“I was alone, Nero. Alone on the nights Kael screamed with colic. Alone when he decided he was Superman and jumped from the second-floor window, swearing he’d fly. Alone on every birthday until the fourth. Alone every time he got sick. I was always alone!”
She’s breathless by the end.
“So no—you don’t have the right to tell me I need to believe you. You may be here now, but you’ve been gone far longer than you’ve been present.”
I don’t respond.
What could I possibly say?
No words could ever measure the depth of my remorse, or the scale of my hatred for Lysandra. If I’d had any doubt about whether I could ever look at her again, it has been obliterated.
There is no argument against everything Nina endured alone while I failed, day after day, to keep every promise I’d ever made—to her and to my son.
As silence settles between us and the truths that were never spoken take their seats around the room, I become nothing but a rigid mass of guilt and self-loathing.
I lived in a hole, was treated like trash, later was deceived inside the house I learned to call home—but I was never alone.
One way or another, I always had a family beside me. I knew they would stay as long as I stayed for them, because my brothers and I are nearly the same age.
Looking into Nina’s wary, wounded eyes, the certainty I’ve carried since the moment I uncovered the truth—back in that sauna, facing Oliver Sarris—swells in my chest until there’s room for nothing else:
I will do everything it takes for Nina to forgive me, or I will die trying. But I will never be able to forgive myself.
Nina hides her face in her hands, shaking her head. And as if the weight of the truths she’s revealed is too much to bear standing, her body gives way and she drops to the floor, legs stretched out, her back against the coffee table behind her.
The sight of her fully exposing that last vulnerability makes it impossible for me not to touch her.
I need to do this. I need to show her that I’m never leaving again. I need to make her believe me—about this and every promise I still want to make.
I don’t have the right.
But it’s not as if I have a choice.
My body moves toward hers without my permission. In a few steps, I close the distance and kneel beside her. I take her hands, lower them to reveal her face, and gently turn it toward me with my thumb and forefinger.
Everything is there—every emotion bled out in her words. In her light-blue irises I find exhaustion, fear, insecurity, pain, and above all, loneliness. So much loneliness that suddenly being close to her no longer feels like enough to quiet the screaming need in my chest to be everything Nina needs.
She needs to know she’s not alone anymore. She needs tofeelit far more than she needs to hear it.
I need to show her that even if it’s just so she can torture me every day—tattooing into my brain, again and again, the same truths that have reduced me to rubble—I will still be here.
I don’t ask for permission this time.
I wrap my arms around her in a firm embrace, one hand pressed to her back, the other threaded into her hair, holding Nina tightly against me.
She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t return the hug—but she doesn’t push me away either.
“Forgive me.”
CHAPTER 68
NINA MARCHESI
“Forgive me?” Nero repeats, and I don’t feel like I have the strength to do anything—let alone answer. “Forgive me?” he says again, his hold around me tightening. “Forgive me?” he repeats, squeezing me harder and harder, rocking my body back and forth.
“Nero?” I call, but he doesn’t change. He keeps begging for forgiveness, trapping me in a suffocating grip, rocking us without stopping. “Nero? What’s happening?” His arms become so tight around me that they start to hurt, and I push against the embrace, fighting to get free.
The moment I manage to break loose, Nero’s body falls backward onto the floor. His eyes are open, but he’s shaking from head to toe, his mouth hanging open. I crawl on my knees until I reach his face, steadying it, looking for signs of a seizure—and finding none.
