Chapter 34
Romeo
“Stay in the car,” I order as we pull up outside the morgue.
I unclick my seat belt and reach for the door handle at the same time as Lucia.
“Hah,” she scoffs. “It’s comical that you think I’m going to obey you. Like I said, I’m not letting you face this alone.”
I blow out a long breath, making sure she hears it, so she knows just how frustrated I am. But deep down, buried beneath all the noise in my chest, there’s a part of me that’s glad she’s here. Even if I’ll never admit it out loud.
I’m accustomed to navigating my personal life on my own.
I always have been.
But for the first time, I’m hoping I won’t have to do that anymore. Because there’s a kind of silence in loneliness that screams louder than any crowd ever could.
And I’m tired.
Tired of shouldering everything on my own.
Tired of pretending it doesn’t eat away at me.
Tired of living like that’s all I deserve.
Lucia and I meet around the front of the car, and without even thinking, I reach for her hand like it’s my lifeline.
“Romeo,” she says softly as her fingers lace with mine. “It’s okay if you cry when we get in there. I’ve got you.”
“I’m not going to cry,” I murmur, even though I know there’s a possibility I might do just that.
It was a fucking struggle to keep my emotions at bay when Dante first told me the news, but seeing my mother and accepting that she’s really gone may be the thing that finally breaks me.
“I get it, I was you once,” she says. “You’ve been living in survival mode for so long, you probably don’t even realise it anymore. Always tense, always waiting for the next thing to go wrong.”
She pauses, her thumb brushing over my knuckles.
“I bet even when things are quiet, your mind doesn’t let you rest. That’s how I felt when I was living with my father.
And it’s not because I’m dramatic or paranoid.
My body simply forgot what it was like to feel safe.
You get used to holding your breath … bracing for impact.
Pretending everything’s fine while fighting battles no one else sees. ”
I don’t say anything. I can’t. But her words hit home, settling deep in places I’ve spent years trying to ignore.
She leans in a little closer and tightens her grip on my hand.
“It’s not drama, Romeo. It’s trauma. And I know healing doesn’t happen overnight.
But it starts with learning that love doesn’t always have to come with pain.
That silence doesn’t mean someone’s about to hurt you.
And that letting yourself rest isn’t a weakness. It’s what you deserve.”
Her voice drops to a whisper as she turns to face me. I glance down at her as her big, beautiful, hopeful brown eyes lock with mine.
“Let me be that for you. Let me be the one thing you don’t have to survive.”
I want that.
I want her.
I want to keep this woman and never let her go.
A knot forms in the back of my throat, thick and heavy, and I tilt my head towards the starlit sky, trying to breathe through it. Whatever she went through growing up has made her wiser than her nineteen years.
“What did I do to deserve you?” I find myself asking, my voice low and rough.
She smiles, but there’s a softness in her eyes that cuts right through me.
“You exist,” she says. “That’s enough for me.” She squeezes my hand again, like she’s anchoring me to the moment. “You don’t have to earn love, Romeo. Not from me. It’s yours, and it’s unconditional.”
Now would be the perfect time to tell her I love her back. I feel it. Boy, do I feel it. But the words get stuck in my throat, caught somewhere between fear and everything I was never taught about love.
So instead, I shift closer and press a kiss to her temple. It’s not the words she deserves, but it’s all I can give her right now. And I hope she understands. One day, I may be able to express my feelings as easily as she does.
The smell hits first. It’s cold, sterile, and unnatural. Like death has a scent, and it’s trying to settle into my skin.
Lucia is still glued to my side as the attendant leads us down a narrow corridor before stopping at one of the metal drawers.
I make a conscious effort not to squeeze her hand too hard. I don’t want to break her delicate fingers.
I suck in a deep breath and hold it when he pulls it open without a word, and there she is.
My mother.
Pale. Still.
Too quiet for someone who used to scream her way through life.
I don’t move at first. I just stand there, taking her in. I thought I’d feel rage or maybe nothing at all. But what creeps in instead is something I can’t quite name.
She looks peaceful. Maybe for the first time in her miserable life.
I release Lucia’s hand and step closer. My heart’s thudding in my chest, but everything else feels numb.
“You really did it this time, Mum,” I murmur in a low voice. “You finally found a way to disappear for good.”
There’s so much I never said. So much I never could say. And now all I’ve got is this cold room and a dead woman who gave me life and took just as much from it.
“There were times I hated you,” I whisper. “Yet, I still loved you. Too much, and maybe not enough.”
I stare at her face, searching for some trace of the woman I used to chase through the streets at midnight. The same one I dragged out of too many drug houses to keep tabs, begging her to get clean … to come home.
But that mess of a woman has now gone.
She’s just a body.
A silence that can no longer argue back.
I inhale sharply, blink away the sting in my eyes, and step back. “I hope you finally find peace now, Mum. If you happen to make it through the pearly gates, tell Dad I said hello.”
The second those words leave my mouth, I feel stupid. The only thing I know about the man who helped create me is his name. I don’t even know what he looked like, but she loved him. I know that much. That was the one constant in the chaos that became her life.
I stand there a moment longer, staring at the woman who, in so many ways, was a stranger to me. And I find myself wondering what she was like before her life went to hell. What our lives would’ve looked like if my father hadn’t died in that accident.
If she’d never gotten hooked on her meds?
If she’d had someone to hold her together before she fell apart? I was just a baby when all of that started.
I lean down and press a chaste kiss to her cold skin. I can count on one hand the number of times I did that while she was alive.
Before I draw back, I drop my mouth near her ear. “You don’t get to haunt me anymore,” I say, soft enough that Lucia doesn’t hear.
But even as I reach for my wife’s hand and turn to leave, I know I’m lying.
She will.
The scars that woman left on me are too deep to ever fully heal.
I feel tired, emotionally spent, and so fucking sore by the time we get back to the house.
The drive home was quiet. Not tense, just still.
Lucia curled into my side and held on tight while I sat there, staring out the window, trying to make sense of everything I’d just seen. Trying to find sorrow for the woman who birthed me, even if she never knew how to be a mother.
She’s being transferred to the crematorium in the morning. I’ve decided to have her cremated. I’ve got no fucking clue what I’m going to do with her ashes, though.
I don’t know if there was a place she loved, somewhere that meant something to her, besides her dealer’s front steps. And I can’t even scatter them at my father’s grave, because I don’t know where that is either.
All I have are pieces. Fragments of two people who never got to be whole. And somehow, I’m what’s left of the mess that was once my family.
As soon as we enter the house, Lucia leads me into our bedroom, strips me down to my boxers, and pulls back the covers, instructing me to get in.
It’s amusing to be honest, because I didn’t even have this type of thing as a kid, so being a grown-arse man makes it feel surreal. Like I’m being looked after in a way I didn’t even know I needed.
Once she’s tucked the covers up around my chin, she leans down to brush her lips against mine. “I’ll go get your pain medication.”
I want to reach out, grab her hand, and tell her not to bother. But the truth is, I need them.
If I’ve got any chance of following through with what needs to happen tonight, I’ll need something to take the edge off the pain that’s currently drilling into my side.
Lucia wanted this from the beginning. I was the one who held back. Not because I didn’t want her, but because I didn’t believe any of this would last.
But now I do, and I want it more than anything. She believes in us, and I want to believe in that too.
This isn’t about sex. It’s about claiming the life I didn’t think I could have. Consummating this marriage is about showing her— showing us both—that what we have isn’t a facade anymore.
It’s real.
Maybe it always was, and it’s time I faced the truth and stopped running from it. I’m going to be selfish for once and take something I want.
I’m keeping her.
With a groan of pain, or maybe several, I manage to wriggle out of my boxer briefs and toss them onto the floor beside the bed. My little vixen is in for a surprise when her fingers go wandering tonight, and my cock is already starting to swell with the thought.
My arms are stretched behind my head, elbows relaxed, and my fingers are loosely laced when she walks back in.
Her eyes lock on mine as she approaches with a glass of water in hand.
But the moment she notices the smug curve of my smile, she slows, narrowing her eyes with that look that’s half suspicion, half challenging.
“What are you looking at me like that for?” she asks.
“Like what?”
“Like that,” she answers, pointing to my face. “Like you are up to something.”
I chuckle, but continue to feign innocence. That is, until she starts moving again and spots my discarded boxers now lying on the floor beside the bed. Shit. I never considered that scenario.