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“Why would you listen to a single thing that motherfucker said? He’s the one that’s miserable. He’s wrong about you, about us. Fuck him, Vanessa. And fuck Zoe, too. She’s obviously been jealous of you and wants to see you fail. Don’t give either of them what they want,” Santino thundered.

“I told you, it’s not all about them, or even about you. It’s me. It’s in here.” Vanessa pressed the middle of her chest, looking so forlorn it made him want to cry. “I’m just…I’m feeling overwhelmed right now. Maybe it’s not fair to ask you to wait for me, but please, can you just let me breathe?”

Shocked, he stared at her as the words pummeled him, each one a body blow. “Let you breathe ? You need space from me? All I did for the last three goddamned years was give you space.”

The room was spinning. He was the one that suddenly couldn’t breathe. She stood watching him with those sad, sad eyes while he tried to keep himself together. With a harsh exhale, he wiped his face.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t say it before, when I should have, but I’m sorry.

I hurt you and I disrespected you. I put someone else first and made you doubt me.

I understand that now. I can acknowledge all of that.

But I thought I did enough this week to make you understand that you’re safe with me.

What more can I do to prove it to you?” Santino shook his head and wiped his face again.

His hands came away wet, and he wasn’t sure if it was tears or clear lava pouring from his skin.

“Whatever issues you have, we can work on them together. But you can’t let that fear win.

You can’t let it keep us apart. I need you. ”

His voice broke. They stood locked in that moment together, him breathing fire and her retreating into that cold, lonely shadow. When she raised her chin, it wasn’t defiance flashing from her eyes. With that gaze, she begged him to understand her. And understanding meant the unthinkable.

“I’ve already forgiven you. And I need you too. But I need to fix my shit or this won’t work. You don’t deserve to be with someone who’s always expecting the worst.”

Forcefully, despite everything in him trembling, he ground out, “No. Don’t do that. Don’t you break my fucking heart and try to sell it to me like what you’re doing is in my best interest. It’s not and you know it. If this is because you really don’t want me, just say that."

He felt out of control, outside himself, his voice rising with anguish. Abruptly, he forced himself to shut the fuck up in a desperate attempt to keep even a shred of his dignity.

“I do want you. But I need to do this first.” Her lip trembling, she pushed her hair away from her face in that familiar gesture that let him know she was trying hard to keep her composure and this time she might fail.

And there it was again. That moment when the realization descended upon him, creeping downward from his head to his toes like a slow, dark mist. It enveloped him.

All the beauty, all the magic, everything he’d believed was finally theirs, had been a mirage.

Just a fantasy made of smoke, seeping through his grasping fingers.

Then he had nothing left to hold on to. No hope for this to ever, ever change.

He nodded thickly, his throat contracting around salt and sorrow. “Okay. I said I’d give you anything you asked for and I will. You want space to figure out why you keep doing this, you’ve got it.”

Santino turned to go, not sure of what would come out of his mouth if he had to speak again.

Vanessa came up behind him, to close and lock the door, he thought.

But when she slid her arms around him, he paused, his head sinking forward as his eyes closed.

He turned and wrapped his arms around her in turn, pulling her in tight, breathing in her wild floral scent and the very air she breathed.

Drank her in, every bit of her, wishing he could take her deeper inside this house and lock her up, force her to open all of herself to him, knowing all the same it wouldn’t do any good.

She had to want this. She had to choose him.

He pressed a single kiss to her lips and caressed her cheek briefly. “I should get going.” His voice was unrecognizable even to himself as he pulled back, turned and left abruptly, before he could give in to the urge to simply refuse to leave.

But almost one week ago, he’d made a promise. And he didn’t go back on a vow once made.

Suddenly he was in front of his parent’s house on City Island.

He had absolutely no recollection of the drive.

The last thing he remembered was shuffling down the path from Vanessa’s front door to the car, and here he was.

It was a miracle he’d made it in one piece.

If he could call anything miraculous at this point.

It was still early in the day. Both his parents’ cars and Gina’s were gone. They’d be at the restaurant now and little Gino would be at Toddler Tyme, a dumb assed spelling for a childcare center that supposedly placed an emphasis on early childhood learning.

Forget the name. He had more things to worry about, like the current implosion happening in his chest. Throwing his bags on the floor of his closet in his old bedroom, his first impulse was to crawl right in that bed and never get out again.

The old times beckoned him, offering promises of peace in oblivion.

Nah. The idea of lying there in his own filth for a few weeks wasn’t appealing anymore.

The prospect of Lina standing over his bed, cursing and raging against Vanessa for putting him there again, wasn’t something he thought he could tolerate right now either.

He might say something to her he’d regret.

Besides that, it wouldn’t resolve anything for anyone else who loved him.

He’d already put them through enough these last few years.

He made a decision. Santino grabbed his things, hauled them back to the car and drove to his own house.

Standing in the doorway, the true state of this place struck him for the first time.

He took in the dilapidated banister of the stairwell, the various cracks in the ceiling and the warped hardwood floors, the fucked up pitted and torn wallpaper left over from someone’s olive green fixation of 1993.

No more of that. He was going to buy it and fix it up.

In between studying and passing that fucking exam, he was going to go full Chip Gaines and make it a fucking palace .

A palace fit for a new princess —no, a goddamned queen , a new woman, someone safe, someone easy, someone who wouldn’t keep ripping out his heart and fucking crushing it over and over again like this.

A new queen? The thought of that made him laugh out loud. Who was he kidding? There was only one, could ever be only one queen of his heart, whether it was crushed or not, whether she believed that’s who she was or not.

A deep spasm crossed his face, twisting it into something he was sure he wouldn’t recognize if he’d been looking in a mirror. That chasm, the entrance to the void opened up before him. Santino peered in, looking down into the vast darkness below, then slowly, resolutely stepped away from the edge.

When Gina called him later, when the sun was sinking and leaking crimson, orange and purple on to a weary sky, he answered on the second ring.

“Hey, Tino Bambino. How was Montreal?” She lowered her voice to a playful whisper. “How did it go? Are you with Vanessa right now?”

“No,” he answered. He swallowed hard. “It didn’t work.”

“Oh, Tino,” she breathed. “Oh no. I’m so sorry.” There was a sniffle on the other end as though she was crying, feeling every bit of his pain.

“Me too. I, um…I really thought we would make it this time.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

There was a beat of silence filled only with more sniffling. Then she said, “Okay, no talking. But would you like me and Gino to come spend the night? We can watch some Lakefront Bargain Home Reno reruns and eat a ton of shit that’s bad for us. I won’t say anything to anybody.”

Santino’s nose was running, leaking onto his lips. He wiped it with the back of his hand, but his eyes kept overflowing. “Yeah. That sounds good.”