The words were foreign. Beautiful. Terrifying.
"It's about safety," he continued. "About giving someone permission to stop being strong. About taking care of them so completely that they can finally—"
"Stop surviving," I whispered.
His eyes met mine. Something cracked open between us.
"Yes."
I thought about Victoria Marchetti and her venomous words. About my father and his ledger-book assessment of my worth. About Enzo, who had promised to cherish me and instead torn me into pieces so small I was still finding fragments.
I thought about every moment of the past three weeks—the way Dante had given me my own room and never pushed. The way he'd appeared at the bar when I was drowning and put himself between me and the monster. The way his commands had reached inside me at the family dinner and turned off the panic like a switch.
He'd been taking care of me already. Without naming it. Without asking anything in return.
"Is this—" I had to stop. Start again. "Is this what I've been feeling? When you tell me to breathe and everything gets quiet? When you give me instructions and I don't have to think, just follow?"
"Yes."
The single word hit me like a wave.
"I didn't know there was a name for it," I said, and something in my voice cracked open. "For wanting someone to—to hold me like that. I thought it meant I was broken."
His hands tightened around mine.
"You're not broken." His voice was quiet but fierce. Certain in a way that left no room for argument. "You're not weak. You're the strongest person I've ever met."
The words sank into places that had been hollow for years.
"And wanting someone to hold you together—" his thumbs brushed across my cheekbones, steady and warm— "doesn't make you less than. It makes you brave enough to need something. Brave enough to ask for it."
I thought about the last time I saw my mom. Before the accident.
I'd been so young. I hadn't known how to be strong. But I'd learned.
I thought about Enzo. The way he'd found me when I was raw and reeling from grief, desperate for someone to tell me I mattered. The way he'd said all the right words, made all the right promises, and then systematically dismantled every part of me that trusted.
He'd taught me that needing someone was dangerous. That surrender was another word for defeat. That the only way to survive was to need nothing and no one.
I'd believed him. For years, I'd believed him.
But sitting here, with Dante's hands on my face and his eyes seeing every broken piece of me, I understood something I hadn't before.
Enzo had been wrong.
Needing someone wasn't weakness. Needing the wrong someone—trusting the wrong hands with your heart—that was the danger. But the need itself, the deep human ache to be held and cared for and safe—that was just being human.
I'd been ashamed of my humanity for a decade.
"I didn't know there was a name for it," I said again, because the realization was still settling into my bones, rearranging everything I thought I understood. "For this thing I've been feeling. I thought it meant something was wrong with me."
His forehead pressed to mine, the way it had in the hallway outside my room, the night we'd kissed and he'd pulled away."You've been carrying so much for so long. You're allowed to put it down."
Could I do that? Could I actually stop fighting, stop surviving, stop holding myself together through sheer force of will?
Could I trust him enough to fall apart?
I felt the moment the decision took shape. Not in my mind—my mind was still catching up, still cataloging risks and calculating odds and doing all the protective work it had been trained to do. The decision happened somewhere deeper. Somewhere that had recognized Dante from the first moment I saw him, that had responded to his voice when everything else was chaos, that had been waiting all my life for someone safe enough to surrender to.
