Page 411 of Rosetti Family New York
I've built her a beautiful cage and called it love.
My chest feels hollowed out, scraped raw. The silver coin lies forgotten on the counter where I dropped it, as motionless as my suddenly silent heart.
"I need time," she says, backing toward the door. "I need to think."
"Isabella, please—" The desperation in my voice would embarrass me if I had any pride left.
"No." She shakes her head, more tears falling like rain. "You just told me you love me, and instead of feeling happy about it, I feel trapped. Do you understand how fucked up that is?"
The profanity on her lips, the raw honesty, breaks something inside me. She's right. I just gave her my heart, and she's running from it because I've made love feel like captivity.
"I love you," I say again, quieter now, the words scraped raw from my throat. "Christ, bella, I love you so much I can't breathe when you're not in the same room. But I don't know how to do this without trying to shield you from everything that might hurt you."
"That's the problem." Her voice is soft, final. "You can't love someone and suffocate them at the same time."
She's gone before I can find words to argue, leaving me alone with the taste of my first 'I love you' bitter as blood in my mouth.
I sink into the nearest chair, my legs finally giving out. Outside, the storm rages with the same violence that's tearing through my chest. Thunder shakes the house while I sit in the wreckage of the most important conversation of my life.
I told her I love her. The most honest words I've ever spoken, and they drove her away.
Because I don't know how to love her without caging her. Don't know how to keep her safe without suffocating her. Don't know how to be the man she deserves instead of the one who's slowly killing her with good intentions.
The coin catches lamplight from where it fell, but I don't reach for it. For the first time in seventeen years, I don't need something to do with my hands.
They're too busy shaking.
20
Isabella
"Ihave something for you."
Matteo's voice cuts through the morning quiet of the kitchen, carefully neutral. My coffee cup pauses halfway to my lips, steam curling between us like a question mark.
He's standing in the doorway wearing dark jeans and a gray henley that clings to his chest, auburn hair still damp from his shower. He looks cautious. Uncertain. Nothing like the man who poured his heart out in desperate, broken words just hours ago.
*I love you. Christ, bella, I love you so much I can't breathe when you're not in the same room.*
I force those words away, bury them deep where they can't crack the careful composure I've rebuilt this morning. "What do you mean?"
Instead of answering, he gestures toward the sunroom with his chin. "Come with me?"
My bare feet are silent on the hardwood as I follow him through the house. The air smells of rain-washed pine and something faintly sweet from the vanilla candle burning on the windowsill. Everything feels too clean, too bright after lastnight's storm. Like the world has been scrubbed raw and left to dry in the gentle morning light.
His voice echoes in my memory as we walk: *I love the way you look at art like it holds secrets only you can unlock. I love how you take your coffee black because you think adding anything is cheating the bean.*
The way he catalogued every small detail I thought no one noticed. The way he said my name like it was something sacred instead of just sounds arranged in a particular order.
Stop. I can't think about this. Can't let those impossible words take root in the hollow spaces of my chest.
The sunroom is bathed in golden light, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the forest where puddles catch sunlight like scattered coins. A small table sits beside the window seat, holding a wrapped package that makes my pulse stutter.
Nothing elaborate. Just brown paper tied with natural twine, the kind of wrapping that suggests the contents matter more than the presentation.
"You mentioned it once," he says quietly, staying near the doorway like he's afraid of spooking me. "I remembered."
My hands start trembling before I even approach the table. The paper tears under my fingers, making small sounds that seem too loud in the quiet room. And then what emerges steals the breath from my lungs in a sharp gasp.
