Page 85 of My Dark Fairy Tale
“I am sorry it came to this,” he said finally, when my sniffles had subsided and I lay there in recovery. “It is the worst kind of grief when we cut the final strings of filial responsibility to our parents in order to carve out our autonomy. Our own futures separate from their vision.”
There was silence, but I could almost hear the words unspoken in his mouth.
“I am very proud of you for standing up for yourself,” he admitted into the top of my hair. “And I do not mean that to be condescending. You are one of the bravest people I have ever known.” He chuckled softly. “You throw yourself into life and adventure with such a pure enthusiasm and confidence, it inspires me to seek the pleasure in life as well.”
I tipped my chin up to peer at his face, my fingers trailing the furred line of his jaw because they could. “And what brings a man like you pleasure?”
“You,” he said simply. “In all your iterations. A goddess on my arm at a party, charming everyone we meet; a genius perched in my lap at my desk, finding something my men, Martina, and I could not find for hours; a little fawn stranded on the side of the road, looking at me with much too trusting eyes. I like them all.”
“You make me sound so much better than I am.” I rubbed my salt-crusted cheek against his chest hair and listened to the steady thud of his heart.
He snorted. “Oh, I like the girl who curls up on my chest in her sleep and leaves a little puddle of drool and the girl who leaves her clothes on the floor and the one who teases me when I have never enjoyed being teased very much. You must remember my definition ofperfect, Vera.”
I did remember. It wasn’t something I was likely to forget, because I wanted to make it my definition too.
“It means something so captivating that you can’t help but find it beautiful, flaws and all.”
“Molto bene,” he praised. “Exactly.”
“And you feel that way about me?” I asked just to clarify. “Even knowing I lied to my parents about where I was. That I can be that selfish and reckless and stubborn as a mule.”
“Especially knowing all that. How boring you would be without those wicked little habits and flaws.”
I had never considered it like that before, but he did have a point. “I did always find heroes a little dull.”
Raffa laughed from his belly, the sound vibrating through his skin into mine. “And who are your favorite villains?”
“I think I would call them antiheroes over villains. They occupy that murky zone between good and bad that most of us battle to stay out of at all costs. Achilles with his unforgiving pride and rage that ultimately led to his avoidable death. He is flawed and wrong more often than he’s right, but we still talk about him as a hero. Scarlett O’Hara inGone with the Windis one of the most obviously manipulative womenin literature, and I cry every time Rhett leaves her without a moment’s hesitation.”
“‘Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.’” Raffa surprised me by quoting those cruel parting words. When I laughed, he shrugged a shoulder. “My sisters love any movie, in any language, that will make them cry.”
“I think it’s easier to empathize with people who aren’t all good,” I realized. “It’s even easier to love them. We can’t relate to perfect heroes because none of us are as good as we want to be.”
“Ben detto,” he agreed, but there was a knot in his brow I had to reach up to erase with my thumb.
“I wish I was a better person,” I confessed with a sigh as I snuggled closer against his chest. “But I also want to be happy, and those two things always seem to be at odds.”
Raffa didn’t smile at my joke. Instead he seemed almost upset about it. His voice, when he spoke, was dry with self-mockery. “Ah, that is the difference between you and me, Guinevere. Sometimes I feel like I should wish the same, but at the end of the day, I know I am not capable of being better, and I am happy with where I am.”
It was my turn to frown. “Are you? Because even though you keep implying you’re a bad guy, you’ve played the hero very well for me.”
“I am a very good actor,” he said, deadpan, and I laughed as I was sure he meant me to.
Even after a brutal fight with my dad, this man could make me smile.
Chapter Nineteen
Guinevere
“Have you ever driven a Ferrari?”
I blinked at Raffa as we emerged from the side entrance of the palazzo into the courtyard, where a gleaming vintage red Ferrari convertible was waiting for us.
Behind me, Martina was laughing, and Carmine was muttering about never being allowed to drive Raffa’s cars because he’d crashed one when he was fourteen.
“Are you serious?” I asked. My mouth dropped open at the prospect.
My dad loved cars in the kind of obsessive way only an Italian immigrant to the United States would love cars. His garage was his haven, filled with paraphernalia from all the top Italian car companies and even a select few American ones. We weren’t wealthy like Raffa—I wasn’t sure many peoplewere—but John Stone was proud of his collection.
