It looked like my saying that socked him in the face. It was as if he was expecting me to say otherwise. I wished more than anything that I could.
“I don’t… I can’t…” I sniffled in and let my words die. I couldn’t muster up anything that would make either of us feel better, so I just stopped.
“I love you,” Gabriel said, and it cut deep. “I always will. No matter what happens, never forget that.”
Tears dripped onto my chest and stained my dress there. “I lo—”
Gabriel held up a hand. “Don’t. Please don’t. I can’t. If I hear it…” He shook his head. “Tell me you hate me. Tell me you’ll never forgive me.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t tell him that. It wasn’t true. But I could respect him and not make it worse by saying I loved him, as well. It wouldn’t make a difference, anyway. Love wasn’t strong enough for us. As long as Gabriel was a Varasso, it wouldn’t be.
We sat in silence for so long that it felt like we may both start to grow weeds. We were stalling. The minute we left that hill, we were walking away from each other forever. Neither of us could make the first move. It was a good thing that Mira eventually climbed out of the car and poked her head around. Otherwise, we might have died up there. I imagined she’d been listening to the conversation and knew that it went dead some time ago.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a whisper that carried miles in the quiet, serene night. “We should go.”
“Can you help me?” I asked.
Mira walked over. She saw the collection of items sitting in front of me and lifted them. She brought them over to the car and then returned, holding out a hand. I opened my mouth, but fear of what would come out closed it again. I took Mira’s hand, got to my feet, and walked over and climbed into the car. We backed out of our parking spot enough to pivot the car until it was facing the right direction. I watched Gabriel through the side-view mirror as his head dropped to his knees. His back started to rise and fall heavily. I cried to match his anguish, wishing that I’d told him I loved him.
“Are you okay?” Mira asked.
I shook my head. “No. I feel like I may be making a huge mistake.”
24
Gabriel
I couldn’t begin to know how long I sat up on that hill. I didn’t know if I was hoping that if I sat there long enough, Stacy would come back, or maybe my dad, or maybe the world would just stop turning all together and end the skin-snatching, gut-wrenching torment that was thundering its way through me.
There would never be another Stacy. I could search until I reached the end of our round earth, and there would never be another. I wouldn’t kid myself and think that there would be. I wouldn’t look. I would commit to memory as much as I could that silken blonde hair and those endless green eyes and her brighter-than-the-sun smile. I would pray for the nights I would find her in my dreams. I wouldn’t try to replace the piece of me that she took with her. That hole was too deep, too dark, too vast. It couldn’t be her, so I wanted nothing at all.
In the end, it was a good thing. I could throw myself into the Varasso business because nothing scared me now. In the past month, my biggest fear had become watching her walk away. Now that I’d faced that and lived, Death himself could hold his scythe at my throat, and I wouldn’t flinch.
When I brought myself to my feet, I didn’t bother with the blanket or retucking the chest away; I wouldn’t be back. If someone found my blanket and felt it was worth pilfering, good for them. Hopefully, they could bear the weight of daddy issues and heartbreak if they were going to cover themselves with it.
The forty-five-minute drive back to our family estate felt like hours. I couldn’t drag my mind away from Stacy, and every time I thought about her, it brought me close to breaking again. I just wanted her in my arms again. We never did get to celebrate our confessed love for one another. Maybe that was for the best. If we’d gotten to cement things that way, I doubt I could have managed letting her leave. I would have grabbed her and held on until the world was crumbling around us. The fact that I made it back with her clawing at my brain was, was an absolute miracle.
When I was turning into our driveway, it almost felt like a foreign, unfamiliar place. I’d left my brothers in the wreckage of the mess that I had made. I didn’t get to hear how they recovered, or if they ever did.
I drove around the cul-de-sac and noticed that Molly’s car was still missing. I should have called her. On the way to the hill or the way back, I had plenty of time. I owed her the biggest apology for forcing Luca over the edge. I needed to tell her that I didn’t know the man wearing my skin in Luca’s office and beg her to come back so that she and Luca could make up. Maybe it was because Luca was the oldest and the head of the family, or maybe it was because I’d had to break up with Stacy, but Luca and Molly felt like the last stand. If they broke, everything else would break, and the pieces would be way too small to glue together again.
I put my car in park and made a plan to call Molly first thing in the morning if she didn’t call tonight. I started to get out of the car and felt the weight of my gun press into the side of my hip. The butt of the gun felt heavier against me than I knew it to be. Being a Varasso meant trusting that my family wouldn’t hurt me. It meant earning their trust back, as well. I lifted it out of my waistband and leaned over to put it in the glove box when I noticed something that shook me to my core.
All the lights in the estate were off.
I scanned all the windows carefully, checking for any stretch of light or illumination that would suggest maybe we were just suddenly trying to save on our electricity bill, but not one single light was on. My father’s entire operation ran out of our estate. He couldn’t afford for our electricity to go down. He had backup generators in case the power went out, and he had backup generators for those backup generators.
None of us slept on the same schedule. Luca often stayed up into the early hours of the morning, went to bed, and slept until noon. I usually had a religious eight-thirty bedtime and was up by five the next morning. When Alessandro and Marco were still around, their schedules changed by the day. Even if all of us were asleep, or none of us, we had round-the-clock staff. The foyer lights were almost always on, as were the ones in the kitchen. Total darkness meant something was wrong.
I folded the glove box lid back into its place and kept my gun in my hand. I was pulling back to step out of my car when my car phone started to blare. In a panic, I slapped my hand down on the console, not intending to do anything specific besides stop the loud ringing. To my shock, the line picked up.
“Gabriel?”
I looked at my center console as if I’d see the face looking back at me. “Stace?”
She sniffled. “Hi.”
“Is everything okay?” I asked, wheeling down the volume button and cursing my truck for having a feature that kept the radio functioning after the car had been totally shut off. I was happy to hear her voice, but the timing couldn’t have been worse.