So maybe it was fitting that in the last empty space of the house, my own personal demon was standing by the window waiting for me.
Alone.
“What the fuck, Nina,” I spluttered as I toppled into the room. “Are we really back to this again? We finally get somewhere, and you just take off? Really?”
But she didn’t answer, just continued to gaze through the back windows that looked out to a small garden behind the townhouse—tiny by most standards, but a massive luxury on the Upper West Side. Nothing says wealth like a backyard in Manhattan.
“Just look at them,” Nina murmured, pulling aside the gauzy curtain.
Through the window, Jane and Eric were standing together, arms wrapped around each other as they gazed at a fountain in the middle of the garden, clearly enjoying a moment of solitude after the evening’s reverie. Every so often, Eric would kiss his wife tenderly on top of her head, and she would nuzzle against his shoulder.
My chest ached at the sight.
“Nina,” I started again, but she kept talking.
“We are such fools, Matthew. We can’t stay away from each other, but together we are miserable, aren’t we?”
“Speak for yourself, duchess,” I said, unable to curb the acidity in my voice. I couldn’t lie. Her words stung. Suddenly I made her miserable? How could that be when touching her made me feel like I was God himself?
“I do,” she said. “Because no matter how much we might want it, we are never going to be that. And it really is torture.”
I frowned. It took me a moment to figure out why her words bothered me so much. After all, it had been months since that night in Boston when we had stared at each other in the dark, equally convinced the other was lying. Fewer still since I’d divulged the particulars of our relationship to my boss and accepted leave before watching Nina’s disappointment in me clang like a hammer to a bell. I’d lived with the separation. Tended bar. Moved through this city like a ghost. I had been mourning my own life like it was already over.
But as I looked at her now, I knew that deep down in my gut, I hadn’t confessed to my boss like he was my priest because I was trying to keep my job. I was doing it because loving her, even when I hated her, was more essential to me than any career. This wasn’t the afterlife—it was limbo until I realized what was really going to happen. Leave or no leave, I’d known the second I stepped into Cardozo’s office that morning that my career at the Brooklyn district attorney’s office was over.
And that one day, after the dust had settled, Nina and I would find our way back to each other. Because we had to. There was no other way.
How could she not know that?
“You’re just scared,” I said bitterly. “Like you always are. We dance around each other like wildcats, but when we finally do what our bodies and minds are screaming for, you run off like a scared little bunny who can’t face the music.”
Nina whirled around, tossing my jacket to the floor. Tracks of tears streamed down her porcelain cheeks.
“I am not scared!” she snapped. “And kindly fuck you for saying so!”
I was stunned—I’d never heard her talk like that before. But my shock didn’t last long.
“Fuck me?” I retorted. “How about fuck you for running off for, what, the fifteenth time since we met? You once accused me of using you, but I’m starting to think it’s the other way around. Think you’ll ever stick around after I make you scream my name, sweetheart? You might be surprised by what happens.”
“Why?” In wild, jerky movements, she swiped a few more angry tears off her cheek. “So you can accuse me of more heinous crimes? Spy on me for another secret investigation?”
“Don’t do that,” I said. “I swear to God, Nina, I was always on your side. I was just confused for one fucking minute when I saw that video.”
“Confused? You mistook another woman for me! You actually believed I was capable of forcing children into prostitution, Matthew!”
“It was a mistake!” I shouted. “And believe me, baby, I am paying for it. Every fuckin’ day, I am paying for it. I have plenty of regrets in my life, Nina, but none so much as not taking a second look at that clip. Just…please!”
“Please what? What do you want from me?”
“EVERYTHING!” I roared.
I sucked in breath like I’d just run a marathon. Nina stood with her back flat against the window, eyes wide, left hand pressed to her heart. For a moment, I saw the ring that used to gleam on that hand. Gaudy and big, flashing in the tiniest of lights. And then I saw another, the one buried deep in my bureau at home. The one Nonna had given me the day after my grandfather’s funeral. The one I knew I’d never be able to give to anyone else but the woman standing in front of me.
This was it. She was it for me.
But she’d lost hope in that future, just like I had once. Somehow, some way, I had to make her believe again.
I took a jagged step toward her, then another, and another until finally I was standing just inches from her complete and utter majesty. Even post-coital, wrinkled, and tear-stained, she really was a queen. How anyone could do anything besides worship her, I’d never fucking understand.
And so, more out of instinct than anything else, I sank to my knees. It fit. It really did.
Loving this woman was the greatest sacrament I’d ever known.
Loving her was holy.
Leaving her was the real sin.
“Everything,” I repeated as I pressed my face into her thigh, inhaling the scent of silk and flowers and sex and us as I did. “I want the fucking world with you, Nina. I want
