Chapter 34 #2
“Thank you,” I say.
Her brows lift slightly.
I take a step closer.
“For keeping me out of prison,” I say. “I have no idea what you told them, but whatever it was, it worked.”
For a second, she just looks at me.
Then she lets out a breath and leans one hip lightly against the edge of the table behind her, takes a small sip of water before setting it on the table.
“It worked enough,” she says.
“Enough’s good.”
“Not if you take it as a sign to do anything remotely similar ever again.”
There it is.
Teresa.
Sharp even when she’s standing in my apartment after waiting for me to get back from federal custody.
I huff a laugh. “Noted.”
Her eyes narrow slightly. “I’m serious.”
“I know.”
The room quiets again.
I study her face, the way tiredness sits around her eyes even though she’s holding herself together beautifully, the way her hair’s a little mussed like she’s been running her hands through it, the fact that she came here anyway.
My chest tightens almost painfully.
“I mean it,” I say, more seriously now. “Thank you.”
Her expression changes a little at that. Softens around the edges, though not all the way.
“They pushed,” she says.
“I figured.”
“They don’t believe me.”
“No,” I say.
It's not a question. More of a confirmation.
Her eyes sharpen on mine.
I let out a breath through my nose and move closer again, enough that there’s only the coffee table between us now.
“They were never going to,” I say. “Not really. Not once they had an excuse to come after my family.”
She watches me for a second, then nods faintly.
“Still,” she says, “I made it harder for them to keep pretending I was helpless. Especially once they insulted me.”
I still.
I know her. At least I think I do. I know the pride, the razor-sharp intelligence, the complete refusal to be patronized. I know the way she pushes back when people underestimate her.
“What’d they say?”
She waves a hand. “The usual misogynistic nonsense. It’s not important.”
My jaw tightens on instinct. “It is to me.”
A faint smile touches her lips, not exactly amused. More… wry. Acknowledging.
“You would say that.”
I say her name then. Low, and without thinking. “Teresa.”
And something in her face shifts at the sound of it.
The composure thins. The carefully constructed distance wavers.
She’s just looking at me, not answering, and in the space between one heartbeat and the next, the tension in the room becomes less about the FBI and more about the fact that she’s in my apartment and I haven’t touched her, and I want to.
So much it’s a physical ache.
I take another step and am stopped by the coffee table between us.
“You shouldn’t have had to do that,” I say anyway.
Her mouth curves, but there’s no humor in it. “No, but it was satisfying.”
I rub a hand over the back of my neck and look away for a second, out at the windows, the city beyond them coming on in lights.
“There are things we need to talk about,” I say.
“Yes.”
She says it so simply that my eyes come back to hers immediately.
No defensiveness. No reluctance. Just agreement.
That almost makes it worse.
Because now the room feels even more like a ledge. One step in either direction changes something.
I nod once. “Yeah.”
Another quiet beat.
Then, because apparently, I’m done pretending distance has changed anything between us, I say, “I missed you.”
The words are out before I can decide whether they’re too much.
Teresa goes very still.
And suddenly I don’t care whether it was too much or not. It’s true.
The week without her was wrong. Every room wrong. Every hour stretched thin and ugly.
Every time I reached for my phone and stopped because Roberto was right and because I’d already done enough damage and because wanting to hear her voice was not, apparently, the same thing as earning it.
So I hold her gaze and let the truth stay where it landed.
“I didn’t know if you wanted this distance,” I say. “Didn’t know if being back home meant you were relieved to be away from me.”
Something flickers across her face.
Pain, maybe. Or recognition of her own version of the same thing.
Then she says, quietly, “No.”
That one word goes through me like heat.
I take another step around the coffee table.
Not close enough to touch her yet.
But close enough that I can see the exact moment her breathing changes.
And I think, with sudden, dangerous clarity, that whatever we have to talk about next, whatever mess is waiting for us after this moment, nothing about seeing her here feels wrong.
It feels like coming back to life.
Unfortunately, it's not the only thing we have to talk about. I take another breath, because if I stop now, I’m not sure I’ll say the next part cleanly.
“There’s something else,” I say.
Teresa’s eyes stay on mine. “Okay.”
I drag a hand over my jaw once, more to buy myself half a second than because I need it.
“You didn’t just keep me out of prison,” I say. “You helped me face something I should’ve faced a long time ago.”
Her expression shifts slightly at that. More focused now.
“Graduate school,” she says, guessing correctly.
I nod once.
“Graduate school,” I repeat. “What I actually want.”
For the first time since I walked into this apartment with her behind me, something in me feels steady. Not easy. Not light. Just decided.
It’s an unfamiliar feeling.
Or maybe not unfamiliar. Just one I haven’t trusted in a long time.
I look at her and say, “I made a decision.”
That gets her full attention.
“What did you decide?” she asks.
I don’t look away and say the words quickly and easily.
“I’m going.”
No hesitation. No qualifiers. No maybe.
Just, I’m going.
A smile immediately spreads across her face, and I know I've made the right decision.
“Vito,” she says quietly.
I keep going before I lose momentum.
“I’m not doing it secretly this time either,” I say. “No hidden applications. No driving back and forth like some kind of double life. No pretending it doesn’t matter enough to say out loud.” I pause. “I’m going to tell my family.”
She exhales slowly, and that sound does more to settle me than any words could have.
“That’s big,” she says.
“Yeah.”
I say it without hesitation, because that’s part of the decision too. Not only the program. Not only Carnegie Mellon. The truth of it. The daylight part. The part I’ve been avoiding almost more than the school itself.
I step closer, not enough to crowd her, just enough to feel closer.
“I’m going to do it all the way,” I say. “Not the hybrid. Not the longer version that lets me keep one foot here and one foot there and pretend I’m managing everything.” I shake my head once. “I’m stepping away. I’m moving to Pennsylvania for the twelve-month program.”
Her eyes search my face.
I can see her registering the full meaning of that. Not just classes. Not just a degree. A real departure. A real break in the structure of my life.
“It’s faster,” I say. “Cleaner. Less messy than trying to patch it into everything here.”
Then, because I owe her the fuller truth, I add, “And more than that, I think I need the time away.”
That hangs there for a second.
I don’t try to soften it or explain around it because she already knows. Hell, she knew before I did.
I need the time away.
From my father. From the role. From the person everyone expects me to be every time I walk into the room.
Maybe even from the version of myself that only knows how to keep becoming what other people already believe.
Teresa looks at me for a long moment.
Not analyzing now. Not pushing. Just looking.
Then she says, softly and with complete certainty, “I think that’s great.”
The simple words mean more coming from her than a million congratulations from anybody else.
Because she means it.
I can tell she means it.
And because she means it, I feel something in my chest loosen that I didn’t even realize I was still bracing.
The relief of her saying that stays in my chest for exactly one breath.
Then the next part shows up.
The part I’ve been circling ever since I decided. The part that seemed simpler in my head every single time I ran through it alone, but feels a hell of a lot less simple with her standing here in front of me, soft-eyed and so damn real.
I can feel the nervousness start up almost immediately.
Which is ridiculous.
I have sat across from federal agents today. I have stood in my father’s office while the man implied the family’s usual solutions might include Teresa.
I have made a decision that is going to detonate my entire life the second I say it out loud to my family.
And somehow this is what makes me restless.
This.
I shift my weight, then hate that I’m doing it because it makes me feel like a teenager trying to work up the nerve to ask a girl to prom instead of a grown man standing in his own apartment.
Teresa sees it. Of course she does.
Her head tilts just slightly. “What?”
I let out a breath through my nose and look away for one second, out toward the city lights, then back to her.
“There’s more,” I say.
“Okay,” she says carefully. “What is it?”
I drag a hand over the back of my neck, then drop it, because stalling isn’t going to make this easier.
“I know you have your own life to get back to,” I say. “Your work. Your home. Everything that existed before I dragged you into…” I gesture once between us, the apartment, the whole mess. “All of this.”
She doesn’t interrupt.
That somehow makes it harder.
I keep going.
“I know things between us are complicated beyond reason.” A humorless breath leaves me. “That’s probably the understatement of the year, but still.” I pause. “And I know what I did to start all of this.”
A statement heavier than the rest.
The kidnapping.
The island.
The beginning none of this can ever quite outrun, no matter what grew after it.
My jaw tightens, but I make myself keep talking.
“I know I don’t get to stand here and act like any of this happened under normal circumstances,” I say. “I know that.”
Her eyes stay locked on mine, and I can’t tell yet what she’s thinking. Only that she’s listening. Really listening.
So I step into it.
“I’ll be gone for twelve months,” I say. “Then I’ll be back.”
A small silence.
I can feel my own pulse now in my throat, slow and heavy.
Christ.
I’ve already gone over this in my head a hundred different ways, and none of them prepared me for the reality of actually having to say it to her face.
Still, I force the rest out.
“Would you consider…” I stop, because I like to think I do still have a limit, then start again more bluntly. “Would you consider doing a long-distance thing?”
There.
It’s out.
No dressing it up. No clever phrasing. No pretending I’m asking for something smaller or less important.
I shift restlessly again and hate that too.
“The drive’s only a few hours,” I say quickly, because silence is suddenly unbearable. “It’s not like I’m moving across the country. And I know we’re not exactly…” I trail off and gesture once, frustrated with language all over again. “I know we’re not exactly in a traditional relationship.”
That sounds worse out loud than it did in my head.
I push on anyway.
“I know I have no right to ask this,” I say. “I know that too. But I’d kick myself if I didn’t at least try.”
The room goes very still.
Teresa’s face changes, but only slightly. Enough that I know something in me is already bracing before she even answers.
She lets out a breath.
Then she says, quietly, “I’m sorry, Vito, but I have no interest in a long-distance thing.”
I've gotten in a lot of fights in my life. Been hit in the face, chest, gut with fists, guns, bats, all sorts of things.
No blow has ever crushed me like those words.