My knight-errant had been brought low with his only weakness.  Me.  It was so glaringly obvious that I couldn't believe I'd allowed myself to miss it for so long.      

Even Bastian seemed to catch on without effort.  "I figure it's something about you.  Something you did.  He's been protecting you, hasn't he?"

I stopped walking, eyes shutting tight.  God, it hurt.  A new pain, worse even than the old one. 

When he started talking again, I made myself open my eyes and meet his.  "Let's look at it simply.  You and I can figure this out, with or without Dante's help.  Obviously, we can't know what she has on you or him.  All we can do is assume she has everything.  We have to think in worst-case scenarios.  So tell me, Scarlett, what's your deepest, darkest secret?

I shook my head, blank eyes staring straight ahead.  "You don't even want to know."

I could see him out of the corner of my eye.  He was wearing a small smile, trying to lighten the mood.  "How bad could it be?" 

I turned my head and met his eyes steadily.  "You don't even want to know," I repeated, because it was the truth.

"What? Did you kill somebody?" 

He was clearly joking, but my reaction was not a joke.  I tensed up, every part of me arrested, automatically going into auto-save mode, still as a statue. 

He studied me, eyes widening.  He began to curse and did not stop.

Yeah, that.   

CHAPTER

THIRTY-ONE

"No one worth possessing can be quite possessed."

~Sara Teasdale

PAST

SCARLETT

We lasted two years in the apartment together.

The plan was always this:  We would live in Cambridge until Dante finished school (and he was working very hard to finish as soon as possible), and then, together, we would move to Hollywood so I could pursue acting.

It was a sacrifice for us both.  I didn't want to wait for my ambitions, and thanks to some memorably horrible trips with his father when he was younger, Dante hated L.A. 

But that's what you did when you loved someone.  You sacrificed.  And that's why I made it two whole years in Cambridge. 

It wasn't all bad.  In itself, living with him was everything I could have hoped for.  Sometimes we fought, but sometimes the fighting was necessary.  Sometimes it was all that made me feel alive. 

Dante was wonderful.  It was never about him. 

It was about me and the way I felt about myself.  At the two year mark I began to see that if I spent much more time being useless I was certain I'd never shake it, that I'd just become some bitter, pointless thing.  Like my grandma. 

I couldn't do that, not even for him. 

I needed to find my self-worth, and for that, I needed to leave him. 

"I feel like I'm stuck here," I told him over a dessert I'd made special just to soften the blow.  "Like I'm giving up my life for yours.  Like the longer I stay here, the more I'm just going to shrivel up into someone I don't recognize."

He stared at me.  "You said you'd wait for me," he said simply.  He didn't even sound upset yet.  He was still in denial.

"I did, and I'm sorry.  I just can't stand it anymore.  I can't stand myself.  I need to be doing something besides serving drinks to a bunch of entitled pricks day after day." 

That riled him.  "That was your idea.  I never wanted that.  Quit!  Just fucking quit!  It's that simple.  There's no reason for you to be working, especially at a job you can't stand." 

I'd gotten off topic, I could see.  "That's all beside the point.  It's this place.  It's being put on hold.  I just cannot stand it, Dante.  I'm starting hate myself, and I need to find a way to change that.  Can't you understand?"

His soulful eyes were tormented on mine.  "You're leaving me?" 

I could barely stand it.  I looked away.  "I'm not breaking up with yo—"

"Was that a really an option for you?" he asked, incredulous.  "You say it like you thought it over, like it could have gone either way?" 

"No."  I saw the discussion getting away from me.  It was going as badly as I'd anticipated.  "No.  I never thought of that.  We'll be together, of course, but long distance.  Until you finish here.  Then you can come live with me, and in the meantime, I'm not putting my dreams on hold for yours."

It was bad.  He didn't take it well.  In fact, he refused to talk about it for days, simply telling me it wasn't an option. 

Gently but firmly, I replied that it wasn't a question either. 

It's an awful thing to realize that even the love of your life can't make you complete, not when you're as fucked up as me, but I was resolute.  It would be torture to be away from him for such a long time, but there was no doubt in my mind that we would find our way back to each other.  I had absolute faith in that. 

A month later I was packing my things, a sullen but resigned Dante hovering over me. 

Just setting up the move made me feel a little more hopeful.  I'd saved all of my waitressing money—every cent because Dante never let me pay for anything, and put it toward first month's rent on a small studio apartment in an area I couldn't have paid for by myself.  Dante put down the last month's rent.  Yes, he was helping me.  That was the only way he'd let me go without a harder fight.  That and weekend visitations whenever he could manage to fly out or fly me back.  Money had its perks, that was a fact.