing into me.

Unease settled heavily in my chest. Fear and I had never been well acquainted. Roxanne changed that.

She had given me her love, her body, her heart. Yet sometimes her silence hollowed me out.

Sometimes her smile didn’t reach her eyes.

Sometimes I watched her like she existed behind glass—close enough to see her smile, too far away to reach whatever was hurting her. As if she lived in a world I couldn’t enter—a dark place carved long before me.

I saw it when her smile slipped. In the way she withdrew afterwards. And I hated it.

Because men like me were taught early that if something mattered, you secured it. Protected it and buried anyone stupid enough to threaten it.

Yet sometimes, when I held her, I felt it—the fracture. The part of her that belonged to the shadows.

I told myself it didn’t matter. That whatever haunted her could be managed like everything else in my life.

I was wrong. Because deep down I knew—some ghosts don’t stay buried. They lie in wait. Some claw their way back through dirt wearing familiar faces—taking pieces of her with them. And they’d always choose the worst moment to rise.

I kissed her temple and she sighed against me. I closed my eyes with her heat against me and allowed myself to drift to sleep.

She began to tremble with sweat in the middle of the night.

At first it was subtle—tightening of her legs, a restless sound caught in her throat. Then came the heat, her skin damp against mine, her brows pinched tight as though pain lived there.

She mumbled unintelligibly before thrashing violently against the sheets, caught in whatever nightmare held her, her heart hammering against my ribs like it wanted out. I tightened my arms around her, locking her against me.

“Roxy,” I murmured into her hair. “Amore, you’re safe.”

She did not wake.