Chapter 6 #3
“But you can be responsible for your own actions,” he argues.
“I thought I could move past it. And I did, in so many ways. In others, it was just buried in a shallow hole, and it was often exposed to the elements or stumbled on when I least expected it. Sometimes, I’d imagine how things could have been different, but that’s useless and frustrating.
Imagination does nothing other than create a figment of itself that causes you to pine for it and makes you feel worse.
” His eyes flick down to the table, then back to my face.
The shadows in them crush my chest. “I’m sure you think I’m quite black hearted. ”
“I like black hearts. They’re so much better than the red ones. But I have to say, the purple ones are the best, though.”
“I want to have my life back. Not the old life I gave up, but the old old life. The old me before… before I… was anything at all.”
I set my plate down on one of the chairs so freaking fast. Then, I just stand there.
Fighting everything in my body that screams at me to close the four feet of distance between us, but in that space, all the complications of why I can’t do that hang heavily.
I don’t have any right to touch him, not even a brush of my finger over his hand.
“You were something. You were a lot of somethings.” Words don’t begin to do anything justice. Not when a hug would convey everything I want to say.
“That came out wrong,” he says, and his hands clench his jeans like he physically needs to restrain them. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to.”
His face goes from reluctant to fuck it in five seconds. He’s going to attempt to explain, even though he just said he has no idea how. “That accident changed so much for me. Physically, mentally. I have scars on top of scars, and most of them aren’t visible.”
His eyes were darting around the cabin before this, but right now, they are sweeping to my face and locking in.
He’s trying to do what I wanted to do, which is to convey everything he’s feeling with a single glance.
I can’t possibly unpack that. There’s so much there, but I still try, falling into those alluring green depths.
I find myself swaying toward him even though my feet are locked in place.
It’s a battle of my will against my body.
If I move an inch, I know I’m going to break.
“Then you came,” he says softly.
A shiver breaks over me, rattling my insides like a wolf snapping at the bars of a cage.
I’m suddenly drenched in the same exact sensation I had standing in Luca’s kitchen yesterday.
It’s something I can only describe as a primal longing mixed with what feels like hunger.
The kind of hunger I’ve always kept locked away in the unknown chambers of my heart and the unexplored parts of my mind.
I’ve wanted to do life with abandon, but something has always stopped me.
Expectations. Rules. The limitations I’ve put on myself.
I’ve always held something back, afraid to give everything I have to just one thing because if that thing breaks, then it’ll all be gone in an instant.
I watched the passion bleed out of my parents, year after year, and I was powerless to give them back their joy.
I never knew what it was exactly, until this moment, but looking back now, I can see that if there is anything even close to magic, it was the loss of that, and hope, that bled them into where they are now.
And it’s not Luca’s fault.
It’s not mine either.
But maybe witnessing it enough stopped me from ever telling them what I truly wanted to do with my life.
It stopped me from ever telling anyone.
I went to business school, not culinary school.
I dated, but I never found anyone I wanted to let close.
I have friends, but no one who properly and truly knows the heart of me.
I love my parents so much, but even they don’t know what’s in my heart.
Maybe I’ve hidden that from myself, too, never fully daring to let it loose because once you open the lid on that, there’s no stuffing it all back inside.
Case in point: Pandora.
I’ve been lost in my head while Luca was probably waiting for me to say something. He grasps the chair in front of him like he needs the support, his knuckles whitening against the curved backrest.
“You saw more than just the ones on my face,” he tells me.
“And I saw the ones I left on you before you were even born, because I left them behind in your life as a legacy. That was wrong, and now I know for certain what I left behind. I can’t undo it, but I do want to change it.
I didn’t mean to start a slow unraveling that would end in absolute destruction. ”
I try to force a smile. It’s hard when the ground seems to be moving in waves beneath my feet. “That might be a little extreme.”
“Is it? I seemed to have stolen your dad’s fire and light.”
Jesus, that curse. There’s no such thing as a curse, and there’s no such thing as magic. Just what people do and say, and how others take it and choose to live with it after.
“Dampened it, maybe. But I do believe in every single person being responsible for their reactions and how they fix or don’t fix themselves.
As you said, it’s been a long time. I don’t even fully agree with my dad’s request.” I shrug helplessly.
“I just didn’t know what else to do. I knew I couldn’t fix anything, and I didn’t expect you to either.
I just thought that maybe if I came out here, I could change my dad’s perspective and help him see that the fire was there all along.
It’s hard to get rid of the coals. They’re the most dangerous part.
They’re still under there, glowing hot, waiting for their revival. ”
He grabs a piece of pizza and holds it up in the air above his face before bringing it to his mouth.
Then, he bites and chews, and I’m mesmerized.
I hoped he’d come here, but I didn’t truly think he would.
Now he’s here, and he’s saying exactly what I wanted him to say, so why am I so unprepared for it?
Why do I have zero defenses when it comes to this man?
With him, I’ve been stripped bare from the beginning.
The lifetime we could have had never happened. If it had, I know I never would have kissed him. He would have been like an uncle to me, and good god, I’m not judging anyone, but the amount of uncle fucking stories that people I know have been talking about lately are just… a lot.
We have a past, but we also don’t.
Maybe that’s why it was so personal from the first second I met Luca. I’m not going to call it easy, but it was like meeting that special friend who was going to be monumental in your life and knowing it immediately because your heart and soul recognized it before your brain ever caught up.
“I’ve swallowed a lot of pride these past years,” Luca says before he takes another bite.
He chews slowly, like the pizza is really that good.
I haven’t tried it yet, but I doubt pepperoni and cheese are exotic tastes.
“Life opened up my mouth and poured itself in so I couldn’t help but swallow or choke and die. ”
“That’s a very horror movie image.”
“Alright, I’m no stranger to swallowing and… oh, good god.”
He cuts himself off, struggling not to laugh. I have to angle away so I’m looking at the window and not him, or I’m going to make that wild sort of laughter that bursts out without warning and ends up in tears and snorting.
“You were thinking about making amends. I hear you. That’s very noble,” I say.
“I don’t want to have a hard heart. I’m a different person, and I live alone, but I’ve never tried to become an ogre. I just didn’t know what else to do. Even back when I was working at my restaurants, I was notoriously soft-hearted. Maybe too much.”
“That’s the thing about being kind. People take advantage, or they try to take it all for themselves, and it’s exhausting. It’s harder to maintain goodness than anything else,” I say with a sigh.
“You had good vibes. You might have created a dishonest situation, but I don’t think everything you said and did was a lie.”
I spin around, gaping at him. Kindness wasn’t something I figured would be on the menu today.
I was fully prepared for a seven-course meal of retribution.
“It wasn’t. At all. It was all a big lead-up to getting there.
Lies to try and tell you the truth. And yes, I know we’ve been over that.
I do know how stupid and wrong it is. I’d apologize again, but I know sorry doesn’t fix anything. ”
He’s eaten everything but the crust. Watching him nibble it is another special brand of hell. Also? What. The. Fuck. Right. Now. Ovaries?
“What am I going to do?” He takes a bite, chews, and studies me so intently that my drowning is official. Drowning in his eyes. In him. In sensation. “Not accept your apology and spend another twenty-some years regretting it? That would be the ultimate stupidity, wouldn’t it?”
“You can still go back and see my dad without forgiving me,” I point out.
Whatever he’s about to say in reply is suddenly cut off by an ungodly scream from outside.
I whip around and rush to the closest window.
I grasp the edge of the sink and lean in to get a better view of the front yard.
It was sunny just a few minutes ago, but everything is grey now.
From what I can see beyond the overhang of the porch, the sky is completely leaden.
The trees are twisting and bending at funny angles as gusts of wind scream through them.
Thank goodness that seems to have been the terrible sound, not mountain lions or something.
Or bears.
Or wolves.
Or werebearwolves.
“Holy banana cream pies, why is it getting so windy out there?”
“Probably a freak storm blowing up. It happens out here,” he answers as he finishes the pizza crust, seemingly completely unbothered that said freak storm looks like it’s gearing up to annihilate us out here.
“The pizza’s pretty good, actually. I give it a solid six, but it gets another two points for being fucking massive. ”
Another gust of wind practically rocks the cabin as it hits. I grasp the sink and counter a little bit tighter, like that could actually save me. “It sounds like it’s going to blow this place right off its foundation. Wait. This does have a foundation, doesn’t it?”
That’s as much as I get out before the rain lets loose.
Torrentially. It beats against the roof and washes down the side windows of the cabin so hard that I can’t see anything past the bubbling, frothing mass of it.
The only window that has any kind of view is this one, but all I can see is the porch and the wall of water coming straight down off the overhang.
It looks like rapids. This is the kind of rain that could soak a yard in minutes.
The kind that could literally cause flash flooding.
In here, it’s perfectly dry, and the roof doesn’t have any leaks. So far.
I turn away from the window and meet Luca’s gaze again. He studies me. I stare back. We’re probably being weird right now, but I think we’ve both come to the same realization. Until this storm stops, we’re basically stuck in here.
Together.