Page 89 of The Kiss Of Death
“So did I,” I said, fidgeting my fingers together. “After my mother’s death…. I didn’t talk with anyone but…”Lucie and you.Lucie healed me with music, and you made silence not so quiet.“I closed myself off completely, and my father became the way he is now. It’s like a part of me died with her. I had to live with everyone’s expectations of me.” I blinked away the memories. “I still have nightmares when I’m unable to do anything. Move. Save her. Speak. I feel so weak.”
“You’re many things, Dalia, but not weak, and your mother knows that.”
“You really think so?” I felt my eyes glistening and my heart hammering. It was the perfect time to get the past behind us. “You know, four years ago… I’m sorry I didn’t have the courage to tell my dad about the kiss.”
“You were ashamed of having kissed me. Understandable.”
Why would he think that?
“No!” I protested, turning to face him. “I was terrified of my father. I wasn’t ashamed of you.”
He simply hummed in response, yet his fingers tensed.
“What happened to you… after?”
“Patrice left,” he deadpanned. “And I emancipated myself.”
He was only sixteen and alone with no family while I was complaining about my life. Levi was the rejected, unloved child, craving control as the only way for him to keep people close.
“My turn.” He switched the subject. “What’s the symbol behind your ribbons?”
“They were my mother’s. She believed ribbons were the connection between two humans. She gave me a ribbon on each of my birthdays until she… left us. She called them the ribbons of destiny, uniting souls in an invisible link. I always wore them because she’s always with me. The one you took, the silver-gray one, is the first one my mom gifted me. My most precious one.”
“Telling me this will only convince me to never give it back to you, you know that.”
I smiled. I knew because this was his way to hold on to a little bit of love in his twisted mind. “If you break it, I’ll feed you to the sharks, Levi Delombre.”
“If you’re the one cutting me into pieces, I may be into it,” he said, joking or maybe not. It was hard to tell with him.
My gaze fixated on the grieving father and his son, who stood solemnly beside a tombstone adorned with flowers. The boy’s tear-streaked face revealed the depth of his sorrow as heclung tightly to his father. Levi’s attention was also drawn to the heartrending scene.
This boy, just like us, had lost a mother, and no one would ever replace her. I wanted to tell him it’d all be okay, but that would’ve been a lie. The warmth she left behind and her absence could never be filled, leaving a void that no words could mend.
“I miss my mom,” I whispered. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought this up. It’s just I always tried to imagine what my childhood would have been like if Mom was here… And I was wondering about yours, and how Lucie was with you and—”
Levi leaned against the rough bark of the tree, his expression clouded. He let out a small, bitter laugh. “Don’t do this.”
“Please.” My gaze pleaded with him. “I want to know more about you. And your childhood is a part of who you became.”
I didn’t push him on the subject of Patrice earlier, but I still wanted him to tell me things he’d never told anyone. Maybe I wanted to feel special, or maybe, deep down, I hadn’t given up on Lucie’s music scores. I promised myself I’d get to the root of it, determined to prove him wrong.
“I was homeschooled in secondary school because Dad thought it was for the best. Those years were pretty lonely for me,” I confided, hoping it’d get him to open up.
“You didn’t miss anything. People are complete idiots,” Levi bit out.
“Why?”
“Oh, you know why, my little thief.” Levi’s words cut through the air, dripping with cruelty. “You heard what your father called me that day.”
The rumors. The mean words they called Lucie.
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
“No, it’s mean, and it’s not true,” I protested, my voice growing stronger with each word.
Levi’s scowl twisted further. “Oh, but it’s true.”
