We were too poor to even take out a loan. How does someone secure an investment when they have no equity?
The only thing of value we had, that we’d ever had, was me.
I tried to model, but I’d been out of the game for a year, and Landon Knox’s blackmark against me still lingered in Milan and echoed out into the rest of Italy.
I couldn’t secure an agent, let alone a go-see or photo shoot.
Even my beauty, it seemed, couldn’t help us now.
My eyes stung as I blinked up into the rain, and I wondered idly if I was crying.
I could have been, though I wasn’t a crier, but I doubted it.
It seemed that running away from the only man I’d ever loved hadn’t ripped me open like a raw wound as I thought it might. Instead, it had calcified me. Where I was once warmth and light, I was only sinew and blood, stripped of metaphor and emotion, a human vessel without animation.
Oh, my family still gave me comfort. I was free to FaceTime with them every night, to see the small but comfortable brownstone Mama had made a deposit on with the last of the money I’d sent her, to see the tender, excited way Elena handled her new law school textbooks for her first semester at NYU, to watch Giselle as she painted intricate works of art as easily as breathing while she gabbed to me about how much she loved Paris, and finally, most beautifully, to discover the face of my brother as he talked about the woman he had fallen in love with.
I could have moved to any of their cities. It would have been an incredible comfort to wrap myself in their love as balm against the sucking black hole of missing and misery that lay in my chest where my heart used to be, but I didn’t.
First, I didn’t want them to see how broken I was. They would have questions I didn’t have answers for, and they wouldn’t let things lie if it looked like I was in pain.
I had to get a handle on myself before I could go to them.
Secondly, I needed a job. I thought, given my previous experience in Italy, that it was the obvious place to do so.
I’d been wrong, but I’d sent the bulk of my money to my family members, and I didn’t have enough to book a flight even if I wanted to. I was crashing on my friend Erika’s couch and that was getting old quick because she had a boyfriend who was gross enough to hit on me whenever she wasn’t home.
So there I was, stuck in Milan with my sorrow and without a hope.
I tilted my head back farther, letting the rain pelt me in the face. I could feel the rush of water drenching my black wrap dress, sluicing over my hair like a religious cleansing, a rebirth, or a baptism. I was lost to religion forever, but I enjoyed the metaphor. My fingers unfurled and my palms rounded so that I would feel the rain run through my fingers.
I just stood there like a crazy person, smiling because I was free to stand there like a crazy person, and no one was going to stop me.
I’d fought so hard for so many things that had escaped me, but this, this freedom, was something I would never ever take for granted.
“Scusi,” a cool, slightly accented voice interrupted my reverie. “Stai bene?”
I righted myself and took in the frankly gorgeous man before me who was nearly as waterlogged as I was. His dark copper hair dripped over his forehead, partially shielding the vivid, nearly electric blue of his eyes as he peered down at me in concern. He was tall—not as tall as Alexander or Dante, but I’d yet to meet anyone who was—and trim but fit beneath his trench coat.
If I’d been a normal girl with a normal past, I might have blushed and flirted with such an attractive stranger.
But I wasn’t that girl.
In fact, the primary reason I found myself drawn in by him was because of the aloof cast to his mouth and the stern set of his features. Even though he was clearly concerned about the crazy woman happily getting drenched in the rain, he didn’t really care.
That apathy stirred something in me, a strange combination of empathy and allure.
I answered him in English, just guessing at his accent. “I’m fine, thank you. I enjoy the rain.”
His lips twitched, drawing my attention to the firm, perfectly formed mouth. “I wonder if it might be better enjoyed from the café behind you, maybe over a hot caffè latte? I’m not sure if you are aware, but your teeth are chattering.”
I froze and noticed that my teeth did not follow suit. “Oh.”