Page 38 of Finding Love

After shoving them into a shoebox, I close the cardboard flaps and pick both boxes up. Outside, I find her talking with Vinny as he loads up the trunk. “Get her home as soon as possible, then stick around outside until I call you,” I mutter, handing him the boxes without looking her way. I don’t dare. I might do something terrible if I look at her.

Or something terribly humiliating, like begging her not to take away my reason for living. Instead, I watch from the front window as the car rolls away.

She walked out of my life without bothering to give me another chance. And with it, any love my black heart might have felt.

16

EMILIA

“Really, I’m fine.” I hook a finger around one of the curtains over the front window and pull it aside a few inches, far enough that I can see the black car down at the curb. That car won’t leave until the next vehicle shows up to take its place. At least, that’s the way it’s been the past few days since I came back to my apartment. I might have walked out, but not far enough for Luca to truly let me go. He insists on keeping guards outside around the clock, no matter how I feel about it.

Secretly, I don’t mind. All it takes is a look at myself in the mirror, without my wig since I’m alone with no one to impress, to recall why a security detail might not be a bad thing.

“I wish I had a chance to say goodbye.” Guilia’s voice trembles, and the sound makes me wince. I didn’t mean to hurt her by leaving suddenly. “You’ll come back, won’t you? This isn’t for good.”

I want to give her a little comfort, but I can’t lie. She isn’t a child. I don’t have to tiptoe around her feelings. “I’m not sure. It’s complicated.”

She groans. “Want me to mess with him for you?”

It feels good to laugh, something I’ve done very little of lately. Not since our dinner in the Hamptons before everything went to hell. It hurts to remember that, so instead, I ask, “What would that involve?”

“Leave it to me,” she says with determination in her voice. “I’ll bug him until he realizes what an ass he is for letting you go.”

If only it were so easy, but that’s not something I want to get into, either. “Maybe take it easy on him,” I decide. “He is going through a lot right now. And I’m fine,” I insist before she can ask. “I really am. I need this time to myself.”

“So long as it’s not forever,” she adds before we get off the phone. “I just got used to having another girl around here.”

I can’t say I feel much better once I’m off the phone, though how could I be at a time like this? I’ve barely unpacked, unable to muster the energy or care to get off the couch and pull my life together, even in the simplest ways.

This was my choice. That doesn’t make living with it any easier.

Why did he have to do it? I’ve spent this time alone, trying and failing to wipe that question out of my mind. It’s pointless, useless. There are no answers, none that matter, anyway. He did it for me, so he says. I think that’s bullshit. I think he is way too comfortable using violence to get his way, and it doesn’t matter who gets hurt. He has a way of rationalizing everything, and that is not the kind of person I want to be with.

Even if I do want to be with him, I want him with all my heart. When he’s the version of himself he showed me in the Hamptons, I want nothing more than for us to be together. When I’m with him, I feel whole. It’s bizarre and inexplicable, but it’s a fundamental truth.

The faint growling of my stomach reminds me I haven’t eaten yet today. I know better than to order delivery. I doubt a delivery driver could get up here without being patted down by whoever is on duty outside. The groceries I picked up the day I returned won’t last forever. I’ll have to go out again, which means being followed around by yet another guard. I might as well wear a sign around my neck, inviting stares and whispers. These guys are not exactly the type who blend in. I guess that would go against the point.

After boiling a pack of noodles, I carry the steaming bowl into the bedroom. It’s about time I finished putting things away. I can’t move forward if I’m stuck in the past, with bags all over the bedroom and mostly empty drawers and shelves.

It doesn’t take long for me to figure out that it isn’t only being heartsick that’s kept me from getting any further with this than I already have. It’s the finality of the act. If I finish unpacking and set my apartment up the way it used to be, that means it’s really over. I don’t live with Luca anymore.

We aren’t together anymore.

Only weeks ago, this was the outcome I wanted. To be here, on my own, living more or less the way I want to live. Granted, I could do without armed men watching me, but even that is something I could learn to live with.

Suddenly, a sweater isn’t just a sweater. Placing it on the shelf in the closet is another step further away from Luca. This is the right choice. I have to believe it is. At the end of the day, I’m a possession he wants to protect. I’m important to him, yet so is his car.

A handful of shoeboxes are stacked in a cardboard box that is otherwise full of books and photos. I notice now that the lid to the top box doesn’t quite fit, sitting crooked. I lift the lid and look inside to find a pair of shoes and a stack of folded paper—letters, by the looks of them.

I sit on the bed and open the first one to find a handwritten message on paper with the hospital’s logo printed along the top.

Dear Emilia,

You’re finally awake. They keep telling me you’re going to get better. Once you recover a little, you’ll get your memory back. I have to believe that’s true, or else I don’t know why I should bother living anymore. It sounds pretty sad, and before you, I would never have dreamed of thinking that way. Now that I have you, though, I know you’re my purpose. The night we met, even when I found out you were a detective and were lying to me, I couldn’t do anything but want you in my life.

Oh, my God. I remember that. Whether the memory has laid dormant inside me all this time or his letter dug it out of my brain, I don’t know. I remember going to the club. I remember waking up in his office, scared out of my wits but also incredibly drawn to him.

My hands are trembling as I fold the page, setting it aside to pull out the next letter. It, too, is handwritten on hospital letterhead. I guess they must have had some in that waiting area where he spent so much time.

---