“My mother prayed every day of her life,” he said, his voice rough but determined. “My father volunteered here so much he practically lived here. They believed in this so completely, and they’re just…gone. They’re gone.” His breath hitched, and he brought his fist up to his mouth. I reached for him, wanting nothing more than to hold him in my arms and tell him everything was going to be okay. He couldn’t see it now because life was shit, but he would.
Before I could touch him, he stepped back, away from me.
“All I can think about is how much they wanted this life for me. That this is God asking me to choose Him.”
“This is grief talking,” I said. “You don’t owe God your life because He took theirs.”
“I do, though. I owe Him everything.”
My chest tightened and I tried to breathe through the fear rolling through me so I could reason with him. “You owe yourself something too. You deserve to live. That’s what your parents would’ve wanted for you.”
Rafael’s eyes were glassy as he shook his head. “You don’t understand what it’s like to lose your family?—”
“I understand what it would be like to lose you. And I’m not doing it.”
“Alessio—”
I grabbed his hands and held them tight when he tried to pull away. “I’m not asking you to leave your faith. Fuck, I’ve never asked that. I’m asking you to choose me with it.”
“You don’t understand,” he whispered.
“I do. You want to run away. I get that. You want to go somewhere and forget. But we could do that together. I?—”
“Remind me of them,” he said before I could finish my thought. “Everything here reminds me of them. You, the church. I need—” He stopped and pulled his hands free. “I need to go away. I need to not be here.”
He turned away from me, walking back toward the fountain, and it took everything I had not to reach for him. Not to grab hold of him and pull him back into my arms, where he belonged.
“I’ve accepted a spot at the Pontifical Gregorian University,” he said in a voice so soft I barely heard him over the pounding of my heart.
“Okay, well, that doesn’t mean we can’t still see each other.”
Rafael turned around, and those pale eyes locked on to mine.
“It’s in Rome, Alessio.”
I knew he’d just said something, but the words weren’t quite registering. Because for a moment there it sounded like he’d said the university was in?—
“Rome?”
“Yes. Father De Vecchi wrote a letter, and spoke to his?—”
“Rome as in Italy?” I interrupted, not giving a fuck about what Father De Vecchi had done. He’d always wanted to take Rafael away from me.
“Yes.”
“But that’s…” I took a step forward, but when Rafael backed up, I lost my train of thought. Already, he was putting distance between us.I shook my head. “That’s in another country.”
“It’s what I need to do.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to scream,And what about whatIneed?But what was the point? It was clear Rafael had made up his mind, clear he’d been thinking this for days, weeks now, and had been pulling away to make a clean break.
I hadn’t even been a factor.
“When?” I said in a voice I barely recognized.
“Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I blinked once, twice, and as Rafael’s face became blurry, I realized exactly what was happening. I swiped at the tear that slipped free, not wanting him to see, not wanting to add to the grief he was already feeling, as my heart cracked in two.
