“What’s wrong?” I ask, blowing out a puff of smoke.
He buries his face in his hands. “She’s right, you know.”
“Who’s right?”
“My mother.”
“Valerio, when I’m with you, I don’t feel trapped. You make me feel desired. You make me feel happy. When I look at you, I don’t see anything she described.”
I love you.I keep that part to myself.
“But I have bad thoughts about you,” he says.
A twinge of fear hits my gut. I ignore it. “How bad?”
“Bad enough that they even disgust a devil like me, Charlotte.”
I’ve seen him covered in blood. I’ve seen him break a man’s jaw for touching my leg. But there hasn’t been a single second where I truly believed he’d hurt me. A part of me still doesn’t.
“Talk to me, Valerio. Tell me.”
I’m pleading now. I’m giving him every piece of me. I’m willing to trust this man with everything I have. “Please. We can work through this. I promise.”
“I want to do unspeakable things to you, Charlotte.” He doesn’t look at me when he admits it, staring out at the skyline. This is one of the few times I can clearly see his thoughts on his face: he’s ashamed.
“Tell me what they are. Let me help you carry them.” I grab his shoulders, trying to shake some life back into him. “Don’t go back into the dark. Stay here. Withme.”
He’s shutting down. I can see the moment he disappears behind the wall. The man who kissed my hands in the car is gone.
“Valerio?” Nothing.
I try for another ten minutes. I beg. I touch his face. I use every clinical trick I know to ground a dissociative patient. He’s unreachable. He’s decided he’s a monster again, and he’s acting the part.
“I want this,” I cry, my heart feeling like it’s failing. “I want us. But I can’t do this if you shut me out every time the noise gets too loud in your head. I’m not your victim, and I’m not your mother.”
I walk back inside, grab a scrap of paper from the counter, and scrawl my number on it. I set it on the glass table near the balcony door.
“Call me whenever you want. I’ll always answer. But the next step has to be yours. You have to choose me over your own fears, Valerio.”
I walk out. I’ve left my heart in a penthouse with a man who thinks he’s a devil, and I have no idea if he’ll ever pick up the phone.
By the time I flag a cab, the first sob breaks through.
I cry the whole way back to my apartment. The cab driver glances nervously at me in the rearview mirror, but I don’t care.
Every textbook I’ve ever read tells me to run. But the textbooks didn’t feel the way his hands shook when he touched me. They didn’t hear the way he said my name like it was a prayer.
I want him.
I know it’s not going to be easy. I know there will be more massacres, more silences, and more moments where he tries to bleed me out with his words just to see if I’ll stay. But as long as he doesn’t intentionally lay a hand on me or hurt me, I’m not going anywhere.
Because even a monster deserves to be found.
I walk into my building, my face a red, blotchy mess, and I wait. I wait for the phone to ring.
And I wait.
And I wait.
