CHAPTER 43
Caroline
“Kitty, I’m trying to talk sense into you.”
Ethan’s voice has lost its usual easy patience, the calm slipping just enough to tell me this matters to him more than he’s letting on.
“I know,” I say, leaning back in my chair, arms loosely crossed. “But I think you’re wrong. Edoardo cared about me, a lot. I could feel it. But that’s not love, Ethan. He didn’t love me.”
“What do you think it was then?” Adam asks, resting his forearms on the table, watching me the way he does when he’s trying to read between my words.
Both of them, Ethan and Adam, left their partners at home tonight and cornered me here, turning what was supposed to be a quiet dinner into an intervention disguised as a meal. I should have known the moment they insisted on choosing the restaurant.
“He liked me,” I repeat, the words feeling rehearsed now. “He cared about me deeply. But that’s not the same thing.”
“So, what is love to you, Kitty?” Ethan asks, softer now, but there’s a quiet insistence under it, like he’s holding a door open but he’s not prepared to let me walk through.
I open my mouth but nothing comes out. Because I know what I feel and how I feel about Edoardo, the contour, the gravity, the way it settles somewhere behind my ribs and hums. But trying to explain it feels like trying to cup water in my hands. The harder I try, the faster it slips through.
So, I stay quiet.
We’ve all been in San Francisco this week for Connor and Gigi, trying to be whatever kind of support they needed.
The weeks leading up to the trials hollowed them out, and I was grateful Celina and Stefano were there the whole time.
They left this morning to see Celina’s family now that it’s over, and apparently that was the opening Ethan and Adam had been waiting for.
“Kitty,” Ethan says, clearing his throat, his voice gentling further, “tell him how you feel. Let Edoardo decide what it means. Right now, you’re deciding for him.”
“Stop.” I lift a hand, not sharp but just firm enough to draw a line. “How can you say I’m deciding for him? I read his letter. In front of him.”
“I’m…” Ethan rubs the back of his neck. “I’m just saying… men are idiots. All of us. We’re insecure in ways you’d never believe.”
Adam nods.
Ethan continues, “our egos are as big as a…”
He stops mid-sentence, eyes scanning the restaurant like he’s shopping for a prop.
And I lose it. The laugh tears out of me before I can stop it, loud and helpless. I bend forward, laughing so hard as I try to catch my breath.
“Oh my God,” I gasp. “How do you still do that? How do you still look around for comparisons like we’re in college?”
It’s such an Ethan thing, needing the world to supply his metaphors, that the memory of every late-night conversation, every dorm room debate, crashes over me and knocks the heaviness sideways.
Adam laughs too, “He’s never going to grow out of it.”
For a minute we just sit there, the three of us buoyed by laughter. Ethan finally schools his face into exaggerated seriousness, which only sets us off again.
“Okay,” Ethan says at last, composure mostly restored. “Back to the point. Edoardo didn’t know how to navigate you. He wrote that letter because he was…” He searches for the right word, careful as always. “Because when we don’t understand what we’re feeling, we retreat.”
Connor must have said something. Or maybe they just know me too well to need a briefing. Either way, I’ve worked so hard to build this careful equilibrium, this version of acceptance that doesn’t wobble when I breathe too deeply.
“Guys, it’s been almost five months. Why drag this up now?” I sigh at the insistence. “He may be seeing someone already.”
“Because you’re still hurting,” Adam sighs. “This week it’s been clear. It’s so rare we’ve been in the same city or the same country. But now, it’s obvious.”
Adam continues, “He honestly seemed like a true gentleman to me. Do you think maybe he was trying to do what he thought you wanted, regardless of how much it hurt him?” Adam pauses. “Did you ever tell him it wasn’t what you wanted?”
I know they are only raising all this because they truly care about me and my happiness, but it doesn’t change the fact that they are like a pair of sharks who smell blood in the water. They are circling closer and closer to the wounds I have tried so hard to conceal from the world and myself.
Ethan leans in, voice low but certain. “Kitty, just talk to him. Give him a chance. I like the guy. He’s solid. And from what I saw… he was in love with you. Probably still is. The way he looked at you - it’s the way Connor looks at Celina. The way Adam looks at Megan.”
“The way Ethan looks at Deba,” Adam adds, nodding once.
No, they have to be wrong. Edoardo knows what he wants but he stepped back. If he loved me, he wouldn’t have walked away.
“Kitty, tell me this,” Adam taps the table lightly, pulling me back. His voice is softer than Ethan’s, but it lands harder. “Did you fight for him?”
The question slides down my spine like cold water, stealing the air from my lungs.
“Did you step back too?” he continues gently, relentless in the way only someone who cares deeply about you can be. “Before you decide he didn’t fight because he didn’t love you… ask yourself how hard you fought.”
The words settle between us, heavy and inescapable. I drop my gaze to my hands, to the faint tremor I can’t quite still, and feel something inside me shift.
Because the truth is: I did fight. I fought hard. I fought for myself, for my balance, for the fragile peace I was terrified of losing.
But I didn’t fight for him. I didn’t fight for us.
And realizing that feels like standing in the quiet aftermath of a storm, looking at the wreckage and understanding, with unbearable clarity, what I allowed to be washed away.
But the damage is done.