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“Of course it matters,” Anna said. “There’s no rule about how much someone can or can’t hurt you and how easy it should be to get over them. There is no statute of limitations on pain.”
“I fucking wish there was,” I said. I felt lightheaded, and my heart hammered in my throat.
Lorenzo was gone. He was reallygone.
A part of me had believed that this was just the rest of the nightmare, and somewhere I would wake up and we would be together. Another part had thought that it wasn’t real that he’d called it off—if we’d found each other again once, we could do it again.
I hadn’t considered that this was real, that he was done with me, and there were no more chapters to this story.
No matter what my life was like, how big my trust fund and how important my name, I could have my heart broken just like everyone else.
I wasn’t invincible. I was Celine Forger, but that didn’t mean shit in the rest of the world, where hearts broke and love died and people disappeared when I wanted them to stay.
It didn’t mean anything at all, and I had to deal with my pain and my grief just like everyone else did.
I started crying.
“Oh, Celine,” Anna said and wrapped her arms around me, holding me. “I’m so sorry.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I cried.
“Of course it does.”
“It shouldn’t have ended this way. I don’t cry over boys. I don’t get hurt. I don’t love and I don’t lose and I… I’m just like the rest of you.”
“What?” Anna asked.
“I always knew that it had to be true—if you cut me, I would bleed.”
“I know,” Anna said softly.
“Lorenzo cut me,” I cried, my voice getting squeaky. “He cut me and I’m bleeding and I don’t know how to make it stop.”
28
LORENZO
ItalywasjusthowI remembered it—evergreen and passionate. The people here were just put together differently. In the town where I’d grown up, surviving was the name of the game. No one wanted more than they needed, no one wanted to hoard things and keep them to themselves. They shared, they lived, they loved.
When I’d been younger, I’d wanted to get out of here as quickly as I could. The town was beautiful, and the people were wonderful, but I didn’t understand a life where merely surviving was enough.
So much had changed about the way I saw the world. So much was different now that I’d grown up that coming back had seemed like a good idea.
Maybe being back home would be a revelation like everything else had been, it would be the life I’d never realized I really wanted.
Yeah, the moment I arrived home, I realized that wasn’t true.
“What do you think?” Dad asked me after he’d given me a tour of the vineyard.
“It’s just how I remember it,” I said with a smile.
Dad laughed and clapped me on the back. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
He was proud that everything had stayed the same, but I hadn’t meant it as a compliment. I knew that the life my parents had built for themselves was enough. I never wanted to change what they needed in life, I just wanted to make sure that I got what I needed.
This wasn’t what I needed. This world hadn’t moved forward in time. They were still stuck in the life they’d led before.
Sure, they weren’t struggling anymore, but they weren’t living the high life, either. They were just… existing.
