Chapter 29
Chapter Twenty Nine
Teresa
By lunchtime, I know two things for certain.
One, Vito does not want to talk about this anymore.
And two, I am absolutely going to make him.
The entire morning after that conversation in bed has been one long exercise in evasion. Not obvious evasion—he is too smart for that, and too used to people reacting to his moods for him to make it clumsy.
But evasion all the same.
He shifted the subject when it got too close. Then he shifted it again. Then he disappeared into practical things.
Showering. Coffee. Breakfast. Dishes. Checking something on the back deck. Pretending he needed to go down to the generator shed. Anything but sitting in the truth of what we had just uncovered.
Or rather, what I uncovered, and he finally stopped denying.
The three-month deadline.
Carnegie Mellon.
The deferred acceptance.
The fact that everything he has been doing—everything—spirals back to one basic, terrifying question: whether he is willing to choose a life that was never handed to him.
And ever since that moment, he has been trying to outrun it.
Unfortunately for him, we are on an island.
There is only so much geography available for avoidance.
Now I am sitting at the kitchen island, one knee bent on the stool, watching him make lunch while pretending this is a normal afternoon and not the aftermath of one of the most emotionally revealing conversations we have had since he dragged me here.
The kitchen is bright with midday light, all white stone and pale wood, and the tropical garden outside the window blazing green beyond the glass.
The air-conditioning is fighting a losing battle against the heat pressing in from outside, and there is a sheen of warmth over everything despite the cool air on my skin.
I changed after our conversation into one of the lighter things from the closet, and now I’m in a loose top and a skirt that would have made the pre-kidnapping version of me roll her eyes at herself.
He is at the counter with a cutting board and a dish of marinated chicken, sliding pieces onto skewers with too much focus to be entirely about lunch.
That is another thing I know for certain.
Vito cooks when he wants his hands busy.
He cooks when he is trying to think around something.
Right now, he is threading chicken and peppers with the concentration of a man disarming a bomb.
I watch him for another ten seconds, maybe fifteen.
The tendons in his forearm shift as he works. His shoulders are tense. His face is neutral in a way that tells me he is very much not neutral at all.
He knows I’m watching.
He doesn’t look up.
Fine.
I say, “You want to go.”
The skewer stops halfway to the dish.
He sets it down with deliberate care and resumes as if I haven’t spoken.
I fold my arms over the edge of the island and tilt my head.
“I know you heard me.”
“I heard you.”
His tone is flat.
Excellent.
“Good,” I say. “Then we can stop pretending.”
He slides another piece of chicken onto the skewer and says, “Or we could do the opposite of that.”
I almost smile.
Because there is something absurdly familiar about this now. The two of us circling each other in kitchens and studies and beach cabanas, him trying to wall something off and me refusing to let him.
“You want to go,” I repeat.
This time, he lets out a breath through his nose, sharp and irritated, then sets the skewer down harder than before.
Not slammed.
But close.
He turns to the sink and washes his hands, his movements careful and controlled. Then he braces his hands on the island across from me and looks at me with an expression halfway between exasperation and accusation.
“Will you just let it go?”
“No.”
The answer comes out so quickly that it surprises even me a little.
His eyes narrow.
“Not a chance,” I say. “Not until you admit that you want to go.”
“I’m not admitting anything.”
“Because you don’t know?”
“Because I don’t know,” he bites out.
I study his face for a second.
The man would be more convincing if his entire body were not reacting like I have a finger pressed straight into a bruise.
“You do know,” I say.
His mouth hardens.
“You just don’t like the answer.”
He laughs once, humorless and low. “You really don’t know when to stop, do you?”
I lean one elbow on the island and rest my chin lightly on my hand, making no move whatsoever to soften the point.
“No,” I say. “Not when someone is trying this hard not to tell the truth.”
“Christ.”
He turns away from me then, reaches for another skewer, then seems to think better of it and just stands there with one hand flat on the counter.
I watch the tension move through his shoulders.
I know I’m pushing.
I know exactly where.
I also know that if I let him retreat now, he’ll disappear into himself again, and I’ll spend the next three days excavating the same ground I’ve already exposed.
No, not happening.
“You wouldn’t have concocted this whole kidnapping,” I say, keeping my tone even, “if you didn’t want to go.”
He whips around.
I hold his gaze.
He looks offended.
“Don’t,” he warns.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“Like what? Accurately?”
His jaw tightens.
I go on before he can shut this down.
“You either took me because you wanted me to convince you to go,” I say, counting it off calmly, “or because you wanted me to convince you that you don’t really want to go.”
He opens his mouth.
I keep going.
“And both of those start from the same place, Vito. Both of those begin with this mattering so much to you that you panicked.”
“Teresa—”
“No.” I sit up straighter on the stool. “You don’t get to tell me to stop when I’m the first person you’ve told the truth to in years.”
He goes still.
That hits close to home. I know it does.
Which is exactly why I don’t back off.
“You did not stalk a psychologist, drug her, put her on a private island, and spend weeks unraveling because of something you don’t actually want,” I say. “That is not how it works.”
His eyes are on me now with full intensity, dark and direct and more alive than they have been since breakfast.
“That is a hell of a speech,” he says.
“It’s also correct.”
He pushes away from the counter and turns back to the skewers, but now there is no pretense that he’s actually focused on them. He picks one up, stares at it, puts it back down.
“You think you have it all figured out,” he mutters.
“No,” I say. “I think I have this figured out.”
That earns me another sharp glance over his shoulder.
I continue anyway.
“You want to go.”
“I said I don’t know.”
“And I’m saying that’s not true.”
He spins around fully this time.
“You don’t get to decide that for me.”
“Then decide it yourself and say it out loud.”
His nostrils flare slightly.
There is a long, taut second where I half expect him to leave the kitchen entirely.
But then I remember, and apparently so does he.
There really isn’t anywhere he can go.
Not if he wants actual distance.
The deck leads to the beach, the beach leads to the cabanas, the cabanas lead back here. The workout hut would only buy him an hour, maybe two. The study, the sitting room, the hallway—none of them are escape routes. Not really.
We are trapped on an island in the middle of nowhere.
His gaze shifts to the open doors, then to the windows, then back to me.
There is nowhere to go.
At least not without taking me with him.
“You are impossible,” he says.
I smile faintly. “And you’re avoiding the obvious.”
He drags a hand over his face.
I can see the war in him so clearly now that it’s almost painful to watch. Not because he’s subtle about it, but because he isn’t subtle anymore.
Not with me. Not here. One part of him wants to hold the line, keep this slippery, keep it undefined.
Another part is tired. Tired enough to let me drag things into the open and hate me for it, while also being relieved someone finally did.
It occurs to me, not for the first time, that this is probably what makes us so dangerous together. I keep pushing where he least wants to be touched, and once I get there, he cannot stop himself from bleeding truth.
“You want my professional opinion?” I ask.
He lets out a sound that is almost a laugh. “Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
That earns a look from him.
I continue before he can decide whether to be offended.
“My professional opinion,” I say, “is that your problem is not uncertainty. Your problem is that you know exactly what you want and you are terrified of what wanting it says about you.”
His expression goes flat.
I lean forward slightly.
“You got in,” I say. “You accepted the deferral. You kept the deadline alive. You did not tear up the acceptance letter and move on with your life. You built this entire insane scenario instead.”
“I know what I did.”
“Then stop acting like it was random.”
He says nothing.
I keep going.
“You want to go.”
He looks at me with a kind of contained fury that would be intimidating if I hadn’t already seen what it costs him to keep that fury contained.
“Say I do,” he says finally, voice low and rough. “Then what?”
There it is.
Not a denial. A challenge.
I sit with that for half a second, then answer carefully.
“Then we stop talking about this like the problem is whether you want it,” I say. “And we start talking about the real problem, which is why you’re so afraid to choose it.”
His stare doesn’t move from my face.
I can almost see him recalculating in real time, realizing I’ve shifted the battlefield.
Too bad.
“You think I’m afraid of school?” he asks.
“No.” I hop down from the stool and stand, because somehow it has become impossible to stay sitting while he’s over there radiating that much agitation. “I think you’re afraid of what happens if you stop being exactly who they expect you to be.”
“Who says I’m exactly who they expect me to be now?”
I pause.
That is the first honest pushback I’ve gotten on this particular point.
I take a step toward the island, resting my palms on the cool stone.
“Not exactly,” I say. “But enough.”