For Mateo, for the answers she didn't get, for the relief she doesn't know how to feel. I press my lips to the top of her head.
And for the first time since my mother died, I hold someone like I am afraid to let go.
“I love you, Kat. I’m never letting you go.”
Chapter 24
Katarina
Last night, Damiano held me in the garden until I stopped crying. He pressed his lips to the top of my head and said the three words I have been turning over in my mind since—the three words I always wanted to hear from him.
I love you, Kat. I'm never letting you go.
I had fallen asleep in his arms on the cold ground, and when I woke up, I was in bed. He had carried me inside. Put me to bed. And then he disappeared.Just... gone. Back into the machinery of his life, as if the garden never happened. As if he hadn't said the thing he said.
I saw him once this morning at the end of the hallway. He looked at me for exactly two seconds, nodded once, and turned away.
Two freaking seconds.
I don't know what I expected. For him to say it again, maybe. In the daylight, where it counts. Where it isn't dark, and I'm not falling apart, and he doesn't have an excuse not to mean it. Instead, Gio told me he had been locked in his office since before sunrise. Andreas and Lucian had come and gone twice. The house moved around him like he was the center of gravity and the rest of us were orbiting him.
I pace the length of the bedroom, carrying a sleeping Pedro in my arms, trying to name what I am feeling, like my therapisttaught me. It isn't anger, exactly. It's something closer to the feeling of being handed a precious gift then pretending they didn’t give it to you the next day.
I sigh.
I can't do this anymore. The distance is eating me alive. I need him to say it again—not in the dark, not while I was breaking apart—but here, with both of us steady, and meaning every word.
So I put Pedro on the bed, his paws stretch as soon as he hits the mattress, but he keeps sleeping. I leave the room, my sneakers squeak against the marble floors as I make my way down the hall. I know where he’ll be. In his study, burying himself in work.
When I reach the double doors, they are slightly open. I take a peek inside, careful not to make any sound. The room is dark, lit only by the blue glow of his computer monitors. Damiano is hunched over his desk, looking exhausted. The smell of whiskey hits me the second I walk in.
"Damiano," I say softly.
His fingers pause over the keys for exactly one second. Then he starts typing again. Faster this time, as if the file in front of him is suddenly the most urgent thing in the world.
"I'm busy," he says.
I crane my neck just enough to see the screen from where I'm standing, and see that it’s a shipping manifest he’s looking at.
"You're reading a shipping manifest."
"It's a very complicated one."
I press my lips together to keep from smiling. I stand in front of his desk, crossing my arms.
"You've been avoiding me all day," I say, sounding annoyed. "After last night."
"I haven't been avoiding you," he says, eyes still on the screen. "I've been working."
"Gio said you ate lunch here."
"I was busy."
"You also took a different hallway when you saw me this morning."
A pause. "That hallway is faster."
"It leads to the laundry room."
