“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “There are only five people on earth that know the truth. The sheriff, Grey Stone, Everett Poésy, you, and me. That’s it.”
“I see,” she repeated. “All that time—” She shook her head. “He hates you so much. Even knowing Luca wasn’t the one behind the wheel.”
“He was, Scarlett,” I said. “He was drunk enough not to know another drunk. One who was worse off than him. It’s a technicality. I’m fucking missing something though. It doesn’t sound like Luca. If anything, he knew the man was a drunk. Luca doesn’t do things by chance.” That sat between us for a few minutes, before I waved a hand and brought up something else. “Maggie Beautiful and Jake Stone were an item before Luca blew through town to deliver Maja her pears.”
Scarlett had found that out in Italy. Between Maja’s journals and Tito’s memories, we found out that the only reason Luca ever came to Natchitoches was to deliver a certain Italian pear to Maja, who had grown fond of them while falling in love with her forbidden Italian lover, the famous artist Matteo Ballerini.
Scarlett and I being fated almost seemed an understatement. It was as though the universe was constantly on a mission to reveal all the small nuances that brought and held us together.
“That makes a lot of sense,” she nodded, agreeing. “So the war actually started before the accident, with Maggie Beautiful falling for Luca. Then continued forward. Scarlett and Brando. Romeo and Juliette.”
“All of the deaths reinforced the hate the Stones had,” I said. “I can’t blame them for that though. If it were me, I’d have killed Luca on the spot. The sheriff was out for torture, though. The slow rot.”
“I can blame them,” she said. “But I try not to. I understand the hate for Luca, given the circumstances, but not you. You did nothing to that man. He had no right to blame an innocent child for the sins of his father.”
“I exist, Scarlett. A reminder. Jake Stone overdosed after Maggie Beautiful left him for Luca. It seems that love and death go hand in hand in this story, and at the heart of it is Luca. I am the son—or a version of him—who should be living today. The product of Maggie and Jake Stone. Not me—the man Luca created. It’s all so tangled that my mind hurts from thinking too fucking much.”
“Brando.” She turned my face toward hers. “Maggie Beautiful didn’t love Jake Stone.”
“She did.”
“Perhaps, but not in the same way she loves Luca. A woman doesn’t leave the man she loves for another one—she only leaves when the love isn’t enough. You and I know she loves Aberto, but not in the same way she loves Luca. Despite what you want to believe, you were created from love, Brando. I can’t speak for Luca, but I know Maggie Beautiful well enough to know that her love for him is stronger than ever. That’s why she fights it so hard. She doesn’t want to love him, but she can’t help herself.”
I almost sat her down on the bench and stepped away from her, wanting to freeze up at the soft talk. But it was unavoidable—all part of this conversation we had to have.
“Luca ruined her life, Scarlett. He ruins everything he fucking touches. She was too young. He messed her up. You need an example? She calls herself Maggie Beautiful now. The love between her and Jake was innocent. Jake wasn’t that much older than her. And even if things didn’t work out between them, she would have gotten over it, maybe found someone else to love. Who fucking knows? Maybe Jake could’ve gotten over it, if it was anyone but the man it was. Still, the fact of the matter stands—Luca. At the core.”
“Damn the consequences to hell, Brando Fausti,” she shouted, a puff of smoke coming from her mouth from the cold air and her warm breath. “You are who I love. No matter how you got here, I’ll thank God every day that you did. Andtwiceon Sundays.”
“Scarlett.”
“I get to tell you these things, remember?”
“Yeah,” I said, resting my forehead against hers. “I do. But that’s the point. You see things as you want them to be, not as they are.”
“I see things asthey are; our reality. I refuse to allow you to even think that your existence is a mistake, or that you should’ve been another man’s son. Luca is worth loving, if only for the sake of you and your brothers.”
“What is there to do, baby?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered, running her hands through my hair. “But we have each other, and right now, that’s enough. Give it time, Brando. If the situation came, so will a solution.”
I closed my eyes, moving my forehead against hers. “You are the only soul I trust, Scarlett Rose Fausti,” I said to her in Italian.
We sat in the cold, our foreheads resting against each other’s, our breath mingling, her hands massaging my scalp.
“Does your head hurt?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Take me home, Brando,” she whispered in Italian. “Let’s go to bed. Tomorrow is a new day, my angel. We will face it together.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Brando
The doorbell rang for the hundredth time in one night. Romeo slapped me on the shoulder and laughed, raspy and low, following behind me to answer it. He was dressed like Spartacus.
“Poseidon! We meet again on rough and tumbling seas!” Mitch stood on the other side, dressed in a pirate’s costume. “Where is the gorgeous Amphitrite tonight?”
