Page 131 of The Mafia Assassin's Redemption-

I glare at him, eyes blurred, throat raw, entire being aching for him. We should be… I don’t know… joyous that we got through this, for Pete’s sake.

At the very least.

He should be fighting for me, not asking me to shoot him.

That’s not much to ask.

Fuck it. We should be dissecting what she told us about each other. She thought we loved each other and…

I stop the thoughts from racing through my mind, the gun still pointed at him, although my finger’s nowhere near the trigger.

“I should shoot you for being such a moron, Torin. I fucking love you and you still think I hate you. How can you be so smart and emotionally stunted? You can’t see the difference?”

“Can you?” he snaps back. Then shock and realization atwhat I just confessed seeps into his expression, his eyes softening.

“Yes.” But for a moment, the blackness of despair and anger swamp me, and I can’t see a thing, but maybe it’s hard to see sometimes through all of the complicated emotions.

There was a lot of hatred for him, poisoning me for a lot of years. Bitterness, resentment, remorse, regret. And survivor’s guilt has festered down deep in both of us.

I don’t even know if I fully understand just how twisted and complex our “us” is, or how simple it might actually be.

But there’s one thing I do know beyond a shadow of a doubt. I drop the gun and give him a shove. “You wanted to know if I could forgive you and I can’t. But do you know why?”

“Of course I do. You think I killed your parents.”

I slide my arms around his neck. “I went down to your basement, saw your computer, stole a thumb drive and copied the files I saw about me and my family. I haven’t looked at them, though. Do you know why?”

He doesn’t answer, but his stillness, that waiting stillness, brings life to my heart, like a flutter of a breeze that’s full of hope.

“It’s why I can’t forgive you.”

I take a breath and wait until his gaze hits me again, and I cringe because I never want to see that bleakness again.

“I know,” he begins. “You?—”

“You don’t.” I drop a hand down to his heart and lay it flat and look up at him. “I can’t ever forgive you because there’s nothing to forgive. And I knew that before today, but I had to work out why I didn’t hate you and haven’t actively hated you for a while. I’ve been falling in love with you, yes, but I needed to know it wasn’t because of or in spite of hate. I just fell in love with you.”

A lump forms in the backof my throat.

“And it hurts me to see you beat yourself up. When I go back over things we’ve talked about, I know you’ve never said you killed them. And when you came into those flames, I was so scared. It plants a deep thing in a kid’s head, but you got me out of there. You protected me.”

“Got a scar and everything.” He tries to sound all ballsy, but there’s wonderment to it and it only deepens my love more. “You forgive me?”

“No, there’s nothing in that to forgive.” My lips lift into a playful smirk. “But the threesome comment will take a while to get over. That woman was hot.”

He frowns. “She was? I didn’t notice.”

I’m not experienced, but I’m not so naïve I’d believe it. From anyone else. But from him, I do. Because he’s holding me like I might break, like I’m the most important thing in his world.

I look at him and edge him closer to the bed. “Do you forgive me?”

“For what?” His frown deepens and he slips a hand over mine that covers his heart and moves them both to mine.

“Blaming you for the deaths of my parents for so long?”

He blows out a breath. “Jesus, fuck, Harry, you were just a kid. I should have?—”

I don’t wait for him to finish. I pull his head down and kiss him, long and sweet, and when we break apart, my heart is thumping like it’s about to shatter with joy.