Page 83 of Capo
“Thank you,” he says and turns. His face is shadowed and still his features are clear to me, etched into my mind. Sometimes I think I’ve never seen another man in my life. Salvatore leans in and rests his forehead against mine. “She was my friend.” His voice is so different. Dark and hoarse, breaking on the last word, filled with unfathomable sorrow.
I wait for him to continue, but seconds tick away and the silence builds. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He swallows audibly. “I didn’t make it in time. I didn’t even know she was ill. I should have been there. I should have seen it. She was so thin, nothing but skin and bone. I’m a fucking idiot.”
“Your friend died?”
“Not even twenty-four hours ago.”
“You came all the way to Sicily? Was she from here? Is her family—”
He shakes his head. “I came… I just needed to rest.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss, Luciano.”
His eyes fly open and my cheeks heat up when I realize what I just did.
“It’s the second time you’ve said my name.”
I frown. “Second? I don’t—”
“I held you. You were bloody, terrified. You whispered ‘Luci’.”
I did? I stare at him, my heart galloping. Why does it mean anything to him that I said his first name?
“Who am I?” I swallow hard, my heart galloping. “Luci.”
“What do you mean?”
“To you. Why are you here? Why am I here? Why do you care? You’re not just protecting your ‘property’, are you?”
“I had nowhere else to go,” he whispers. “Everyone is pulling me in every different direction. ‘Boss’. ‘Sir’. ‘Uncle’. Fucking no one just… You’ve never demanded anything from me.”
I raise my eyebrows. “My freedom?”
Salvatore turns on his back and stares up at the ceiling.
“Why did you take me?”
He scoffs. “Because I’m an idiot.”
“Yeah, you are.” My mouth says it before I even think it over. I inhale in sudden fear that I stepped over the line, but he doesn’t react. I put my hand on his arm, stroking softly over the coarse hair, his skin warm. “I’m lost,” I whisper. “I have had so many lives. I don’t know who I am anymore.”
“Yeah… I haven’t helped, have I?”
I don’t know what to say.
“Do you hate me, Chloe?”
My heart skips a beat. I have no idea how to answer that. I should. I have. But there is so much more. There’s no heart of gold in this man. He’s as dark as they come. But there’s honor in him, pride, hurt, desperation. He wants to be acknowledged. He wants to be cared for, loved. He just doesn’t know how to ask for it. I shouldn’t be the one who thinks she can provide it, but he’s awoken something in me that’s not only sexual. Our mornings together with David. Sitting in a comfortable silence late at night on the patio, when his house had calmed down.
“I’ve lost you too,” he says, his voice a shade darker, more desolate than ever.
“You haven’t ‘lost’ me. You can’t lose something you’ve never had.”
A sound escapes him, a mix between a whimper and a groan, and then he turns on his side, away from me.
“Hey.” I put a hand on his shoulder, terrified of my own actions. I have no idea what I’m doing. All I know is that he is nothing like himself, and that I can’t stand to see his pain.