Page 184 of The Art of Ruin

“No. My advice is to stop making her forgiveness another outcome you have to manage. Show her you’ve listened. Show her you’re sorry. That you hear her.”

I go still because he’s right. Even now, some part of me wants a plan. Steps, a strategy. The right apology in the right order. Some proof I can place in her hands that makes the pain I caused hurt less

But trust doesn’t rebuild with one simple apology because I decide it should. I need to put the work in and show her I mean everything I say.

Footsteps sound softly in the hallway.

Elena appears a moment later in silk pajamas and a robe, hair pulled back, face free of makeup. She looks at Nico, then at me, then at the untouched whiskey.

“Oh, Tesoro,” she says, and somehow the softness is worse than if she’d called me an idiot.

“I’m fine.”

She gives Nico a look.

He lifts both hands. “I tried.”

Elena crosses the kitchen and takes the glass from my hand before I can protest. She sniffs it, grimaces, and sets it down far from me.

“You look like a man auditioning for a funeral portrait, and addling your brain with whiskey will not help you get the woman you love back to you.”

Nico coughs into his water.

I close my eyes briefly. “Helpful. Thanks, Elena.”

“I’m not here to be helpful. I’m here because you’re brooding loudly enough to wake the dead.”

“Elena.”

“No.” Her voice sharpens just enough to silence me. “You will listen.”

And because she’s Elena, I do.

“You do not get to terrify a woman with the size of your love and then act wounded when she steps back to breathe,” she says, her accent thicker around the emotion. “Casey has already lived with men making choices around her, about her, over her. She needed you to be different.”

Shame sits heavy in my stomach. “I wanted to be.”

“I know.” Her face softens then, and she reaches up to straighten the collar of my shirt even though it doesn’t need straightening. “That is why this hurts.”

For a moment, the kitchen is quiet.

Then she cups my cheek briefly, a maternal gesture she rarely offers so openly. “You are not a bad man because you failed her. But you will become one if you make her responsible for easing your guilt. Even good men fail sometimes, but they own it. This is what you must do.”

I swallow hard.

I miss her so violently I can barely function, but that is mine to carry. Not hers.

“What do I do?” I ask, and my voice sounds rougher than I expect. I never ask for help or show my vulnerability. Not since Letty’s mom died have I felt so lost.

Elena looks at me for a long moment. “You tell the truth. All of it. You accept that she may still walk away. And if she gives you even the smallest chance, you spend the rest of your life proving that loving her does not mean owning her pain.”

Nico is quiet beside us.

I nod once.

It isn’t enough.

It won’t fix anything tonight.