“They don’t understand you yet. But they will. I promise.”
I wish I could believe Damiano. I let him hold me anyway because this is the only place I feel safe.
That night, I lie awake thinking about the gun. About the expensive cars that come and go at odd hours. About the men in suits who defer to Dad with a particular kind of fear-tinged respect.
I’m not stupid. I’m beginning to suspect what this family is. I just didn’t want to admit it.
Meanwhile, Damiano’s nightmares are getting worse. He wakes up screaming at least twice a week now, and I always run in to comfort him. I slip into his bed and hold him while he shakes, while he gasps about fire and burning.
“Lucy, no. Lucy, please. Don’t go in there.”
Tonight is particularly bad. He’s thrashing so violently, I’m afraid he’ll hurt himself.
“Damiano, wake up. I’m here. I’m safe.”
His eyes fly open, wild and unfocused. Then they land on me, and he makes a sound like a wounded animal, pulling me against his chest so hard I can barely breathe.
“You’re okay. You’re okay.” He’s saying it like a mantra, his hands running over my hair, my back, my arms, as if checking that I’m real and whole.
“I’m okay,” I promise. “I’m right here.”
He buries his face in my hair, and I feel wetness on my neck. Tears.
“I can’t lose you, Lucy. I can’t. You’re all I have.”
“You won’t lose me. Never.”
We stay like that for a long time, wrapped around each other in the darkness. Within his embrace, something shifts inside me. It’s the way I fit against him. The way his heart beats against my cheek. The way his fingers tangle in my hair like he’s trying to memorize the feel of it. Is this how a brother holds a sister?
My own heart is racing, and warmth pools in my stomach. I never want to leave his arms. It doesn’t feel like how a sister loves a brother.
Am I falling in love with Damiano?
Confusion crashes over me like ice water. I’m twelve years old, and I have tender feelings for the boy who calls himself my brother. The boy who saved my life, who’s the only person in the world who truly loves me.
I open my mouth to ask him if he feels the same about me, but what if he’s so horrified that he pulls away? What if he never comes to my bed again or lets me come to his?
What would Mom and Dad do to me if they found out? What would they do tohim?
I picture their cold eyes at the dinner table. The way they assess everything and everyone. They took us in, but we’re not really theirs. Not their blood. If they discovered the truth, that we lied about being siblings, they’d throw me out. Or worse.
And if they knew I hadthesefeelings for Damiano? My stomach twists, and I close my mouth.
Damiano only sees me as the sister he wants to protect. I can never, ever tell him.
5
Lucy
Four years later
“Well, well, the prodigal son drags himself out of bed at last.”
I look over the top of my book at a shirtless Damiano as he emerges onto the sunny terrace. His dark curls are messy from sleep, and it strikes me—not for the first time—that my eighteen-year-old brother looks more like a man every day. Tall and muscular, with a tan burnishing his skin, and dark stubble on his jaw.
My stomach does that stupid flip it’s been doing for the past six years whenever I look at him. I hate it. I love it. I can’t help it.
Striding toward me with a smile on his lips, Damiano tosses aside my book, puts an arm under my knees and another around my back, and scoops me out of the chair and into his arms.
