Page 156 of The Ache That Stayed

“Amore.”

His voice cut through the haze. And everything inside me collapsed. One second I was sitting there, empty and suspended, and the next—the reality of him—solid, real. And my hands gripping his shirt like I needed proof that reality still existed the way it was supposed to.

After that, everything was muddy again, and the next thing I knew we were in the washroom and suddenly everything came crashing back.

The warehouse.

The blood.

His voice.

And the truth I hadn’t let myself look at. And what I had done. What it meant.

My grip tightened, fingers curling into the fabric of Marcello’s shirt as a bitter sickness twisted violently inside me.

“I hurt you,” I choked out, the words forcing their way through before I could stop them. “I hurt you, and you’ll hate me when you know… I hurt you…”

I didn’t explain it. I couldn’t. Because if I did, I would have to say it out loud. And I wasn’t ready for that. The words kept coming anyway, fractured, uneven, breaking apart between breaths that didn’t feel like enough to hold them.

“I hurt you…”

My knees gave before I realised what was happening. I think he caught me. I think he said something. I don’t remember.

Because all I could hear—was Santino’s voice.

“Rox… I—”

My breath hitched sharply. I knew what he had been trying to say. And I had stopped him.

A broken sound escaped me, half sob, half something worse, as my grip on Marcello tightened—not because I was reaching for him, but because I didn’t know where else to put the weight of it all.

I didn’t know how long I stayed like that. Long enough for the edges of everything to dull. Eventually, exhaustion began to win where my mind refused to.

And the next thing I knew, I was standing in front of my mother in Mumbai. She welcomed me the way she always did—warm, familiar, unchanged.

“Marcello told me you’d be coming,” she said, stepping aside. “I thought the kids were too?”

“No,” I replied, my voice flat, stripped of anything that sounded like me anymore. “They’re in Palma. With Alessia.”

Her brows drew together slightly.

“Rox… is everything okay?”

I nodded. “I’m just tired.”

I didn’t bother with an explanation, didn’t make eye contact, just spoke the words with emptiness, as though they belonged to someone else. She didn’t push, but her eyes stayed on me a second longer than they should have before she stepped aside fully and let me pass.

I walked to my room. Closed the door. And didn’t come out.

Time stopped meaning anything after that. I slept when exhaustion finally won, woke whenever the pressure in my chest became too much. Sometimes I cried. Sometimes I just stared at the ceiling until my eyes blurred. Eventually, I stopped knowing whether it was morning or night.

Only that everything inside me felt—wrong. Like a wound had been ripped open and left that way and would never close again.

On the third or fourth day, my mother came into my room without knocking. She didn’t ask anything at first. Just sat beside me. I felt her warm hand rest over mine carefully.

“Roxanne,” she said gently. “You need to get out of here.”

She gently sat me up.