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“I know it was your fault,” she says sharply. “I deserved much better.”
“I know.” I swallow and flex my quads so my legs will stay steady. I have to clear the numb cloud out of my head to say this one thing. Count…and breathe, Luca. And say it. “You deserved another story.” The words catch in my throat. “Every day I hate it that I didn’t give you that one.”
I look back over my shoulder, and I watch as her eyes pop open wide.
“You’re bleeding.” Her jaw drops, and realization twists her features. “My ring.”
I give her a twitch of my cheek—an approximation of a smile…is what I mean for it to be. “’S fine.”
“Are you okay?” She moves closer.
“Doesn’t hurt.”
“Does that…thing still happen?” It’s the quietest whisper.
“It’s okay.” I let go of the button keeping the doors closed.
Her shoulder brushes mine as she slaps her palm down on the button. Then her eyes are on mine.
“Your hand’s shaking,” she says.
“No it’s not.” I hold it up, counting on myself to hide it by tensing my hand, as I have so many times before. But I watch tears well in her eyes—because it is, a little.
She looks aghast. “I’m so sorry.”
“Sometimes they just shake.”
She squeezes her eyes shut, and I drink her in—this new Elise, so fucking beautiful and regal I could fall to my knees. It feels like hours before she looks back at me.
“I hate you. For what you did.” Her lips tremble. “I hate that I ever met you. That I see you and I know who you are.”
Tears spill down her cheeks, and I want nothing more than to pull her up against me. I want it so much that I stand there frozen, imagining what it would look like to give in: to tell her, touch her. I could tell her but that’s not what I’m going to do.
Some small noise comes from me. Almost like a groan, but it sounds hoarse, as if it broke free from the prison of my throat.
Her face tightens as she steps back from me. “I don’t want to be near you. Don’t come near me on campus or in the store or anywhere! Don’t get near me at a party.” Her voice breaks—because she’s starting to cry. “I had hoped to see you here—in your…environment—so I can tell myself that you’re a monster. You’re not who I thought you were. You never were.”
My chest aches so badly I can’t inhale.
“And don’t think I don’t know. What you are now. Who you hang around with, what you people do. Soon I’m graduating, and I’m going into law.”
I swallow—somehow. “Good for you.”
“Luca?” Her hard voice is hoarse now. I can tell from her mouth that she’s trying not to cry. “Why did you do it that way?”
I look at my legs, at the black pants I wore to play poker. “I don’t think it matters.” Breathe in…and out. I can feel my body flickering, and distantly I wonder if I might pass out.
“No. It doesn’t, at all,” she says. “But I still want to know.”
Another long breath in and slow breath out so my head will stop spinning. “Doesn’t matter.” I bite my cheek hard enough that I can taste blood. The sting helps to ground me. I look at her. At her eyes, which look at me with kindness every time I shut my eyes to sleep. I take in how angry she is—this real, living person that I broke with my actions.
“Doesn’t matter,” I rasp. I step back against the doors, fixing my gaze on the wall over her shoulder. “You just said you know who I am. None of that stuff matters.”
“You’re not a nice guy,” she whispers.
I touch my jaw where it’s now dripping, feeling really float-y. “No,” I agree.
She sniffs. When she speaks again, I hear the tears I can’t see while looking at the reflective gold walls.
“Do you know how hard I tried to find you? I found out you were at her house. The next day,” she rasps. “I wanted to kill her. I thought…everyone…and it was Isa. She was always strange. So quiet. I thought she was…scary.” Some sound comes from her throat; it’s like a laugh mid-strangle. “I just didn’t get her. Dani—I could see that. Everybody was in love with Dani. I couldn’t see how you could fall for Isa. So fast. It made me think that you had never really cared about me.” Her voice breaks as she says, “And that made me crazy.” She hides her face behind her hands, and I can’t keep my eyes from sweeping up and down her again, reverent, almost starving for her. “That’s the part that really made me messed up,” she says into her palms. “Not that I wasn’t good enough to keep you. But the way it was all fake.”
