It shouldn’t.Because I'm a Rivas.Trained to keep my spine straight, even when bleeding.Trained to keep my voice locked behind my teeth, even when the world caves in.
But this girl — this fucking girl—she bends things inside me I didn’t know could bend.
“I’m not who you think I am,” I whisper. “And I’m not who I pretend to be.”
A bitter laugh slips out, sharp and cracked at the edges.
"I was not destined for God. Not with this rage.”
The confession hangs between us like a noose.
In another life, I would’ve run from it.Dodged it.Buried it under a sermon or a scripture I didn’t believe.
Now?Now I lean into it.Lean into her.Lean into every dark truth I never had the spine to speak.
On the other side, she exhales softly.Not fear.Not judgment.Something softer.Something that shouldn’t exist between two people on opposite sides of a torture chamber door.
Then she whispers:
“You still came for me.”
My eyes close.
It shouldn’t hit as hard as it does.It shouldn’t feel like she just reached inside my chest and touched something I didn’t know was still alive.
Still.
As if I ever had a choice.
“I would tear this place apart if you asked me to,” I say, voice low, rough. “I’d burn every secret my father hid. I’d burn the whole church.”
My throat tightens.The old part of me—the priest, the dutiful son, the boy Giovanni raised—tries to claw the words back.
I don’t let it.
“You matter more to me than all of this.”
Silence follows.
But it’s not cold.Not empty.
It hums.
Heavy.Electric.Dangerous.
Then—movement.
A soft slide, her hand trailing up the inside of the door.
Her palm presses flat to the steel.
The sound is faint, but I feel the placement of it instantly—right where mine already rests.
I lift my hand slowly, fingers finding the invisible outline of hers through the metal.Six inches of steel.Two bloodlines soaked in sin.One connection neither of us meant to create.
We aren’t touching.
Not really.
