Page 154 of Legacy
The silence after that nearly guts me.
I press on, desperate, hollow.
“I thought… if I could touch you again—if I couldfeelyou again—you’d know. You’d feel what I couldn’t say. That it would undo some of the damage. That it wouldmeansomething.”
I breathe out, my voice raw, low, broken.
“But I was wrong.”
“Very wrong,” she finishes for me, her fury sharp, her hurt sharper. “And you know what it did mean? That you’re still the same Angelo who called me a mistake. Who threw me out like I was nothing. And thatshrine?Five years of my life on display like some fucking collection?”
Her words tear straight through me, clean and deep, slicing into every wound I never let heal.
“You weren’t a mistake,” I snap, the edge in my voice more from pain than anger. “And I didn’t toss you out. I couldn’t. I didn’t. I had you followed. I—”
The admission spills out before I can stop it. Weak. Useless.
She stares at me like she’s seeing the worst of me and maybe she is.
Her fist hits the table, making the plates jump.
“Damn it, Angelo.”
Her voice drops, low and gutted.
“I don’twantto want you.”
She wants me.
That truth is its own blade.
“You hurt me,” her voice trembles now, breath shuddering, eyes glassing with unshed tears.
And God, I’d carve my own eyes out if it meant she didn’t have to cry because of me.
“You—” she falters, eyes dropping to her plate. “You always do this. Serious fucking conversations in the middle of a meal.”
She swipes at a tear.
“And you know food is sacred, I told you that!”
It breaks something in me.
She stands abruptly, the chair legs screeching against the floor.
I’m on my feet in an instant.
I can’t help it.
I can’t watch her walk away again.
“Every bit of this is suffocating!” She moves toward the living room and I follow her.
I willalwaysfollow her.
Chapter 28
Adriana
