"He's a man I don't know living in my house with access to the people I'm responsible for."
"He's a man who took beatings for me. Who bled for me. Who..."
"I know what he did," he says quietly.
"Then why are you watching him like he's a threat?"
Elio sighs, his arms wrapping around my mid section as he buries his head in the crook of my neck. "I need you to trust me."
"I do trust you."
"No matter what."
I scrunch up my face in confusion, pulling his face from my neck to read his expression. His eyes are pleading for me to understand, despite not giving me any answers.
"No matter what?" I repeat.
"No matter what."
I'm silent, unable to decide if this is jealousy speaking, or if it's more serious, something he's just not ready to tell me yet. I feel like I'm about to sign a contract with the devil without being able to read it first. Am I ready to give my soul blindly to Elio Marchetti? I'm not sure.
But then his hand comes up and his fingers trace my jaw, and his eyes crack open just enough to show me what's underneath. Raw. Scared. So deeply, viciously his. And the thing in me that's in love with him overrides everything else
"Okay," I say. "No matter what."
He presses his forehead to mine. His eyes close. His breath is warm on my mouth and his hand is shaking. Just barely. Just enough that I can feel the tremor where his fingers rest against my neck.
And then he pulls back. Kisses my forehead.
"Go to sleep, tesoro," he murmurs. "I'll be with you soon."
19
VIOLET
Matt is halfway through a reenactment that involves both hands, three vocal registers, and what appears to be a full-body commitment to the bit.
"She walks in," he says, pitching his voice low, setting the scene with the gravity of a man narrating a nature documentary. "Six-fifteen in the morning. Nobody asked her to be there. Nobody told her to go to the kitchen. She just..." He breaks character to look at me, eyes wide, hands suspended mid-gesture. "Violet. She just walked in."
I'm on the stone bench in the garden, legs tucked under me, the late morning sun warm on my back. The air smells like orange blossom and warm stone and the kind of freedom that comes with sitting outside without permission or a schedule.
"And then?" I ask, because the man has clearly been building to this for fifteen minutes and I will not rob him of his crescendo.
"And then." He holds up one finger. The pause is theatrical. Twelve years of teenagers have made him very good at the pause. "She looks at the woman preparing food. She makes eye contact. Direct eye contact. And she says..."
Another pause. Longer this time.
"Matt, I swear to God..."
"May I have some tea, please. Thank you." His voice goes high on please, cracks on thank you, and the grin that splits his face is so enormous and so unguarded that it rearranges his whole face into something beautiful.
"Unprompted," he says, like the word itself is a miracle. Like he's holding it in both hands. "Nobody coached her. Nobody stood behind her and whispered it. She just... she had it. She had it."
"You're telling me you're this excited about tea?" I laugh.
"I'm telling you I'm this excited about a please." He sits down on the grass in front of the bench, cross-legged, still beaming. "Do you know how long that word takes? Not the pronunciation, the... the choosing to say it. Two weeks ago she wouldn't look at anyone. Wouldn't eat unless food was left in the room and the door was closed. And yesterday she stood in a kitchen and asked for something she wanted and said please while she did it."
The warmth in his voice has nothing to do with pride, not really, not the way people usually mean it. It's closer to awe. The awe of a man who has spent his adult life watching understanding arrive in someone's face and never gotten tired of the moment he sees it.
