Chapter 42 Marcello
Marcello
The vending machine hated me.
I fed it coins it didn’t want and punched buttons that blinked back at me like a challenge. The coffee inside rattled and groaned, then stalled halfway through dispensing, the cup crooked and dripping like it was bleeding out.
“Of course,” I muttered. “Now you decide to die.”
I hit the side of the machine with the flat of my hand—once, twice—harder than necessary. The cup lurched, then dropped. Lukewarm coffee sloshed dangerously close to the rim.
“Easy, killer.”
Tone’s shoulder bumped mine, light but deliberate. Grounding. I hadn’t heard her approach.
She reached past me, fed the machine again, and somehow coaxed out two cups without violence. She handed one to me, took the other, and nodded down the hall.
“Come on, let’s sit.”
I hesitated.
The machines behind Samira’s door hummed softly, a slow mechanical breathing that had become my anchor. Proof she was still here. Proof I hadn’t lost everything. Leaving—even for a minute—felt like tempting fate.
Tone saw it on my face.
“She’s stable,” she said gently. “You’re allowed to blink.”
I followed her anyway.
We sat in the waiting room closest to Samira’s room. It was empty. Too unnaturally still.
I sank into the chair and tipped my head back, staring at the ceiling tiles. I exhaled hard, and it felt like the first breath I’d taken in days.
Tone watched me over the rim of her cup. “How are you doing?”
I laughed once. It came out wrong. “Is that a trick question?”
She didn’t smile.
I lowered my head and stared at the coffee in my hands. It had gone untouched.
“I don’t know. I’m here. She’s alive. Everything else feels… irrelevant.”
Tone nodded slowly. “Fair. But you can’t neglect yourself, Marcello. You need a change of clothes. A shower. You need to rest.”
I shook my head once, resolute. “I’m not leaving.”
“I figured.” Tone leaned back in her chair, exhaustion finally winning. “She relaxes when you’re there. Her vitals even out. Even the nurses noticed.”
I swallowed.
“When she wakes,” I started, the words already formed, already decided, “I’m taking her home.”
Tone’s head snapped toward me. “Marcello.”
“She doesn’t go back to a boarding house,” I continued. “She doesn’t go somewhere small and temporary like she’s waiting to disappear. She comes home with me.”
Tone studied me for a long moment before she spoke again, as though weighing her words first.
“No,” she disagreed. “You don’t get to decide that.”
I turned to face her fully. “I’m not abandoning her again.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“I don’t care if she hates me,” I pushed on, my voice rough. “I don’t care if she never forgives me. She’s not going back to some temporary place where she’s alone with her nightmares and no one watching her back. The girl is a walking magnet for trouble.”
Tone leaned in, eyes blazing. “You can’t save her by caging her.”
That stopped me cold.
She softened just a fraction. “Say what you really mean.”
I swallowed.
“She’s my home,” I murmured. “And I didn’t realize it until she was bleeding out on that riverbank.”
The words felt like a confession. Like truth finally swimming its way to the surface.
“She stepped into my life and—” I shook my head. “The noise stopped. The chaos. The rage. She steadied me without even trying.”
Tone watched me closely now. Measuring.
“I’ve lived my entire life balancing violence and control,” I reminded her. “She’s the only thing that ever tipped the scale toward something… human.”
“And you hurt her,” Tone reminded me. She wasn’t saying it to be cruel. She was giving me her honesty.
“I did.”
“She may never trust you again.”
“I know.”
“She may never love you.”
“I know that, too.”
Tone exhaled slowly. “Then what exactly are you promising her?”
I didn’t hesitate.
“That I will spend the rest of my life earning the right to stand beside her,” I vowed. “That I will never again decide what’s best for her without her consent. That I will protect her without possessing her.”
Tone’s eyes glistened despite herself.
“She has trauma stacked on trauma, Marcello,” she reminded me. “Healing isn’t linear. Some days she’ll look at you and see salvation. Other days she’ll see the monster you are.”
“I’ll take both. I deserve both.”
Silence stretched between us.
Finally, Tone nodded. Once. “If she says no—”
“I’ll step back. But I’ll watch her from a distance regardless.”
“That’s the difference,” Tone murmured softly. “That’s what she needs.”
Her voice carried none of the clinical detachment she used with patients. This was softer. Human.
I glanced back toward her hospital room. It was only a few steps away, but the distance felt enormous.
My chest tightened.
“She held me steady when everything in me wanted to burn.” My voice was barely a whisper. “I didn’t even realize she was doing it. She just… existed. That’s all it took.”
I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck, trying to find the words that had been grinding around in my chest for days.
“And suddenly I wasn’t alone in my own head anymore.”
Tone studied me for a long moment. There was something sad in her expression. Not pity—Tone didn’t do pity—but recognition. Like she had been waiting for me to reach this point and had already accepted what it meant.
“You’re in love with her,” she announced gently.
The words didn’t feel like a question.
They landed heavy. Permanent.
For a moment I didn’t answer. Because saying it out loud meant acknowledging everything that came with it—the damage I had done, the distance between us, the possibility that she might never look at me the same way ever again.
But silence wasn’t going to change the reality of it.
“Yes.”
The word was barely a whisper.
“I think I have been since the moment I brought her home.”
The confession settled between us.
Tone let out a slow breath.
“And you’re prepared to wait?”
I didn’t hesitate.
“For as long as it takes.”
If that meant months. Years. If it meant she walked away and never looked back. It didn’t matter.
Tone reached out and gripped my arm. Firm. Grounding. The kind of grip that made sure you were listening.
“Then don’t fuck this up again.”
There was no accusation in her voice. Just truth.
I almost smiled. Because she was right. I had already fucked it up once. In a dark alley with a decision I couldn’t undo.
Every step Samira took toward healing now was happening despite me—not because of me.
When I finally stepped back toward her hospital room, the hallway felt more stifling than before. Even the air seemed to hold its breath.
I could hear her inside. The faint shift of sheets. The soft rhythm of her breathing.
Alive.
I didn’t step inside. Instead I stayed where I was. Standing there. Guarding. Waiting.
Because loving Samira wasn’t about fixing what had been broken. It wasn’t about saving her or claiming some twisted redemption for myself.
It was something far more humbling than that.
It meant standing beside her while she fought her way back to herself.
Watching her rebuild the pieces of a life that had been torn apart long before I ever found her.
And if she allowed me to remain close enough to witness that—if she chose, even once, to look at me without fear—then that would be more mercy than I deserved.