I hug him, rubbing his back, and he starts sobbing, holding me tight against his chest. “Please, Elowen. I will do anything. Please love me.”
I keep rubbing his back, crying silently with him. I can deal with every other version of him, but not this one. I don’t think anyone has a heart strong enough not to break for him.
He sobs for a long time, only stopping when he falls asleep. I know he’s asleep because his weight becomes crushingly heavy on me.
I try to move away, but he doesn’t release me. Somehow, I manage to ease him onto his back on the carpet, with me still in his arms, lying on top of him.
This is how he used to sleep in Naples, with me on top of him. It was a habit he picked up gradually. When I asked him whether he felt uncomfortable under my weight, he said he felt at peace. No one could take me away from him if I slept like that,because he would feel the loss of my weight, it would break his sleep, and he wouldn’t let me go.
I used to laugh at that. Now, I don’t find it amusing anymore.
Chapter 28
Elowen
I have to get out of here. Fast.
After what happened yesterday, I’m losing my mind. It’s not because of that ugly fight, where I said all the things I’d wanted to shout at him for a long time. It’s because of what happened after.
My heart clenches every time the memory of him crying surfaces, which is about fifty times an hour. I can see myself sliding down the tunnel of helplessness, and what waits at the end of that tunnel is chronic depression. And then everything will fall apart.
I reach the kitchen, where he’s cooking. I’ve never seen him cook before, I would have loved to spend that time alone without someone’s eyes on me. But I don’t need to see him cook to know he has a knife, a big chef’s knife, that I never find in the kitchen or anywhere else in the house during my searches for a weapon.
He looks up as I hop onto the counter, a few feet away from him. His face doesn’t carry the same painful helplessness from last night, I think he has his episodes after sunset too, like me.
“Where were you?” I ask.
I woke up in my bed, and he was nowhere in the house.
He doesn’t say anything for a long minute, just studies me in silence, most likely trying to understand this change in my behavior. His face is blank, no clear emotion on the surface, which means he’s calm, or at least trying to stay calm.
I raise a brow the way he and Salvario do when they have a question.
“I was outside,” he intones.
“What were you doing outside all morning?”
He narrows his eyes. “What do you want?”
I roll my eyes. “Fine. If you don’t want to talk to me. I was just trying to extend an olive branch. We don’t have to be at each other’s throats all the time.”
“I don’t remember doing anything with your throat,” he mutters, going back to chopping.
I bite the corner of my lip, watching his hands, the knife in them, then his face. His lips are pursed, a faint frown set between his brows.
“I thought we could be friends.”
His grip tightens on the knife. His jaw locks.
“What’s there to get mad about?” I ask into his silence.
Finally, he sets the knife down and pins me with his gaze. His eyes are no longer calm. There’s a storm in them—a gray sandstorm.
He steps in front of me, leaving only a few inches between us. “I don’t want to become your friend, Elowen. Actually, I can’t, even if I forced myself to.”
“Why?”
He moves a little closer. I don’t lean back or push him away, I stay where I am. He doesn’t miss it.
