He’s silent, his eyes roving all over the kitchen as if searching for something, and I am desperate for him to understand, to put himself in my shoes.
“So the twins aren’t good enough for you?” he finally says. “You don’t care what happens to them? You’re just going to abandon them, like our parents did?”
I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face. Holy hell, I did not see this coming.
“What are you talking about? No.”
“Do you know what this is going to do to them?” he cries out, his features strained by pure agony. “This will kill them. You can’t leave them! You can’t possibly be that selfish!”
I jerk my head back, the words cutting deep. “I’m not selfish,” I manage to choke out.
“You are,” he says. “And you’re leaving me. After everything, you’re leaving me.”
I stare at him and my soul feels bereft. I shake my head, tears spilling down my face. “I never said I was leaving you, Derio. I never said that’s what I wanted to do.” I take in a deep breath. It hurts. “But I’m leaving you now.”
“What?” he asks breathlessly.
I brush past him out of the kitchen, trying to keep it together before I start bawling, but he grabs my arm and stops me.
“You aren’t leaving,” he says, his voice breaking. “What I said, I didn’t mean it.”
“But you did,” I say. “And I do, too. This is for the best.”
“For you!” he suddenly yells. “This is the best for you! What about me?”
“This is the best for everyone in the end,” I tell him. “This never would have worked, not with me. Felisa knew what she was doing.”
“Felisa is gone!” he yells, his face red, his eyes pained. “And I love you. I love you.”
“Even if that’s true,” I tell him, trying to gather what little strength I have to make it up the stairs, “sometimes love is not enough.”
“Mia leonessa,” he says in a broken whisper as I go up the stairs. But that’s all he says. He doesn’t come after me. I pack my bags as quickly as I can, trying my hardest not to cry. I can’t lose it here, not in this house. I have to get off this island, get away and clear my head. I know I have enough money saved now in my makeshift piggy bank—a hollowed-out book—to buy a ticket home at a travel agency. Derio still owes me a bit more but he can keep it. It’s not worth it. It would only remind me of why I was here to begin with—as the hired help. A job that, somewhere along the way, turned into something more, something messy, something heart-wrenching.
I close my bag and zip it shut and take a moment to breathe before swinging it over my shoulders. I haven’t carried it in months, and the weight of it feels so foreign. It was such a big part of me for so long, a part of my life, and now it feels like a hug from an old friend. But even my backpack can’t comfort me. It just reminds me of the person I was before. I’m not sure I like her much either.
I look around our room—Derio’s room—knowing I’m probably leaving half of my stuff behind, but I don’t care. These things can be replaced; the memories can’t.
I ready myself before I step out into the hall and am relieved to feel that sense of numbness come over me like a cloak. I rely on it to get me down the stairs and to the front door. I don’t want to see Derio if I can help it.
But, of course, he steps out of his office, his eyes red and wet, and calls out to me.
“Don’t go,” he says quietly. “Please.”
He is breaking and I am broken. I can hear it, I can feel it. But even though I know he means for me to stay, wants me to stay, I can’t. Not anymore. Call it stubbornness or doing the right thing, but the voices deep inside of me are telling me to get out of here. That the situation is too messy to navigate. That we won’t be able to work through it. That our love, our beautiful, passionate love, won’t be enough to sustain us through the hard times. This moment is already proving that, after all.
I’m packed, with one foot out the door.
I have been pushed off the tightrope.
Now the fall begins.
“Goodbye,” I whisper to him as I turn the door handle. “Tell the twins I’m sorry.”
And then I steal out past the sad lemon trees, all which seem to weep yellow tears for me, and walk down the Via Tragara for the last time, heading for the ferry, for the mainland, for freedom. For home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I’m curled up in the fetal position in a hotel in Naples, letting the pain pass through me in sharp, thorny ribbons. It hurts. It really fucking hurts. Heartache is so physically real that it needs to be recognized as a sickness, an ailment, a cancer of love. A broken heart is a sad, angry, powerful thing that shakes you by the collar and demands your respect, and it’s pummeling me into the mattress, shattering me to pieces. It’s as real as the actual heart in my chest.
In some ways, it’s more real because it flows throughout your whole body, wrapping around your bones and your organs and your blood. It’s in everything you do, every breath you take. I can’t drink, I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I just hurt as my mind turns over and over what I’ve done and what it means. I keep seeing the look on Derio’s face, his heartbreak at my own hands, and I’m suffering all over again.
And again and again and again.
I think about everything I’m giving up by walking away and doing the so-called right thing. The twins, the love of my life. Everything changed for me on that island, and a part of me is afraid I’m throwing in the towel too soon.