He just smiled ruefully, eyes aimed out the window at the spectacular harbor view.  He waited for the bellhop to finish, handed him a bill, closed and bolted the door behind him, and dragged me to bed.

We didn’t leave the suite until morning.

Dante woke up early with me and while I packed and got ready, he just sat on the edge of the bed watching me, his unhappy eyes following everything I did with uncanny focus.

Finally I stopped, staring at him.  “What?  You’re making me nervous.  Shouldn’t you be getting dressed?”

He was wearing nothing but his boxer briefs.  He was leaning forward, the muscles of his torso bunching and flexing with his every breath.

Superficial creature that I am, it distracted me to an extreme degree.  Contrary creature that I am, I was trying not to show it.  “What?” I asked again.

He just kept staring.

With a huff, I went back to getting ready.  The closer I got to actually being ready though, the way he was looking at me, the way his eyes were screaming at me, and the screaming was getting louder and louder, until they were trying to melt me from the inside out, became too much.

“Stop it,” I told him, zipping up my suitcase.  “I need to leave soon, and you need to stop looking at me like that.”

But he didn’t stop.  And it was too much.

I was stepping into my shoes when I said, “I’m ready.”

A desperate sound escaped him, and that was too much.

Too much.  Too much.  Too.  Much.

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” he spoke, each word gutted.  “If I could forgive you, could you forgive me?”

“What?”  I could barely get my voice to work for that one word.

“For all of it.  Everything.  Every last horrible thing we’ve done to each other.  I’m so tired of this war.  I’m so done lashing out at you, and I’m ready now.  Ready to forgive you.  Even for the worst of it.  Especially for that.”

I was shaking.  “You’re ready to forgive me?  Oh, that is rich.”

“Yes.  I’m ready.  I can forgive you.  Can you forgive me?”

It was so completely out of left field that I had no response.  The idea of him forgiving me was so implausible on its own.

And the idea of me forgiving him was so completely and wholly foreign that it had never even crossed my mind.

Could I forgive him?

I didn’t know.  I’d never tried.

I’d just assumed it was an impossible task, and one he’d certainly never asked me for before this moment.  “I think we’ve proven that what you’re asking is impossible,” I finally said, cutting each word out of myself in big gory chunks.

I’d backed so far away from him that my back was to the wall.  My hands were in fists at my sides.

He stood up and my whole body jerked.  I put my hands up as though to ward him off, but he didn’t take even one step forward, and when he spoke, he spoke passionately and to the ground at my feet.    “All we are is proof that love can survive anything.  You and I, we’re heavy hitters, but even at our worst, we still couldn’t break this bond.  If you’re honest with yourself, we didn’t even come close.”

I was weakening, my mind trying to find a way to reconcile what he was saying, to accept it and believe it, though I’d never admit it aloud.

But I didn’t have to.  That was the worst thing about Dante.  He knew me too well. Every in and out of me.  Every lie and truth.  He and I alone held the keys to my destruction.

As I’ve said, lovers should have secrets.

I asked the one question that would put an end to this madness.  “Will you ever tell me why?”  I didn’t have to elaborate.  He knew what I wanted to know.

Why did you throw me away?

And . . .

Why did you let me give you every part of myself just so you could toss it all back into the trashcan that it came from?

But particularly . . .

How?  How could you break my heart?

“I can’t give you an excuse,” he said in a careful voice that trembled.  “But I’m asking for forgiveness.  Please.  I don’t make sense without you and you don’t make sense without me and you know it.  We only ever worked together.  How long did you think it was going to last?  Scarlett without Dante, Dante without Scarlett?  You and I going about our lives as though the other doesn’t exist?  Who are you kidding?  Who are we without each other?  Apart we’re not ourselves.  And it’s been long enough.  I’ve been punished long enough.”

Had he?

And—had I?

And—couldn’t he at least try to make up an excuse?  Even if it was bullshit, even if it was a complete lie, couldn’t he at least try?

I didn’t know how to respond to him.  I didn’t know what to say.

I didn’t know what to think.

He had completely weakened me, utterly destroyed any resolve I thought I’d built against him, and when he started to move to me, I couldn’t find the strength to get away.

He crowded but barely touched, his hands going around me, under my hair, feeling at my nape.

Time froze as he unfastened one of the chains around my neck, took the ring off, and put it on my limp finger.

“I know this is sudden to you.  I know it’s a shock.  I’ll give you time.  There’s no deadline on your answer, but it’s out there now, what I want, how I feel, though that was never much of a mystery if you were paying attention.”