I lifted one eyebrow to let him know that I was and pointed my paintbrush at him. “She didn’t like your sister. That’s pretty unacceptable.”
“We weren’t as serious as you think,” he argued. “We dated for a year, but we barely knew each other. Barely even saw each other.”
“You named a restaurant after her.”
He leaned forward in his chair, dropping his elbows on his knees. “I named a restaurant after a pretty name that for a long time reminded me not to get distracted by pretty things.”
I laughed because… honestly. “So, Bianca, Sarita, and Lilou are all cautionary tales? Past mistakes that you’re unwilling to make again?”
“Kind of pathetic it took three of them, right?”
I shook my head at him, slowly moving it back and forth. He was unbelievable. “I can’t decide if you’re sugarcoating or not.”
“I lost my mom when I was twelve.” His voice grated with deep grief that sounded surprisingly fresh. “She was my entire world. Even when she was sick. And then one day, she was gone. Not just her, but my whole life was over. I lost my home and my friends, my school, my neighborhood, but most of all I lost the one person that loved me. I spent the next four years in and out of foster homes until I finally met Jo, the one woman on the planet who wouldn’t put up with my shit. She was brutal sometimes—so heartless I questioned if she wasn’t a robot. She whipped my ass into shape and I will always be grateful for my time with her, but she did not come into my life and love me. She didn’t replace the missing piece that I lost when my mom passed. And I’m okay with that now. Jo is a hard woman that has her own grief to contend with. But for a long time, I thought that not having someone in my life that loved me was a character flaw that belonged to me. I took the weight of that burden and carried it around for years. And as people came into my life offering something that looked like love, I couldn’t help but be attracted to it. Even when it turned out to be false or broken… or attached to strings.”
My hands trembled as he opened up to me. I hadn’t been expecting him to say or admit these things. I didn’t expect him to feel these things. His raw truth scraped at my chest, clawing its way to the heart of me, desperate to make me feel something so much deeper than what I was ready for. “Ezra.”
He gave me a helpless look and a deprecating half smile. “Tragic, right?”
“You’re not,” I promised him.
He turned his head and it felt like he had torn his gaze away from me, like I’d been clinging to it, grasping it with two fists and he’d ripped it away from me. I was left with aching fingers and a hollow feeling carved out in the center of my chest.
“After Elena, I should have known better.”
“There are certain women out there that—”
He jerked his chin, interrupting me. “It’s a certain kind of person. They don’t have to be female. My dad was the same way. They’re users. They see something they want and they do whatever they have to, become whatever they need to in order to get it.”
“How long did you know your dad?”
“Two years. By the time he found me, his disease was very advanced. I’d thought… I’d been young enough to believe he’d gone out of his way, used his resources, etcetera, because of me, because he’d found out he had a son and wanted to do right by him. I was wrong. He didn’t want a son, he wanted an heir. He wanted someone to pass his legacy to, someone that would keep it in his name. He wanted a caretaker.” He swallowed. His Adam’s apple moved up and down with the effort. “I got his estate and he died knowing we were even.” His voice dropped again. “I did get Dillon, though. Maybe I won after all.”
Only he and his father weren’t even. I tried to picture Ezra as a child, as an orphan. I tried to picture him happy with the mother he loved so much, or happy that he was found again by a father he hadn’t known to hope for. I tried to picture him giving Jo hell or meeting Dillon for the first time.
Until this moment, it would have been impossible. He had always been so confident, so utterly without fault. He had been this intimidating, larger than life, fictional creature that I had been terrified of. But now… Now, he was worse.
He was human. He was real—vulnerable in a way that was surprising but also bewitching. My insides felt fizzy, and electrified, and unsure all at once. I couldn’t catch a breath at the same time I felt like I’d just taken the first big breath of my entire life. I couldn’t make sense of my muddled thoughts, and at the same time my mind had never been clearer.
But most of all, I couldn’t stand the distance between us, the look on his face… the grief strangling the oxygen in the room.
Tossing my palette and paintbrush on the sheet-covered table next to me, I walked over to him.
My movement captured his attention again, and with his full focus on me I questioned every step I took. My heart divided in two, half convinced I should run away and half desperate to run to him.
He had more baggage than I knew what to do with. He had been hurt and betrayed, and still he’d always risen above it, always marched forward with his head held high and his dignity intact.
I wanted to cry for him, but at the same time I wouldn’t do him the dishonor. He was… everything a man should be.
Everything a person should be.
And I couldn’t believe I’d tried to stay away from him.
He watched me move toward him with a look on his face I couldn’t define. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew how it made me feel.
Fluttery and trembling and… beautiful.
“You’re the most amazing man I’ve ever met,” I told him. “Those people… your dad, Elena, the rest of the three witches… they did not deserve you. They didn’t even deserve pieces of you.”
He didn’t respond verbally, but his entire body responded, changing his expression and infusing the atmosphere with gratitude, and pride. and something deeper, something lasting.
Meeting me in the middle of the dining room, his lips met mine before my arms could wrap fully around his neck. We were fireworks exploding, and cars crashing, and worlds colliding.
The kiss was hungry at the same time it was healing. He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t sweet. This kiss was no longer exploratory.
With the restaurant completely to ourselves, we finished saying with our bodies everything we couldn’t verbalize.
He kissed my mouth and moved to my jaw, down the line of my throat, the tops of my breasts walking me backward the entire time. I smoothed my hands over his crisp shirt making it wrinkly and disheveled, putting my mark on him.