Page 210 of The Devil's Thorn
I didn’t move. I just gripped the pendant harder. And waited.
I didn’t have to look to know he was close now. His presence curled around me like smoke, heavier with each step until the silence cracked and he was there—standing just beside me, his forearms resting on the railing, eyes fixed on the horizon like he wasn’t watching me at all. Like he didn’t feel the storm still in my chest.
I swallowed and stared straight ahead. The pendant sat heavy in my palm, warmed by my skin. I should’ve slipped it back under my shirt, but I didn’t. I didn’t know why.
Maybe I wanted it to anchor me. Maybe I was too tired to hide anything tonight.
“You don’t sleep much,” Rafael said, his voice low, dragging over the silence like velvet and ash.
I let out a soft huff. “Neither do you.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him glance at me. “You’ve noticed?”
“You don’t exactly make it hard,” I murmured, brushing my thumb over the pendant. “You walk like a ghost and look like a nightmare. Kind of hard to miss.”
A short laugh escaped him—quiet, but real. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
I shrugged. “Take it however you want.”
The silence fell again, but it didn’t feel empty this time. It felt… full. Of things we weren’t saying. Of things we both knew didn’t have names yet.
“You ever been to Italy before?” he asked, voice more casual now, like he was trying to sound like this was just another conversation. Like we were normal.
“No.” I tilted my head back, watching the stars peeking through the velvet sky. “But my mom used to tell me stories.”
“About Naples?”
“About everything.” I turned to face him slightly, my hair brushing against my cheek with the breeze. “She was Italian. Born in Milan, but she always said the South had more soul.”
He didn’t respond right away. Then, “She wasn’t wrong.”
I smiled, small and sad. “She used to say the air here tasted like wine and heartbreak. I didn’t understand what that meant when I was younger.”
“And now?”
“I think I do.” My voice was quiet. “Some things are beautiful because they’re broken.”
He looked at me then—really looked. And I hated how my breath caught.
“What about your parents?” he asked, softer now. “How did they meet?”
I didn’t answer right away. Not because I didn’t remember. But because it hurt.
“They met at a bookstore,” I said finally, the memory surfacing like a slow tide. “My mom used to go there after her university classes. My dad worked weekends there to pay for his.”
Rafael watched me with something unreadable in his eyes.
“She said he recommended her a book she hated,” I continued. “But she kept coming back. Every Friday. Pretending to look for something new. He’d always find her a book, and she’d always complain about it the next week.”
I smiled faintly. “And then one day, he recommended a poetry collection. She never told me which one. She just said it was the first one she didn’t return.”
“You remember them well,” Rafael said.
I nodded, my chest tightening. “I try to.”
He didn’t ask anything else. He didn’t push. He just stayed there, beside me, looking out at the city like he could see the pieces of the past scattered between the rooftops and church towers.
And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel alone in it.
