Twelve #3
That hits harder than I want it to. Lands like a physical blow because it’s true and the truth stings more than any lie could.
I was so forgettable, so insignificant, that even ruining my life didn’t register as memorable.
I swallow around the lump forming in my throat, around the grief trying to claw its way out.
“That supposed to make me feel better?”
“No.” He holds my eyes and doesn’t look away, which is worse than if he had. “Worse.”
He’s on his feet by the time the word lands, the distance gone before I register he moved. The admission cost him something. I can see it in the set of his shoulders, the way he won’t quite meet my gaze.
Good. Let it cost him. Let it carve out a space inside him that aches the way mine has for years.
The building shudders around us. Neither of us looks away.
“Worse how?” I ask because I need the answer, even if it guts me.
He breathes out slow, deliberate, like he’s trying to find words that won’t make this worse. The edges of him look tired, a man running on fumes.
“Being around you—” A shake of his head, dark hair falling across his forehead. He drags a hand through it, leaving it messier. “It’s not helping. Knowing what I did. Seeing you here and knowing I can’t undo it. That I don’t even have the right to—”
He stops himself. Swallows whatever the rest of that sentence was going to be.
My laugh is a shard of glass, cutting us both. “That the line you use on all the girls you ruin? The tortured guilt thing? Because I gotta tell you, Castellano, it needs work.”
The words are venom, designed to wound. They hit their mark—I see it in the way he flinches. But there’s something else there too. Something raw that makes my stomach twist in a way I don’t want to examine.
A vicious gust shoves the bar hard enough to jar my balance, the floor bucking under my boots like a living thing trying to throw me off.
His hand snaps out, catching my elbow before I can stumble.
Even through the layers—my flannel, his palm—the heat of his touch hits like voltage, electric and unwelcome and entirely too potent for something that should mean nothing.
The contact lingers a second too long. His fingers, broad and warm, press just firmly enough that I feel the ghost of them even as I jerk away. My skin remembers where he touched me, burns with it, and I hate that I notice. Hate that some treacherous part of me doesn’t want to pull away at all.
“Careful,” he says, and his voice is rough like gravel.
I yank free like his touch scalds, the contact burning even after I break it. My pulse hammers in my throat, visible proof of how rattled I am. “Don’t touch me.”
The words hang there, loaded with everything we’re not saying.
So does the thing underneath it—the air charged with proximity and history and the way we’re both breathing too fast for a conversation that was never going to be simple.
For two people who should hate each other cleanly, without this complicated heat threading through every interaction.
His eyes drop to my mouth. Just for a heartbeat. Just long enough that I know he did, that it wasn’t an accident or coincidence. Then they snap back up, guilt burning through whatever’s left of his composure.
He takes a half step back, putting necessary, suffocating distance between us. I retreat to my stool, my hands trembling just enough that I hide them under the mahogany.
We eat without speaking. My stew has gone lukewarm, the fat in the rich broth starting to congeal along the edges of the ceramic bowl.
The rosemary tastes dull now, the meat heavy and metallic on my tongue, but I force another spoonful down.
I need the calories to fight the cold, and I’m not about to let a little congealed fat make me push my bowl away.
I have endured a hell of a lot worse than cold soup.
But the silence is what really makes it hard to swallow. It fills up with all the things we’re not saying, pressing against my sternum until it feels more suffocating than the storm outside. After a while, I can’t stand it.
“For the record,” I say, looking into my bowl, “I don’t care what you remember. I care what you do now.”
There’s a long pause. “I know,” he says.
When I finally look up, he’s watching me. Brows furrowing slightly, his eyes tracing my face like he’s trying to piece together fragments of a torn photograph.
Another tremor runs through the floor. I grip the edge of the bar until my knuckles ache.
My hatred for Gabriel Castellano has been a ghost I could fight.
But the man two feet away from me is solid flesh and bone.
I’m hyper-aware of him in a way that feels like a betrayal to myself—the sound of his breathing, the warmth radiating from his body in the growing cold, the bruise on his cheekbone that proves he’s not untouchable.
He’s no longer just a memory. He’s here.
And that reality is a current humming between us, potent and unwelcome.
The wind screams. The building holds.
And we’re trapped here together all night.