Chapter 28 #2
“What do you want me to say?” His voice is too calm. Too controlled. “She’s safe. She’s happy. She has someone. That’s what we wanted for her.”
“That’s not.” I stop. Take a breath. “That’s not what we wanted. We wanted to find her. We wanted to be with her. We wanted…”
“We wanted her alive.” He cuts me off. “We wanted her not dead in a ditch because Sal found her first. She’s alive. She’s more than alive. She’s thriving.”
“With someone else.”
“Yes.” He turns away. Walks to the window. Looks out at nothing. “With someone else. Someone who can give her a normal life. Someone who won’t get her killed.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend you’re okay with this.” I cross the room. Get in his space. “I saw your face when I told you. You’re not okay. You’re fucking dying inside, same as me.”
“What I feel doesn’t matter.”
“Bullshit.”
He spins around. And there it is, the thing he’s been hiding. The rage. The grief. The same devastation I’ve been carrying for hours.
“What do you want me to do?” His voice cracks. Actually cracks, Dario Marchetti who never loses control. “Storm into Colorado? Drag her out of her bakery? Tell her she has to choose us over the man who’s been there for her? The man who didn’t tell her to stay away because he was scared?”
The words hit like a punch.
“That’s not what happened.”
“I told you to watch her. You fell in love with her. And then you told her to stay away because Sal was getting suspicious.” He’s in my face now, closer than he’s ever been, anger radiating off him like heat.
“You pushed her away. You gave her a reason to think we didn’t want her.
And then you’re surprised she found someone else? ”
“I was trying to protect her!”
“You were trying to protect yourself!” His hand slams against the wall beside my head. “You were scared of what Sal would do so you pushed her away and now she’s gone and it’s on you, Enzo. It’s on you.”
I snap. Don’t think. Just move.
My good hand fists in his shirt, shoves him back against the wall. He doesn’t resist, just lets me pin him there, breathing hard, both of us vibrating with something that wants to turn violent.
“I loved her,” I snarl. “I showed her that and then she was gone. I didn’t push her away. I was coming back. I was always going to come back.”
“But you weren’t there.”
“Neither were you! You were here, hiding behind your unlocked door, waiting for her to come to you. You never went to her. Never took the risk. You just waited.”
His eyes flash. “I was protecting her from a distance.”
“You were protecting yourself from rejection.” I lean closer. “You’re so fucking scared of wanting something you can’t control that you let her slip through your fingers. And now you want to blame me?”
We stare at each other. Both of us broken by losing her. Both of us looking for someone to blame.
“Let go of me,” Dario says quietly.
I don’t.
“Enzo. Let go.”
Something in his voice cuts through the rage. Not fear. Not anger. Exhaustion.
I release his shirt. Step back.
He straightens his collar. Adjusts his sleeves. Puts himself back together piece by piece.
But his hands are shaking.
“We both fucked up,” he says finally. “Both of us. We were so careful, so cautious, so afraid of putting her in danger that we pushed her toward the one person who could actually be with her.”
“The Marshal.”
“The Marshal.” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “The safest man she could have chosen. The one who won’t get her killed. The one who can give her a normal life.”
“She doesn’t want normal. She never wanted normal.”
“Maybe she learned to want it.” He meets my eyes. “Maybe disappearing twice taught her that safe is better than seen.”
“So what do we do?” I ask. “Just let her go? Pretend we don’t know where she is? Move on?”
“Can you move on?”
No. The answer is immediate. Absolute.
I can’t move on. I can’t forget her. I can’t pretend that what we had was nothing, that she’s just some woman I used to know, that my heart isn’t still in that apartment with her.
“No,” I say out loud.
“Neither can I.” Dario walks to the bar. Pours two drinks. Hands me one. “So we figure out what to do about it.”
“What is there to do? She’s happy. She’s with someone. We’re the dangerous past she left behind.”
“She left because she had to. Not because she wanted to.” He downs his drink. Pours another. “She left us notes. Cookies. She didn’t choose to go.”
“That was six weeks ago. A lot can change in six weeks.”
“Yes. It can.” He looks at me. “Or it can’t. We don’t know what she wants. What she feels. You’re making assumptions based on a kiss you weren’t supposed to see.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying we don’t know enough.” He sets down his glass. “I’m saying before we decide to walk away, we should at least ask her. Give her the choice.”
“And if she chooses him?”
“Then we have our answer.” His jaw tightens. “But at least she’ll know. At least she won’t spend the rest of her life wondering if we forgot about her. If we stopped looking. If we didn’t care enough to find her.”
He’s right. I hate that he’s right.
“How?” I ask.
“Chocolates. Like before.” He moves toward his desk. “A note. Simple. Just asking if she’s okay. Letting her know we found her. Giving her the option to respond.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Then we leave her alone.”
Can I do that? If she doesn’t respond, if she chooses her new life over us, can I actually walk away?
I look at my ruined hand. The blood seeping through the bandage. The evidence of how well I’m handling this so far.
“I don’t know if I can let her go,” I admit.
“Neither do I.” Dario’s voice is rough. “But we have to try. For her. We have to at least give her the choice.”
I nod. Can’t speak.
He starts writing. Expensive stationery. Neat handwriting.
Are you okay? - D
Three words. The same question they kept asking each other, over and over, because it was the only way they knew how to say I love you without saying it.
“I’ll send them tomorrow,” he says. “She’ll have them by end of week.”
“And then?”
“And then we wait.”
I finish my drink. Set down the glass. My hand is throbbing. My chest is hollow. Everything I thought I knew about what comes next has shattered.
But there’s something underneath the pain. Something that feels almost like hope.
She’s alive. She’s safe. She’s building a life. And soon she’ll know we never stopped looking.
What she does with that information is up to her.
I just hope, fuck, I hope so hard it hurts, that she still wants us in her life.
But what if she doesn’t respond? What if the note sits on her counter next to Saul’s coffee mug and she throws it away?
What if she’s so happy in her new life that hearing from us is just a reminder of the dangerous past she escaped?
What if I spend the rest of my life waiting for an answer that never comes?
Even a piece of her. Even a fraction. Even just knowing she’s okay.
It would be enough. It would have to be enough.
Because the alternative is nothing.
And nothing is unbearable.