Chapter 39 #4
He nodded, poured himself another glass of water, and went to the sliding door at the back of the cabin. He opened it and stood there, staring out at the blacked-out world. I could see the tension in his silhouette, the way his shoulders hunched forward.
I joined him on the deck, the air cold enough to bite deep, the lake a vast nothing except for the thrum of crickets and the distant lap of water against the dock. Dante leaned both arms on the wooden rail, his head dipped as if he was listening for something underground.
We stood that way a long time, neither of us talking. I let the freeze sink through my shirt to the skin, welcomed it as punishment or penance.
My mind kept circling back to Amelia, all of her. The weight of her on my lap, the taste of her mouth, the way she’d looked at me like she was daring me to be anything other than what I was.
For a second, I forgot Dante was even there, until he exhaled hard enough to make a cloud of breath between us.
“It’s been a wild day, huh,” he said, voice so soft I almost missed it over the wind.
“Yeah.”
Dante shifted, picked at a splinter in the rail. “I meant what I said earlier. About not wanting to see you fuck her up.”
I laughed, though it sounded jagged and hollow. “You think I don’t know that’s what I do?”
He smiled, but it was more a flash of teeth than anything warm. “Maybe. But I see you trying. That’s different.”
It hurt, the way he said it, like watching a teacher hand back a test covered in red ink, but with a gold star in the corner for effort. I braced my elbows on the rail, stared out until my eyes watered from the cold.
I waited for Dante to say something more, but he just picked at the rail, knuckles blanched with cold. Neither of us had ever been good at talking.
For years, our friendship had been a kind of controlled demolition. Each of us detonating in turn, then shoveling the debris back into place so the other could stand.
Maybe Dante was the only person in the world I could stand next to in silence and feel something like peace.
We had that fight over Amelia earlier, but it didn’t seem to matter to him or me. We men are better at forgetting things like that, while women hold onto fights like a dog with a bone.
He looked sideways at me, the whites of his eyes catching just enough porch light to make him look more wolf than man. "You think you love her?"
The question stunned me, but I didn't hesitate. "It's not about that. I just can't stop needing her, and thinking about her.”
He laughed, low and bitter. "That's the same thing, idiot. Just a different brand."
Maybe it was. Maybe I was just another version of my father, chasing sensation, burning everything good until all that was left were the ashes and the guilt.
“You gonna tell her?” Dante asked, the words casual, but the question landed between us with the weight of a fallen tree.
I didn’t pretend not to know what he meant. “Tell her what? That I want her so fucking bad it feels like drowning? Or that I’m scared shitless I’ll turn into my old man and wreck her on accident?” I let out a frustrated huff of air. “Guess I could flip a coin.”
Dante snorted. “She’s not a prize, Caiden. You don’t have to win or lose her.”
“I know she’s not,” I said, softer now. “But you and I both know what I’m capable of. I’m a fucking wreck. She doesn’t need more pain, not after the trauma we went through in Colorado.”
Dante picked up a pine needle from the railing and rolled it between his fingers, stripping it down until it snapped. “You think it’s about what happened in Colorado? It’s not. She’s been carrying that heavy shit since she was a kid, just like you.”
I bristled at that, but didn’t argue. Instead, I watched the moon slide out from behind a cloud, bleeding silver over the water.
“You ever think we’re all just reruns of shit our parents did?” I asked. “Like, you get to choose how you want to live, but it’s always just some flavor of the same old trauma.”
Dante didn’t move. “That’s the lie everybody tells themselves. You get to break the cycle if you want. Most people just don’t want it enough.”
I rolled that around in my head, the bitterness of it settling somewhere behind my teeth. “I do want it. I want it so bad some days I can’t even breathe.”
Dante finally turned to look at me, and for once, he wasn’t smirking or laughing. “Until you decide how you want to feel and how you want to act, I don’t think you should drag Amelia into it with you. Like you said, you might end up hurting her worse.”
He clapped my shoulder, hard, and went inside. The screen door slapped shut behind him, leaving me alone with the bugs and the wind and the moon skating on the surface of the lake.
I stood there until my hands went numb, and then I went inside too.
His words haunted the core of my soul because I knew he was right.
I hovered by Amelia’s door for a full minute, hand poised to knock, then thought better of it. I’d never been good at knowing when to leave something alone, but tonight I tried to let her be.
I crashed on the couch, didn’t bother with a blanket. I let my body cool, every muscle and bone fine with freezing if that was what it took to keep everything else together.