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“Don’t you feel better?”
“I don’t follow”
He stood up, but leaned back against his desk, stretching out his long legs and crossing thee of the wood “Having an honest, open argu frustrations and resentments inside Clears the air It doesn’t fester It’s healthy”
“I’et the concept of healthy confrontation Toat each other, hurling insults In the end so hurt because one person doesn’t knohen to stop” She said it all in one breath, but couldn’t look at hi away the shaking that happened every ti he was out there somewhere, and free
So clicked in Luca’s head A seed of an idea that was suddenly so clear he didn’t knohy he hadn’t put two and two together before Maybe because he’d been so focused on his job that he hadn’t given it priority
Mari had been hurt Someone had hurt her and now she was afraid
It ns but he could see the The way she’d looked at him in the attic, the way she stood now, by the door, like she was ready to flee The way her eyes wouldn’twas so One didn’t negate the other He couldn’t live life with his sister and father and not argue, it was part of who they were But he’d been right about the loving, too As much as he chafed at his father’s control of Fiori, it didn’t stop the love between them It was the love that had made them safe But he could see now that soht her differently Soht her that love hurt
But he couldn’t broach the topic They hardly knew each other He was her boss, and it would be crossing a personal line But he couldn’t help but wonder what—or who—hadhe wanted was for her to be afraid of him He was no threat
“Mari, I’m sorry I certainly didn’t mean to upset you We’ve both been under soht into himself wouldn’t hurt, to put her at ease He sue as passionately as we love each other We know that we’ll be there for each other, no ree I didn’t think that perhaps not everyone is the same way”
She turned her eyes on hiht for a brief moray dawn at hiined He could see the pain The pain she thought she kept hidden inside behind the wall she’d built around herself He’d seen that kind of ache before In his father’s eyes, and in his sister Gina’s It was, he realized, the look of the death of hope As hard as he’d tried over the years, he’d never been able to o away for them completely “I’m sorry,” he repeated