Page 104 of Inferno
‘I don’t think I will be.’
‘I do.’
My throat was starting to feel wobbly. ‘How do I do it?’
Luca got to his knees so that we were leaning towards each other at eye level. He didn’t touch me, but something inside made me feel like maybe he wanted to. I wanted him to. His hands were hovering close to mine. ‘You embrace the pain, Sophie. Don’t fear it. Let it wash over you. Use it as fuel to spur you on.’
‘I don’t want to think about that night.’
‘You have to, sooner or later.’
‘I should have saved her.’
‘You couldn’t have.’
‘I didn’t try hard enough.’
‘Sophie.’ Luca came closer still. I was overwhelmed by his smell, fresh and familiar. My fingers were starting to shake. Icould feel the walls starting to buckle, the things I had kept hidden beginning to emerge once more. ‘When I pulled you out of that fire you were nearly dead. Even if you had gotten to her it would have been too late for both of you.’
I gaped at him, and something flashed at the back of my mind. I remembered the feeling of hands on my ankles, my shoulders, my waist, dragging me from her. ‘Youpulled me out?’
He fell on to his haunches. ‘Who did you think it was?’
‘Why didn’t you let me get to her?’
‘You wouldn’t have been able to.’
My voice changed. ‘Why did you take me away from her?’
His voice changed too. Anger, fear, insistence strained his words. ‘Because you were burning alive. You did the thing I told you not to do. You jumped off the cliff.’
‘I was trying to save her!’
‘You were killing yourself!’
The walls were coming down and my mind was exploding with that night. ‘She was calling out to me.’
Luca’s movements changed. They became slower, more deliberate. ‘She wasn’t calling you.’
‘I heard her.’
‘The fire does strange things to your senses.’
‘You’re wrong.’ I kept thinking about those white sneakers.
Luca placed his hands on either side of my legs, his fingers curling in the sheets. ‘Sophie,’ he said softly, ‘your mother lost her life in the explosion. She was too close to the stove when it happened.’
I rose up, away from him. I was disconnecting, the room spinning as memories crashed into me. ‘I could have savedher but you took me away from her!’
He was shaking his head.
The fire burnt inside my mind. My arms were stinging. I could taste singed hair across my lips. Before the fire there was the explosion, before the explosion there was the gas and before the gas there was Jack. Before that… there was everything else. A raging war. I grasped at the thread of understanding. ‘They lured you to them. They knew you’d come to protect your brothers.’
‘Yes.’
How could he remain so calm? Wasn’t he thinking about all the things that I was? Wasn’t he feeling the heat of the memories like flames?
‘You’re supposed to be smarter than that.’
