Page 27 of His to Destroy

She always reminds me—without words—of the line I’m not allowed to cross.

Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

I come again two nights after our conversation. At a time when I’m sure Luca is asleep. This time, I find her in the music room.

She’s seated at the piano, her fingers gently ghosting the keys. She doesn’t play anything. Just presses notes at random, like testing memories.

“I didn’t know you played,” I say.

She looks up at me startled and opens her mouth like she’s about to ask how or when I got here. But at the last minute, she decides against it and closes her mouth, turning her attention back to the piano.

“I don’t. Not anymore.”

“Why?”

She shrugs. “Lost the music.”

I walk in slowly. “Maybe it’s not lost. Maybe it’s just buried.”

She doesn’t answer.

But she raises her hands to the keys and starts playing. Seconds turn into minutes, and she keeps playing. Serenading the room with a familiar tune from our childhoods.

Two weeks later, I do something reckless.

I ask her to have dinner. Just the two of us. No Luca. No staff. No guards.

She raises an eyebrow.“A date?”

“No,” I lie.“Just food.”

She thinks about it for a long moment. Then she says, “Fine. But I pick the wine.”

It’s more than I expected.

I take it as the beginning of a truce.

That night, after dinner, we sit on the patio.

She sips her wine. I sip my guilt.

“Do you think you can ever forgive me?” I ask.

The question is a risk.

A knife between us.

She sets her glass down.

“I don’t know,” she says. “Some days, I wake up and I think maybe I can. Maybe there’s a version of us that makes sense. And other days, I look at Luca and remember the alley, and all I feel is rage.”

“I would undo it if I could.”

“I know,” she says. “But you can’t.”

Silence.

---