“I am,” I admonish miserably. “How can you say I’m not?”
“Because monsters share no emotion over what they are. They revel in it. They love the power and control they have. They love their ability to manipulate and prey. They love the thrill of the kill. If you had any of that, Amelia, you wouldn’t be looking to fight for your brother and save him. You wouldn’t give a fuck about him. You’d be up there with people like Giovanni, ready to feed Manuel to your father.” He lifts his hand up to wipe my errant tears away and just offers me a glimmer of hope with his support. “You would’ve killed me by now, Amelia. You would have, if you were a true monster.”
“I can’t kill you,” I remark, my voice slowly disintegrating. “Because I love you.”
“Exactly, my point. You feel too much.” His tone is so focused with sincerity, and I can tell he’s fighting to save my soul. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been by my bedside in such a beautiful mess after the shooting. You wouldn’t have been the one thing I needed if I knew you were capable of being a true killer. I wouldn’t keep you with me day in and day out. I wouldn’t want you here with me. I couldn’t bear to love a monster, Amelia. When you told me what you did and the pieces all fell together, I still loved you. I see how conflicted and twisted you are because of your father. Sweetheart, he’s taught you to be something your conscience can’t keep up with. It’s eating you away. I can see it is.” His thumb massages across my cheek, the pad gentle against my tear stricken face. “There is going to come a time, extremely soon, where you will snap.”
“I can feel it happening already,” I agree but then look over his shoulder. “Are you going to save the pan now seeing as that burning smell is really making it hard to focus on the moment?”
“Fuck!” he swears and quickly shoots from his seat over to the stove. The sight causes me to laugh through my continual tears. “Erm, I might need a new pan now.” His comment comes with him tossing the entire thing into the sink. He quickly goes for another pan and sticks it over the flame.
While he waits for the new pan to heat up, he stands before me, eyes glued upon me as I sit before him, silent and vulnerable. I decide now is the time to ask my own billion dollar question.
“If I were to ask you if you’d run away with me, what would you say?” My question is verbalized meekly, and my immediate answer is the Manhattan traffic from outside – Zane remains silent. I dare myself to look at Zane, and I gulp. “If I were to say, let’s leave. Would you?”
Slowly, a smile creeps across Zane’s face. “Yes.” His reply is stated with simplistic conviction, and my heart swells. “No, I’d actually say, ‘what the fuck took you so long, Sweetheart?’ and then I would run like hell and never look back.”
“You make it sound so simple,” I reply, unable to believe he would leave his life behind.
“That’s because it is,” he counters, walking back toward me. “Do you realize how easy it would be to pack up the car and just drive?”
“Simplicity doesn’t come with my family,” I reprove, trying not to dare myself to dream too quickly. “I just wanted to know if I’m worth running away with.”
“You’re worth a lot more to me than just running away with.” He pulls me up from my perch and again, wraps his arms around me. “You are worth every breath in me, Amelia, because I have lived an empty life without you and I never quite realized until I had you back in front of me. I can’t explain everything you make me feel because for the most part, it’s out of this world. It’s all so indescribable. But if I had to say it in simple terms, then I would say you make me feel alive.”
“Then why didn’t you try to find me?” I ask, feeling my body go rigid at the thought.
“Because I’m a coward, Amelia,” he states with integrity and his eyes have a newfound dolefulness to them. “I ran when the going got tough, and when I looked back, I didn’t dare try to win you back because of your family.” He shakes his head, obviously still shamed of his own actions. “It was the worst mistake of my life.”
He releases me slightly, but only to capture the side of my face with his palm. He holds my head delicately, his fingers partially threaded into my hair. The moment causes me to close my eyes and enjoy the low sensuality to his touch.
“You do realize no other man will be able to love you like I can,” he murmurs to me, and I open my eyes. “No man will ever know how to worship your body or know how to talk around your defiance. No other man should get the chance.” He stares at me, passion fevering his expression. “And if he can, I’ll be waiting there to outshine him.”