My heart scrunches into a hard knot as I slide up and lean against the headboard. “Alessandro, stop,” I say, unable to contain the panic swirling into a hurricane inside me. “Nothing has changed. Don’t make me sorry I told you.”
Betrayal and anger flare in his eyes, and it’s suddenly clear the cool façade is his wall. “You didn’t tell me. I had to sort it on my own.”
I throw my hands in the air. “It’s not like you’ve been an open book either! You go all broody and cryptic anytime I ask you about what you did that was so terrible you have to beat yourself up over it for the rest of your life. You won’t open up and let me help you. You’d rather just shut me out and hate yourself.”
The storm of emotions he’s been working so hard to hide passes over his features in the next heartbeat: anger, fear, frustration, finally settling on anguish. He rubs a hand down his face, his deep charcoal eyes more tortured than I’ve ever seen them. “Damn it! Don’t you see, Hilary! You nearly took your own life, and Henri’s too, because of what Lorenzo and I did to you, and you’re not the only one. We ruined countless lives. But this . . .” He waves an arm between us. “You and Henri are my chance to finally do something right, if you’ll let me help you.”
It’s like someone just threw my heart into a meat grinder. I can’t breathe.
He thinks he loves me, and maybe he does, but I don’t think love can survive if it’s born of guilt. If we’re always questioning it, it will die a slow, ugly death.
And I’m not sure I’ll survive it this time.
The mortar sets on the walls I’ve raised around my heart, with Alessandro firmly on the outside. I’m not going to be anyone’s pity project. I’m not going to be weak. “Henri and I are fine,” I say, feeling my heart shrivel a little inside its fortress. “We don’t need any help.”
He closes his eyes and rubs his forehead as if it hurts. When he opens them again, his façade is back in place; everything he doesn’t want me to see hidden behind it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.”
“Why not?”
The pity in his eyes as they lift to mine kills me inside. “Because I don’t want to upset you.”
“Why not?” I repeat, my voice harder. “Do you think I’m weak? That I can’t handle whatever you’re feeling?”
He blows out a weary sigh as he crosses the room and sits on the edge of the bed. “There’s a psychologist that volunteers at the youth center. I think you should talk to her.”
I lower my head into my hands and grab fistfuls of my hair, fighting to keep from screaming at him. “So now I’m crazy?”
“I didn’t say that.”
I lift my head and glare at him. “Then what are you saying?”
The edges of his wall are staring to crumble, and his eyes betray his fear. “I don’t know. I’m guess I’m saying, maybe you need help.”
“I need help? Me?”
He throws his hands in the air. “I don’t know what you want from me, Hilary!”
“I want you to look at me the way you did before you knew. I want us to be how we were! I want you to tell me what you’re feeling so we can deal with it!”
He’s working so hard to keep the wall in place, but his breathing is erratic, and his eyes are wild. “This is how I deal with it.”
“By keeping everything inside. I know! Why won’t you talk to me?”
“This isn’t about me!” I see the panic hiding just beneath the surface, and that’s when I know. It is about him. As long as he thinks I’m broken, he’s going to keep trying to “fix” me. And he’ll never trust me to help him.
My heart contracts into a hard ball as everything I thought we had crashes and burns all around me. I fist my hands in my hair, trying to hold myself together. I wanted this too much. I let myself believe I could have it. My chest is so tight I can hardly get enough air to say, “Get out.”
He goes pale and his hand shakes as he lays it on my thigh. “Don’t push me away, Hilary. Let me help you.”
I slap his hand away. “You are such a hypocrite! I’m not the one who needs help!”
“It’s okay to drop your defenses and be vulnerable.” He rakes the hand I slapped through his hair. “I know how hard you try to be strong, but inside, you’re still that scared girl. It’s okay to ask for help. You don’t have to keep up this act.”
Oh, God. I can’t stop the frustrated tear that courses down my cheek, and I don’t move to wipe it away. “So, you do think I’m weak. Huh. That’s funny, because all along I’ve been thinking that you were the pathetic one . . . worshiping Lorenzo, wishing you could be half the man he was. I really hope Lorenzo is Henri’s father. At least that way, he’ll grow up to have a backbone.”
In this instant, all I care about is hurting him, and I know I have when I watch my words hit the mark. His shoulders sag, his face crumples, and a rush of air leaves his lungs, as if he’s been sucker punched. The determined set to his jaw dissolves into a pained grimace as he stands and backs toward the door. “I’ll go.”
“Good,” I say, setting my resolve and closing off my heart. “And take your stuff. I don’t want to see you again.”
He fists a hand into his hair and hangs his head, and a low groan works its way up from his core. When he lifts his head and looks at me, there’s still part of me that hopes he’ll have figured it out and I’ll see the Alessandro I was falling in love with. But mingling with the anguish in his eyes is pity, and that’s all I need to see to know I made the right decision. This never could have worked. He’s got too many demons, and I’m one of them.
He reaches for the doorknob. “I’m truly sorry, Hilary. For everything. The last thing I ever intended to do was to hurt you again.”
And then he’s gone.
The snap of the door latch, echoing through the silent room as he closes it behind him, sounds so final. The fleeting urge to run after him is washed away by the tidal wave of relief. Because the truth is, I always knew he’d leave me again.
Everyone does.
IT’S AN HOUR later that I lift my swollen face out of my pillow and notice I have a voice mail. The totally irrational hope that it’s Alessandro flits through my mind as I wipe my eyes and look at the screen, but I don’t recognize the number.
I hit the button and listen to the message. “Hi, Hilary. This is Terry Vern. I’m an agent at Pinnacle Creative Management. Hailey Dunning passed your information along to me and said I should give you a call. If you could e-mail your headshot, resume, and links to any audition tape you have, that would be enough to get us started. And if you have any questions, feel free to call me back.”
As she reels off her e-mail address, I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I just sit here with my phone glued to my ear as my voice mail menu repeats over and over.
Alessandro is gone. The hole in my heart hurts as much now as it did eight years ago. But maybe this is a sign. Henri will be safe. Mallory won’t look at me like I’m her worst enemy. And, with any luck, this agent thing will work out and I’ll be on my way. It’s like the powers that be just hit the reboot button and my life is a blank slate. From here, I can make it anything I want it to be. If there was ever a new leaf, this is it.
Life is going to be good.
I didn’t just make a huge mistake by letting Alessandro walk away.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I WALK OUT of the Pinnacle Creative Management office the next Wednesday evening with two things: 1) an agent, and 2) the certainty that the person I most want to share that news with walked out of my life last week.