Read When I'm With You: Part Eight: When We Are One for Free Online

courage.
    The words Lucien had once spoken to her on this very terrace beneath a midnight-blue, star-studded sky echoed around her brain. Was she perhaps being a coward by leaving? Was she giving up too early, without giving herself the opportunity to speak to Lucien . . . to ask for his forgiveness?
    Was she still being impulsive, even if she wasn’t being selfish?
    “You’re not leaving.”
    Elise jumped in alarm at the sound of the familiar quiet yet determined voice.
    She spun around, her eyes wide. He stood not ten feet away, wearing a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt, his scarlet button-down shirt flapping slightly in the wind around his lean torso. Stubble surrounded his usually neat goatee, his cheekbones looked more prominent than usual, and there were shadows beneath his eyes.
    Yet he’d never looked more beautiful to her.
    “Lucien,” she mouthed.
    “Why are none of your things in the penthouse?” he asked, his face rigid, his eyes blazing as he stepped toward her.
    “Because they’ve been sent on to Denise’s. She’s said I could live with her while I finished with my stage. That is”—she licked her lower lip nervously—“if you allow me to finish my training at Fusion.”
    “Why wouldn’t I allow you to finish your training at Fusion?” he asked, his nostrils flaring slightly, his eyebrows slanting in a dangerous expression.
    Elise shrugged and gave a desperate, gasping laugh. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I betrayed your trust, and made you tell Ian Noble the truth before you were ready? Maybe because it blew up in not only my face but Ian’s and Francesca’s? Maybe because as usual, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, and screwed everything up. Even if I never mean to harm, it seems I’m fated to do it inadvertently.”
    He gave her a long, searching look and shook his head slightly, casting a wild glance to the lake.
    “You didn’t do anything that isn’t in your character, Elise. It was me who shouldn’t have kept you in the dark. If I had opened up in the beginning about why I was in Chicago . . . well. Things would have been different.”
    A car horn beeped in the far distance. The wind rushed past her ears.
    “Why didn’t you?” she asked, not at all certain she wanted to know the answer. “Is it because you didn’t trust me with the truth? Did you think I was going to hold it over your head somehow or maybe . . . blurt it out the way I did?” she finished hopelessly. “You ended up being right about that.”
    “No,” he said scornfully. “That’s not it. At least that hasn’t been a concern for a long time now. And besides, you didn’t blurt anything out. You may have set the stage, but I was the one who decided to tell Ian the truth that night in his office. You didn’t force me into anything. It just seemed . . . fated or something, me telling him at that moment. I’m not the only one who has said so. Ian mentioned something about it as well.”
    “He must hate me, for bringing it all to the surface when he was so vulnerable.”
    Lucien shook his head. “He doesn’t. Not in the least. He told me that the whole experience had an uncanny feeling for him, as if he’d been waiting for a good part of his life for that moment. He dreaded it, but he longed to know the truth about his origins. About himself.”
    She just stared at him, speechless.
    “I thought you were angry. When I apologized and said I didn’t do it on purpose, you said, ‘Of course not. You never do.’”
    His brows slanted as if he tried to recall exactly what she meant. “I wasn’t being sarcastic.”
    “What?” she asked, bewildered.
    He closed his eyes briefly and exhaled. “I know I was distracted. Ian was a wreck and he wasn’t far away while we spoke. I only meant that while it’s in your nature to speak from the heart, I know you never intend to harm. You’re very kindhearted as a rule. I know you aren’t capricious. You’re never more yourself than when you