Chapter 16
746 Words
Damiano pov :
He didn’t sleep.
He tried.
Lay there. Still. Eyes closed. Arms crossed over his chest like maybe if he stayed still enough, the thoughts would leave him alone.
They didn’t.
They never did.
But tonight was worse.
Tonight, it wasn’t just guilt or memory or silence eating away at him.
It was her.
---
He could still see her — sitting there on the bed, small, guarded, staring at him like she didn’t know whether to scream or stay quiet.
She didn’t cry.
Didn’t yell.
She just… looked at him.
And somehow that was harder to carry than if she’d thrown the damn book at his face.
Because that look wasn’t hate.
It wasn’t forgiveness either.
It was something in between. And he didn’t know what the hell to do with that.
---
He sat up in bed, palms pressed into his eyes.
The room was dark, but his chest still felt too full.
He’d said things tonight he didn’t mean to say out loud.
Things he didn’t know how to take back.
And maybe that’s what scared him most.
Because when she asked him why he was doing this — why he stayed, why he showed her something so personal — he didn’t have a clean answer.
Only the truth.
And the truth felt too big in his mouth.
“Maybe because nothing else has ever made me feel real.”
God.
What the hell did that even mean?
---
He stood, barefoot, unsure.
Didn’t bother with a shirt.
Didn’t know where he was going — just knew he couldn’t stay in that bed, in that silence.
He wandered the halls slowly, shoulders tense, hands curled into tired fists.
He passed her door.
Paused.
His chest pulled, but he kept walking.
Because if he went back in there now, he wouldn’t know how to sit still again.
He might say something else he couldn’t unsay.
And maybe she wouldn’t look at him the same after that.
---
He ended up in the study.
Not for the books. Not for the whiskey.
Just because the room didn’t feel like him.
It was cold. Unused. Quiet in a way that didn’t expect anything.
He sat in the corner chair and stared at nothing.
There were no cameras in here.
No guards outside the door.
No orders to bark or business to run.
Just him.
And the dull, constant hum in his head that sounded like: You’re the reason she looks like that now.
---
He rubbed the back of his neck, jaw tight.
He thought about the way she touched the sketchbook — gentle, careful, like it was something delicate.
Like he might’ve been something delicate once too.
And he hated how much that stayed with him.
He hated that when she looked at the drawing of his mother, she didn’t ask him why he still had it.
She asked if he drew it.
And he told her yes.
Told her he was fifteen.
And it just… slipped out. Like it belonged to someone else. Some version of him that didn’t exist anymore.
---
He wanted to go back in time and shake that kid.
Tell him not to lose himself. Not to trust anyone. Not to pick up the gun.
But it was too late.
And now he was here.
A grown man, sitting in his own house, afraid of the way a girl looked at him without fear.
---
She said she still hated him sometimes.
That she didn’t trust him.
That she dreamed of leaving.
He’d expected all of it.
But what he hadn’t expected was how much it mattered.
How it settled under his skin like something permanent.
Because even if she did hate him…
She was still talking to him.
Still trying to make sense of him.
And that was more than anyone had done in a long time.
---
He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.
Didn’t pray.
Didn’t hope.
Just sat there. Breathing.
Because maybe that was all he could do right now.
Maybe it was enough that he hadn’t yelled. Or left. Or ruined the moment by trying to explain something he didn’t even understand.
Maybe the only thing he could give her tonight was space.
And silence.
And the truth.
That he didn’t want to hurt her anymore.
That he didn’t know who he was around her.
And that he was scared of whatever the hell was happening to him....
- Writer
