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I’ve seen it many times but on him. On him it was petrifying.
“Are you hurt?” I asked in a mere whisper.
The response was cold and hard.
“No.”
“Was anyone killed?”
Lucca abruptly stopped midway through the room. My heart bounced; then it yelled for my body to awaken to the threat of his eyes on mine.
“I meant one ofours.”
Ours?His eyes narrowed.
“Go to bed,” Lucca ordered and continued on the path to the bathroom.
Enzo had warned me, but the truth was smeared and smoldered in Lucca’s eyes.
The war had begun, and a part of me worried for his safety.
Fast streams of water hit the shower tile, revealing Lucca’s movements, and as I lay back on the bed, my heart stung anxiously with an unsettling weight in my chest.
I had to fight Lucca harder. I had to find a way to win small battles between us because I was running out of time, and I felt powerless in this home as danger roared behind its doors. It seemed vulnerability was the only move I had left to regain the ability to protect myself from such. It meant I had to be honest and open when he was around. To show a part of me evenIwas a stranger to. It could work, but I struggled because vulnerability was the opposite of power. Yet, I lied to myself.
Because the moment I left myself exposed, he would break me.
He’d warned me himself.
It was a risk I had to take. A risk that promised knives, training, and the sliver of freedom. Now, without any of them, I have learned my weaknesses.
“Weaknesses are the door to death.”
My grandfather’s words recited in my head. Without them, I was weak.
The bathroom door opened, and Lucca slipped through silently. His mood hadn’t changed, and I carefully watched him. The strong lines of his muscles, to the towel that wrapped around his hips. Too soon, his strong inked back disappeared into the closet but quickly returned in only a black pair of boxers covering his taunting body.
I gripped the covers a bit tighter, rolling their soft texture against my fingertips. He wasn’t fully dressed. In fact, it didn’t seem as if he had any plans for leaving the room.
The dim light disappeared, and my body stilled beneath the sheets. My eardrums thudded as they followed each tap his bare feet made against the floor. As my bottled nerves melted through my body with the unfamiliarity of his actions, quick breaths escaped silently, and my eyes remained open in the darkness as if I could see through the night.
The bed shifted, dipping inches away from me. His scent wrapped around our short distance as the covers bunched in ruffles and the weight of his body spread evenly.
I couldn’t move.
Instead, our bodies lay in silence.
We were so close, sharing the same bed, and yet we were divided.
Only the falls and rises of my chest and our breathing blended in one.
There was something about the darkness. The kind that allowed you to hide behind it. The kind that eased. The kind that enticed you to relax. A veil so thin and yet too obscure to resist. Just like Lucca’s darkness, it compelled me to it. As much as I fought darkness, the urge never left, and I wanted all its kinds.
I knew sleep hadn’t claimed him, and I wanted a glimpse of his thoughts. Lucca had once promised he would always be honest when it came to my questions, but he had also warned me of his answers.
But as he’d walked bathed in blood, and a spring of concern for him had appeared, it made my decision to allow glimpses of vulnerability to slip easier.
So I asked in Italian, disrupting the silence in a soft murmur and allowing our tongue to take away the bitterness of words.
