Sempre (Sempre 1)

“Here I have food to eat and clothes to wear.”

“But no one understands you?”

She shook her head. “My masters treat me nicely, though.”

“Whoa.” Masters? That rubbed him the wrong way. “Why the hell do you keep saying that? It sounds wrong, like you’re a servant or a slave or something.”

She peeked at him as he spoke. “Aren’t I?”

“How . . . ? What the fuck?”

“It isn’t bad here,” she quickly explained. “People like me wish for the kind of place where they don’t have to fear paying for someone else’s mistakes with their life.”

“And wherever you came from, you worried you’d be killed for no reason?”

“No, there’s always a reason,” she said. “Just not one you caused.”

Carmine was taken aback by how much he understood the strange girl. She may not have seen it, but Carmine knew what it was like to pay for others’ mistakes. He knew what it was like to live knowing your life could end because of something that had absolutely nothing to do with you.

But masters? That he didn’t get.

She finished folding her clothes in silence before making a move to leave, but Carmine remained in the doorway, blocking her only exit.

“Do you need anything else?” she asked.

“I need to know why you hate me.”

Her brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“You run from me; you won’t look at me or talk to me. The only reason you’re doing it now is because you don’t think you have a choice. You have no problem being around my brother, so why the problem with me? Am I that horrible?” She stared at him as he rambled in frustration, her muteness putting him more on edge. “Christ, now I’m fucking yelling at you, like that’s going to fix anything. Is that what’s wrong? Is it my temper?”

“I don’t hate you. I just . . . don’t understand you.”

Something about those words was like a dagger striking his chest. No one had understood him before, but he wanted her to. He needed her to, because for the first time in years, he wondered if someone finally could.

The ringing of his phone thwarted his response. He pulled it out of his pocket, and she took the opportunity to slip past him.

“Haven,” he called, stepping out of the laundry room behind her. “I think you’ll find we’re a lot alike if you take the chance to get to know me.”

He turned away from her to answer the call. “Yeah, Dia?”

“I shouldn’t have hung up,” Dia said. “Do you still need your laundry done?”

“No, I got it,” he said. “Someone showed me how to do it.”

He realized, as he glanced into the laundry room, that he hadn’t even thanked Haven for her help.

* * *

Carmine burst into his father’s office and plopped down in the chair in front of the desk. Vincent put down the medical journal he’d been flipping through and removed his glasses. “Come in, son. You’re not interrupting at all.”

Not in the mood for a lecture, Carmine dived in to what was on his mind. “Why’s that girl here?”

Vincent sighed. “Haven’t we already had this conversation? You said you didn’t care.”

“I care now.” His own words caught him off guard. Did he?

Vincent eyed him suspiciously. “Why?”