Then I book myself on the next commercial flight to Norfolk.
I don’t know what I’m going to say to her when I get there. I don’t know if she’ll open the door. I don’t know if any of this is fixable or if I burned it down so thoroughly that all that’s left is ash.
But I know she’s not safe.
And I’m the reason she’s not safe.
And until I can fix that, the rest of it, the guilt, the grief, the look on her face, the flinch, all of it goes in a box.
And the box goes on a shelf, and I move.
28
NATALIA
The beach house feels wrong.
Nothing’s moved. Nothing’s changed. But I came back a different person, and now the whole place feels like a set built for someone else’s life.
I made it as far as the couch. Bag on the floor, deadbolt thrown, shoes still on. I’m still in my clothes from yesterday. I didn’t sleep on the flight home. Hard to close your eyes on a plane owned by the family that wants you dead.
I stare at the wall and try to think about nothing. It doesn’t work, because Luca’s jacket is still draped over the back of the kitchen chair. His flip-flops are still on the mat by the front door. One of his sketches is still pinned under a magnet on the fridge.
The whole house is full of him, and I am trying very hard to sit still on this couch and not tear every trace of the man out of these walls with my bare hands.
Instead, I pull out my phone.
The screen lights up, and my thumb goes straight to his contact before I can stop it.
Luca
No last name. Just a number.
My thumb hovers over the call button, and I hate myself for it.
I walked out of a hotel room in tears because this man was sent here to kill me, and my first instinct now is still to call him.
Because he would pick up.
Because he would listen.
Because for almost a month, he was the only person on this planet who made me feel like a human being instead of a chess piece, and my stupid, starving heart hasn’t caught up to the part where that should matter less than the truth.
Except it doesn’t matter less. That’s the problem.
It wasn’t all fake, I know that. The amnesia was real. The way he looked at me was real. The pasta and the sketches and the way he held me in the dark were real, and that makes the betrayal worse, not better, because it means I fell for the actual man and the actual man is Luca Andretti.
I lock the phone and drop it on the cushion beside me like it burned me.
Coffee. Coffee is a thing I can do.
The kitchen is too quiet without him in it. I stand at the counter while the machine sputters and hisses, and when my eyes drift back to my phone, I tell myself I’m only checking my messages out of habit.
There’s a text from his number, sent a few hours ago while I was somewhere over Virginia, staring out a dark window at nothing.
I just need you to know that I won’t let my family hurt you. You’re safe from us. From me.
I stare at the words until they blur. The phone dims in my hand and goes dark.
