“No. I mean . . . you turned yourself in?”
He nods.
And still, he insists on beating himself up over this. I take a deep breath. “So there are some things you did wrong, Alessandro. You made some bad choices. You’re human. But you have to separate those things from the things Lorenzo did. You have to let his shit go so you can focus on what to do about your own. I want to help you.” I lift my hand and trace a finger along the scar on his side. He flinches away from me, but I don’t stop. “I want that more than anything . . . for you to let me in so I can make you see what an amazing person you really are. But I can’t do that unless you want me to. You have to invite me in.”
He tips his forehead into mine. “You are so far inside me, sometimes I’m not sure where I stop and you start.”
“Then let me help you. You can show me your pain. I promise it won’t break me.”
His gaze burns into mine. “I’ve always seen your strength, even when we were young. But I can’t burden you with mine on top of what you’re already dealing with. It wouldn’t be right.”
I pull away from him. “If you can’t trust me to help you through this, I don’t think we’re going to make it.” I tip his face up and kiss him gently on the lips. “And I want to make it, Alessandro. I want that more than anything.”
A tear spills over his long lashes, and then another. I wipe them away with my thumb and watch as what’s left of his composure crumbles. I manage to coax him back to my bed, where he wraps himself around me. I hold him as he falls apart, and hope it’s enough.
After the longest hour of my life, he finally lifts his head out of my chest and looks at me. “You’ll help me sort mine from his?”
“I will do anything for you that you’ll let me.” As I say it, a knot forms in my chest at the truth in those words. I’d do anything for him. “Is it too hard for you—being here in New York? I mean . . . if you were back in Corsica, would you be able to get past this?”
His eyes flare in the dark. “I thought I was clear. I’m not leaving you again.”
I swallow. “What if I came with you?” I want him to heal . . . to feel whole again . . . and if leaving New York will help him get his soul back, the way he helped me get mine, I’d do it for him in a heartbeat. I don’t want to give up the theater—especially now—but I realize just at this second that Alessandro means more to me than Broadway. He means more to me than anything, except maybe Henri. If he needs to go, I’ll go with him.
He shakes his head slowly. “And just when I thought I couldn’t possibly love you any more . . .”
“I’m serious. I want you to be free of this burden. It will crush you otherwise. If we have to leave for that to happen, I’ll go.”
“No, Hilary. We’re going to do this right here. You’re right that I need to sort Lorenzo’s from mine, and I trust you to help me.”
“I’m so sorry what I said about Lorenzo before you left. I hope you know I didn’t mean any of it.”
His eyes glimmer in the moonlight through the window as his finger traces the lines of my face. “There was some truth in it. I did worship Lorenzo. But you have to understand, he wasn’t always the person you knew. When we were little, Lorenzo was my hero.”
I listen intently as he tells me everything. It turns out Lorenzo wasn’t always hard. He was softer when they were young kids. But he changed after he got beat up one day on his way home from school.
“I could see him slipping away,” Alessandro says. “He started hanging out with older kids, who I guess he thought would protect him. They thought it was funny to use Lorenzo as their gofer. They’d send him into stores to shoplift cigarettes or candy, and he’d do it. They’d send him to buy their drugs, and he’d do it. I threatened to tell our father what he was doing, but he said his ‘gang’ would beat the crap out of me if I told. And then Dad died and Lorenzo just went off the deep end. He started using . . . skipping school . . . and our mom was too distraught to see what was happening.”
We talk for hours about Lorenzo as Alessandro tries to sort it all out in his head. There are more tears—both his and mine—as he recounts everything leading up to the group home.
“And then . . . what he did to you. I couldn’t bear it when he started bragging. I wanted to help you, but I didn’t know how. When you came to me . . . when you told me what you wanted, I felt sick. But you didn’t give up, and I’d always . . . I really liked you and I . . .” He swallows as more tears threaten. “God help me, I wanted you for myself, and I rationalized what I did by convincing myself I could help you if you let me close enough.”
“You did help me, Alessandro. You helped me more that I can even say.”
His lips purse. “Not in the way I’d meant to.”
“Please, Alessandro. I don’t know how to make you understand. You were what I needed, and if what we did was wrong, it was my fault. I can’t live with your guilt. If you can’t forgive yourself for you, do it for me. Please.”
He brushes his fingertips over my jawline. “There’s very little I wouldn’t do for you.”
I kiss him, then sink deeper into his body, resting my head on his chest. I remember how safe I felt in his sixteen-year-old arms. Some things never change.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
BRIGHT MORNING SUN is streaming in my window when I finally wake in Alessandro’s arms and find him gazing down at me. His lips brush mine. “Good morning.”
I roll so I’m facing him, his glorious naked body pressed against mine. “Morning.”
He kisses me deeply, liquefying my insides and making me hope he’s leading up to something more. So when he kisses the tip of my nose and says, “I want to know everything about Henri,” my heart skips.
I knew this was coming. We need to talk about it. But what if he wants to tell Henri?
The skin around Alessandro’s eyes tightens. “Hilary, you look like you’ve swallowed a porcupine. Say something.”
“It’s just . . .” There’s a tug at my heart that I can’t explain. I love Henri so much, and part of me has always wanted him to know the truth—to have him look at me the way he looks at Mallory. “I want him to know . . . but Mallory . . . she’d never . . .”
He threads his fingers into my hair and kisses my forehead. “Mallory has been an excellent mother to him. When and how Henri learns the truth has got to be her decision.”
My insides loosen. Everyone’s on the same page. This is good.
“Henri is amazing,” I start, and then I can’t stop, telling him everything about Henri, from how his first step turned into his first somersault, to how, instead of learning to speak one word at a time like most kids, he saved it all up and started spouting full sentences when he was fourteen months old. I tell him how Henri could do hundred-piece puzzles by the time he was a year and a half, and how he tested into the gifted program at school in the second grade. I tell him how, when Max was nine months old and Mallory still couldn’t get him to eat solid food, Henri was the one who finally got him to eat, even though he was little more than a baby himself, by finger painting scenes on Max’s plate in baby food that Max would slap his hand into, then lick off. I tell him how Henri held Max’s hand and walked him to class his first day of school, and how he’s always been fiercely protective of Mallory, and how he loves Jeff more than anything.
And then I realize what I’ve said and I cringe a little.
“He loves his father, Hilary, as he should. It means he’s had a happy upbringing. That’s all I could ever want for my son.”
At those words coming from Alessandro’s mouth, a shiver courses through me. Henri is his son, and now he knows. It’s surreal that we’re even having this conversation . . . forget the fact that we’re doing it naked in my bed.