Page 87 of Of Lies and Shadows

When I pull back, her eyes meet mine. They're not empty, not gone like before. But they’re guarded, watchful, as though she’s waiting to see which version of me I’ll be next.

I don’t know how much to say. How much she'll even believe.

But the truth claws its way out of me anyway.

“I was hurt. Heartbroken. I thought I’d been used, played… but the truth is, I was falling for you, even then.” I take a breath that feels like splinters. “I’m in love with you, Francesca.” I’ve never said that to anyone before.

Silence.

Her gaze breaks from mine. Slowly, carefully, she lowers her eyes… and brushes a nonexistent crease from her skirt.

No smile. No tears. Just a gesture that says everything. She heard me but won’t acknowledge it, and that hurts more than any rejection ever could.

“Francesca?”

She looks up, and her eyes are shiny with unshed tears. Not the soft kind. The kind that sting. The kind that come from insult, not intimacy

And it hits me hard and wrong. I cracked my heart open for her, laid it bleeding at her feet… and somehow, it felt like a slap to her.

“This is not possible,” she says quietly.

“What isn’t?” My voice breaks before I can stop it. “Me loving you?” I take her hand and press it against the center of my chest. Over the rhythm she put there. “I can assure you it is.”

She lets her hand rest there for a second. A second that feels like hope, but then she pulls away.

“No,” she says, stepping back. “This isn’t love.”

“Then what is it?”

“Obsession. Guilt. Possession. Penitence. Anythingbutlove.”

I stare at her, gutted.

She shakes her head slowly, eyes flicking to the ground like she can’t bear to hold mine. “I can’t forget that day. Iwon’tforget it. I won’t let myself get lost in you.”

“I would never hurt you like that again.”

She flinches like the words themselves are a betrayal. “This is your nature. Men in your position lose their humanity, and you showed me who you truly are.”

“What if this is who I am, and the version you refuse to see past was just a man who was bleeding?”

She doesn’t answer. Just juts her chin forward, unshaken, unlistening, locked in her own quiet war.

“I won’t become her,” she says softly. And somehow, that makes it worse.

My breath catches. “Her? Who isher?”

She lifts her gaze now, direct, cold, and clear.

“The woman who stayed. The woman who remained silent.”

“Francesca, who?—”

“My mother,” she replies before she turns and walks out of the room like nothing happened.

I stay there, frozen.

I bring my hand to my chest, half expecting to feel it split open. Wondering how my heart is still in there, still beating, and not shattered on the floor.

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