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“Good.” I gave him a curt nod, lowering myself into the wheelchair. “Have you seen Alessia? How is she?”
“She won’t admit it, but everyone’s worried about her. She’s… distant.”
“She went through something traumatic.”
“Yeah, but this feels… more than that. Nicco tried to broach transferring colleges with her and by all accounts, she lost it. He had to send in reinforcements to calm her down. Nora’s worried. We all are.”
Fuck.
That hollow ache inside me had me rubbing my chest, trying to ease the phantom pain. Because it wasn’t something physical I could heal from. It was bone deep guilt.
Soul deep regret.
But more than that, it was a mark on my heart I wasn’t sure I would ever recover from.
I’d hurt her.
And in doing so, I’d hurt myself.
Enzo wheeled me toward the door and chuckled. “I hope you’re ready to be fussed over. I don’t know who will be worse. Ari, Nora, or Caitlin.”
But it didn’t matter because the only girl I cared about visiting me, wouldn’t be there.
CHAPTER9
ALESSIA
Iwasn’t talking to Nicco.
I wasn’t really talking to anyone. He’d stopped by a couple of days ago and suggested I transfer to a college out of state, and I’d been ignoring him ever since.
After everything I’d been through, he wanted to ship me away to a new town, a new place where I didn’t know anyone.
“It’ll give you a chance to spread your wings,” he’d said.
I didn’t want to spread my wings. I wanted to see Tristan. I wanted to see for myself that he was okay.
No one had kept me away from the hospital, but I hadn’t been brave enough to visit. To see the rejection I knew I’d find in his eyes. Whatever happened between us in the cabin was fleeting. A moment of madness fueled by fear and desperation.
Yet, it had been so much more to me.
When I’d heard the gunshots, heard him scream my name, and I’d run from the shed and found him bleeding out on the gravel, my heart had fractured.
Irrevocably and unequivocally broken.
Because in that moment, I realized two things.
One, I truly was desperately and hopelessly in love with Tristan Capizola, and two, I was going to watch the man I loved die. I didn’t remember falling to my knees or crawling toward him, reaching for him before strong arms hoisted me off the ground.
Matteo.
Matteo found me first. Then Enzo, Luis, and Nicco had appeared. I couldn’t remember much about what happened after. The dead bodies and hushed conversations. The smell of burning.
They said I went into shock. I’m not sure I snapped out of it until I heard those two little words.
He’s alive.
Tears burned the backs of my eyes but I blinked them away. I was done crying, my eyes bleary and sore from all the tears that had fallen these past few days. Tears for myself, for what might have been and what would never be.
