I can no longer fight the answers that’s aching to break out.
I want him to be mine.
Not shared. Not divided. Not someone else’s former anything.Mine.
I was jealous. Genuinely, painfully jealous of a woman I’d never met, over a man who kidnapped me. In my head, I called himmy monster.
The possessive pronoun is proof. My heart has moved to a place my logic hates. My feelings have shifted without my permission, planted roots I didn’t notice until they were too deep to pull.
I care.
More than I want to.
More than is safe.
The guards have dispersed. The garden is quiet again. Just the two of us standing in the jasmine-scented garden while everything I thought I knew about myself crumbles.
23
VIOLET
My brain refuses to shut the fuck up.
He always comes back to me. No matter how many little distractions catch his eye. He gets bored.Gabriella’s voice loops through my skull and won’t stop, won’t quiet, won’t let me have even five minutes of peace. The smug satisfaction in her tone. The way she looked at me like I was temporary. Disposable.
Enjoy him while you can, troia.
I roll onto my side. Punch the pillow into a different shape. The moonlight cuts silver lines across the floor. Outside, the Mediterranean whispers against distant rocks.
I called himmymonster. In my head, but still. A possessive pronoun, like I have any right to it. Claiming something I have no right to claim.
Like I haven’t been fighting it for weeks.
I think about the courtyard. About his fingers between my thighs. The way I came so hard while hating myself for how badly I wanted to. I think about the restaurant, the table, his tongue making me come apart while I told myself I’d never forgive him.
I think about today. Gabriella’s nails reaching for my face. Elio shielding me from her without hesitation. His thumb on my cheekbone.
Are you hurt?
The tenderness in his voice. The rage in his eyes when she called me nothing.
He’ll change his mind. He always does.
But he didn’t, did he? Twelve years of engagement, and he ended it with a text message. For me. The American trash he dragged in off the street.
I press my face into the pillow and groan.
What are you doing, Murphy?
The question echoes in the dark. Same question I’ve been asking myself since the first time my body betrayed me. Since I stopped wanting to escape and started wanting... him.
Stockholm syndrome,my brain whispers.
But that’s the thing.
I am thinking clearly. Maybe for the first time since I woke up in this gilded cage.
I wanted him before the fear became familiar. Before the captivity settled into routine. I wanted him in the café, before I knew what he was. Electricity passed between us over espresso and ricotta pastries, and I’ve been lying to myself about it ever since.
