I swallow away the emotion that rises in my throat. He has a strange way of sensing when I need someone to be there. Even if he’s not talking, he knows how to listen.
“I know…” He hesitates, swallowing. His fingers tap out a rhythm on the mattress, and he watches them instead of me. “I know what it’s like to feel trapped.”
Curiosity blooms in my chest, but I don’t trust myself to ask questions. He’ll talk if he’s ready, I just have to wait for him. The fact that he’s even opening up to me is huge for him, and I know pushing him for information is only going to push him away.
“A while after you left, there was an upstart gang who was giving us trouble,” he says, his voice emotionless. “It was supposed to be in and out. We didn’t think they were so strong, so well-established already. But they were. They didn’t have much in the way of resources, but they had a leader who was ruthless and smart as hell.”
My feet carry me to the bed without thought, and I sit down next to him. I want to crawl onto his lap and wrap my arms around him, but I resist. Instead, I keep a reasonable distance between us, staring at my feet and listening.
Not looking.
Not touching.
Letting him have the space he needs to speak freely.
“They…” I hesitate. “They took you.”
It’s not a question so much as it is a thought spoken out loud. I’ve slowly been piecing together theories, bits of information I’ve picked up that support this conclusion. After the incident in the car when I pushed him too far and Hale hauled me out into the woods, I learned not to be so stupid as to ask questions. But I still caught hints of what happened. Filling in the blanks, it’s easy to guess now.
Ciro nods. I catch the movement in my periphery.
“They tortured me,” he says quietly. “Wanted me to give up what I knew about the Novak Syndicate. They knew I was high enough up on that ladder to know a lot. They tried to break me, but I didn’t let them. I learned to shut it out.”
My heart twists. Just like you’re still shutting everything out.
“It’s hard to go back to normal after something like that.”
His words are blank. Empty. Just a statement of fact, unattached from the pain that should accompany words like that. He rubs the tattoos on his knuckles without realizing it, drawing my attention to the design.
He didn’t have those tattoos when I left. He got them sometime in the intervening years, and I wonder if they were inked on his skin after his rescue from the gang that captured him.
“Ciro,” I murmur quietly, trying to keep my own voice even like his is. I worry that any show of emotion will upset him, but it’s hard to keep my feelings under control. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. No one should have to go through that.”
I don’t need him to tell me the details. I can guess at parts of it, and I have a feeling there are parts I’m not emotionally equipped to hear about.
There are aspects of what he’s been through that he might not even remember. Like he said—he’s learned to shut it out. I may not know exactly what he’s been through, but after everything I’ve been through, I can begin to understand the battle he fights every single day. The battle he fights with his mind, with the memories.
He can’t run from what happened to him. It will always be there, no matter how much he tries to hide.
The repercussions of his torture will last forever.
“It doesn’t matter now,” he says quietly. He turns his head a little, looking at my feet instead of his own. “I don’t need you to feel sorry for me. I just wanted you to know… I understand what it’s like. To wish you could change things. To feel trapped.”
Anger burns through me, consuming my body and filling my veins.
Anger for his sake. Anger against the people who did this to him, anger for the person they took away—the quiet, bookish boy I once knew. Ciro was always steady, but now he teeters on the edge, fighting a battle every single day that none of us will ever understand.
My heart breaks, the pieces catching in my throat and stomach, making it hard to breathe.
“Ciro…”
I say his name again, because I don’t know what the fuck else to say.
Those steel-gray eyes meet mine, shattered and broken to their very depths.
Goddammit. I hate how much he hurts, even if he tries to hide it. I hate that he tore open a wound inside himself just to try to make me feel better, to let me know I’m not alone.
But I love him for it a little bit too.