Page 84 of The Savage

I don’t know how to win this without losing something I can’t afford to lose.

For once, I decide not to plan the end at the beginning.

‘Sleep,’ I murmur, useless and necessary. ‘I’ve got you.’

The phone goes silent.

The night doesn’t. Somewhere out beyond the water, the storm that will break is arranging itself, drawing breath.

I lean back against the headboard, keep hold of her wrist, and wait to learn what I’ll be when the lightning finds us.

* * *

Giada

I wake before he does.

I lie on my side watching him, the lamp throwing faint amber over his face, making him look both impossibly young and carved from something ancient.

He’s fallen asleep with one hand wrapped tight around my wrist as if he meant to keep me shackled even in his dreams. I should be concerned about the possessiveness of it. Instead, I trace the tiny ridges of callus across his knuckles, and my chest folds in on itself.

My mind will not be quiet and I know in my bones the past is rising. And it’s not good. A silent snort surprises me. Forget good.

Whatever my brain has buried is bad. Very, very bad.

Every prayer I whisper turns into a question.

What if I really am everything I fear? What if I hurt someone? Someone Renzo Salvatore loves? What if that blood in my dream wasn’t symbolic at all?

I ease my wrist free, careful not to wake him, but even that small separation hurts. I fold my hands and press my forehead against them. The words that come out are ragged, nothing like the neat Latin I was taught. ‘Please, Lord, if I’ve sinned, let me remember. Let me atone. Let me do whatever it takes…’

Stop.

The sound that escapes me isn’t holy. It’s small, cracked, helpless. And it wakes him.

‘Giada?’ His voice, low and rough and smoky with sleep.

I scrub at my face. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to⁠—’

He shifts, eyes opening, hair a dark tangle against the pillow. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I was praying.’

‘That’s usually supposed to calm people down.’

‘It didn’t.’ I meet his gaze, the weight of it burning through the dark. ‘Renzo… am I a monster?’

He goes utterly still.

The silence stretches so long I can hear the tick of the clock in the hall. When he finally answers, the pause before his words is the sharpest thing in the room.

‘I don’t know,’ he says quietly.

The air leaves my lungs in a single, broken sob. He sits up immediately, catching me before I can turn away, one arm solid and sure around me.

I fight him for half a second, but then the dam breaks and I let it happen and bury my face in the rough cotton of his shirt, shaking with the kind of crying I haven’t done since the fire.

‘Hey,’ he murmurs, voice raw. ‘Don’t do that. You’re not a monster. You’re human. You’re⁠—’