“Why’s that?”
“Because he could never know me,” she said quietly. “I had friends, but they didn’t know me, either. No one did. They don’t know where I came from or what I went through. They only know the cover story, the girl I pretend to be . . . the girl everyone wants me to be . . . the girl I still sometimes wish I could be. They think the world I came from only exists in movies.”
“That’s the point,” he said. “You can be whoever you want to be.”
She sighed. “Don’t you get it, Carmine? I am that girl. I always will be, and believe it or not, I like her. I like being her. I like me.”
“I like you, too,” he said, “but you deserve more than this life, Haven.”
“Well, so do you.”
He groaned. “I chose this shit.”
“Then why couldn’t I?” she asked. “Why did you choose for me?”
“Because I’d be goddamned if I was going to let you throw everything away for someone like me. You’re better than my kind.”
Haven shook her head with disbelief. “Your kind? How can you say that? You, the boy who told me over and over again that I’d overcome my label . . . how can you label yourself? You wanted me to go out there and explore my options. I did that, Carmine, and I loved it, but I was lonely. Do you know what it’s like to stand in a crowded room and still feel like you’re the only one there? Do you? Because that was how it felt to me.”
“I couldn’t be something you settled for, Haven.”
“You think being with you would be settling? I’ll always be a part of your world. I’ll always have someone keeping tabs on me, making sure I don’t break my silence. My house got broken into and I couldn’t even call the police, I had to call your uncle! How do I explain that to people? It’s not normal—I’m not normal! Being out there in the world alone, spending my life pretending to be someone I’m not . . . that’s settling, Carmine. Does it even matter what I want?”
Carmine sighed exasperatedly, taking another drink. “Of course it matters.”
“Then why’d you do it?”
He stared at her, his eyes boring into hers intensely. “What do you do when the thing you want most suddenly feels like it’s just beyond your fingertips?”
The question caught Haven off guard. “What?”
“You wrote that in your journal,” he said. “I couldn’t hold you back.”
A bitter laugh of disbelief erupted from her chest. “That’s why you did it? Are you kidding me? The answer to that question isn’t to give up, Carmine. You don’t just quit. You keep trying. You keep reaching. All I ever wanted was someone to see me, to love me, to understand me. I didn’t have to hide from you; I didn’t have to pretend to be someone I wasn’t. You know me, the person no one else will ever know. I wanted to be with you, I thought we’d be together, and then you left! You walked out on me as I slept!”
Haven shook as all of the hurt came pouring out in her words, everything she had kept bottled in for the past eighteen months erupting in a cloud of anger.
“I wanted what was best for you,” he said. “I wanted you to have a chance.”
“A chance?” she asked. “You asked me for a chance once. Do you remember that? I gave it to you, and I don’t regret that for a second. I’ll never regret it. If you didn’t love me, that’s one thing, but—”
“Of course I loved you!” His eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t want to get you killed!”
“You’re not your father, Carmine, and I’m not your mother.”
“I know that,” he spat.
“Do you? You’re so busy trying to stop history from repeating itself that you’re completely ignoring what’s right in front of you!”
He wiped his eyes. “And what’s that?”
“Fate,” she said. “You came into my life because you were meant to be in my life. It wasn’t an accident! So don’t push me away, because I fucking love you, Carmine DeMarco, and you’re just hurting yourself doing it!”
Frantic, Haven wrapped her arms around her chest, trying to hold herself together. Carmine stared at her in a daze, but the moment a sob escaped from her throat he snapped back to reality. He wrapped his arms around her tightly. “Oh, tesoro,” he whispered into her hair. “I fucking love you, too.”
They clung to each other again until Carmine’s phone shattered yet another moment. He groaned as he reached for it and glanced at the screen.
“Sir?” His voice was even as he answered, his eyes refusing to leave Haven’s face. “Yes, sir. Thirty minutes. I got it.”