EPILOGUE 2
Roxanne
The strange thing about healing was that nobody ever told you how quiet it became once it stopped hurting loudly.
For years, I thought healing would feel monumental.
Like some undeniable shift inside me. A moment where the memories transformed into something easier to carry, where the twelve-year-old version of me finally loosened her hands from around my throat, and I would wake up as someone lighter. Easier to live inside.
But that wasn’t what happened. Healing arrived slowly enough that most days, I only recognised it in hindsight. In the way I no longer flinched when someone walked too closely behind me. In the nights I no longer woke up gasping for air, convinced I was trapped somewhere I couldn’t escape.
Healing, I learned, wasn’t linear enough to feel heroic. It was quieter than that. It was repetition. Safety. Being loved consistently enough that my body stopped expecting pain to follow tenderness.
For so long, I thought what happened to me had split something open permanently.
Like Darius had reached inside me and rearranged the way I understood myself, my body, my wants.
I spent years trying to become smaller after that.
Softer. Easier to hold. Easier to love. As though being less of myself might finally make me safe.
The clinic hadn’t changed. Same sterile air, same hum of lights. But I had. I didn’t sit straight this time. I sprawled across the couch, one arm thrown over the back, legs stretched, careless. Like the room belonged to me now.
Julian leaned back slightly in his chair across from me, patient as ever while sunlight stretched across the floor of his office.
“You look good. Different,” he said finally.
A soft laugh escaped me.
“I think that’s therapist language for emotionally unstable in a new direction.”
One corner of his mouth twitched faintly.
“No,” he said calmly. “Less afraid.”
The words settled somewhere deeper than I expected. Because once upon a time, fear had shaped nearly every decision I made. Fear of not being loved. Of wanting too much. Of becoming too much. Fear that if people saw the ugliest parts of me clearly enough, they would eventually leave.
And maybe that was the cruellest thing trauma did.The way it invaded everything—mind, body, soul—until eventually you no longer recognised yourself beneath it. Not the pain itself. The conviction that love had to be earned through suffering to be real.
My fingers curled loosely in my lap.
“There are still days where I think none of this should work,” I admitted quietly. “Where I look at my life and think… this shouldn’t make sense.”
Julian didn’t interrupt. Outside his office window, the city moved in restless waves beneath the late afternoon sun.
“I spent so long believing I had to divide myself to survive,” I continued. “One version of me for the world. One for my family. One for the people I loved.”
I took a breath.
“And now?” His question came softer.
I thought about Marcello. Steady hands at the small of my back. The certainty of him. The kind that remained steady even when I couldn’t. The way he loved without demanding performance, without making me feel smaller for demanding it.
Then Santino.
All sharp edges and hunger. The man who looked at the worst parts of me and never once asked me to muffle them.
Loving him felt like waking up parts of myself I had spent years forcing into silence.
Parts that frightened me. Parts that felt too sharp, too alive in ways I no longer knew how to contain.
And I didn’t realise how much I had shut down…
until he touched me and my body remembered something my mind had spent years trying to forget.
Warmth spread through my chest.
“Now I think maybe healing was never about becoming someone easier to understand.”
Julian’s gaze remained steady on mine.
“Maybe it’s just… finally allowing yourself to exist without apologising for it. Not just the softer parts, but the angry ones too. The complicated parts. The parts that loved differently than the world expected me to. The parts that survived in ways that weren’t always pretty.”
We sat in comfortable silence between us. And for the first time since I’d met him, I realised I no longer felt like I was sitting across from someone trying to fix me.
Because I wasn’t broken anymore. I wasn’t untouched, and I wasn’t free from every scar. But I was whole in a way I’d never been before. Not because the damage disappeared. But because I stopped believing it made me unworthy of love.
Some wounds closed. Others became the ache that stayed.
Julian studied me for another second before speaking.
“I think our official sessions may be coming to an end.”
I felt an unexpected tightness in my chest, something closer to grief. The strange sadness that comes from realising you no longer need the place that once helped keep you alive.
Because this office had witnessed versions of me I could barely recognise now.
The woman who could barely say certain words aloud.
The woman who mistook numbness for strength.
And the woman who believed love was something she had to survive instead of something she was allowed to keep.
“You’ll still call if things get bad?” he asked.
I smiled faintly. “You say that like you think I attract chaos.”
“I think chaos follows you home voluntarily.”
I laughed then. Fully this time. And God—that alone felt like proof I’d come further than I ever thought I would.
Julian walked me out the door. When we stepped outside, the evening air brushed gently against my skin. I took a few steps before I stopped and looked back at him.
“There’s something I never said properly.”
His brow lifted slightly.
“You helped me remember that surviving isn’t the same thing as living.”
For the first time, a crack appeared in Julian’s composure.
“You did that part yourself, Roxanne.”
Emotion tightened unexpectedly in my throat. Before I could overthink it, I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him briefly.
Julian went still for half a second—like physical affection still caught him off guard—before his hand settled carefully between my shoulder blades. Brief. Controlled. Yet the restraint behind it made the affection feel even heavier.
When I pulled back, an unreadable look crossed his face before composure settled over him once more.
“Take care of yourself, Roxanne.”
A smile pulled at my mouth. “You too, Julian.”
“Our monthly lunch dates still stand,” I said lightly as I pulled back.
One corner of his mouth lifted.
“Of course. Someone has to supervise your life choices.”
I rolled my eyes and waved him goodbye.
A black car waited at the curb below. And even from here, I could already see them.
Marcello leaning against the driver’s side door, sleeves rolled to his forearms, composed as ever.Santino sprawled carelessly across the hood beside him, smoking a cigarette he absolutely promised me he’d quit two months ago.
Santino’s posture shifted instinctively the second he saw me hugging Julian. Marcello looked equally unimpressed beside him.
The second Santino’s gaze lifted and landed on me, his whole expression changed. Like he still couldn’t help reacting to me. Like some part of him always would.
Marcello noticed it too. Of course he did. His mouth twitched faintly before he looked toward me instead, steady and certain in a way only Marcello had ever been. Waiting for me, the way he always did.
And maybe that was the thing nobody tells you about healing.
Sometimes it isn’t about returning to who you were before.
Sometimes it’s about finally becoming someone you were never allowed to be in the first place.
Because the girl I had been before Darius no longer existed. And grieving her took me years.
I walked toward them slowly. Toward the chaos. The love.The life we had built from the ruins of everything that should’ve destroyed us.
For most of my life, I thought loving me fully would eventually exhaust people. That if they saw enough of me—the grief, the rage, the damage, the wanting—they would leave.
Instead, they stayed. And for the first time—I didn’t feel afraid of what came next.
Santino straightened first, stubbing his cigarette, already watching me like he’d been starving for the sight of me instead of gone an hour. His gaze dragged lazily down my body before returning to my face.
“Madonna santa,” he muttered under his breath when I got closer. “You’re driving me insane, walking around dressed like that.”
Heat curled low in my stomach despite myself. Marcello sighed and shook his head.
“You behave like a lust-struck teenager half the time.”
“And whose fault is that?” Santino shot back immediately, gaze dragging over me again.
I went on my toes first toward Marcello, pressing a soft kiss to his mouth. His hand settled automatically at my waist. Grounding. Familiar.
Santino immediately pulled me toward him the second I turned. He kissed me once—quick and rough—before his mouth slid deliberately to the curve of my neck.
“Behave,” I warned, breathless already.
A smirk curved against my skin, his hands sliding lower to the curve of my hip.
“Not when you’re dressed like sin, Volpi.”
Marcello snorted beside us.
“Get in the car before he puts on a show in public.”
And somehow—after everything—I felt whole. Because I was no longer at war with myself. And maybe, after everything, that was enough.
Loving them—and being loved in return—had taught me that I didn’t need saving. I only needed permission to stop fighting myself.