Slowburn

Chapter 109

         I'll admit, I didn't know I loved Renzo until after I killed Sven. I knew I had strong feelings for Renzo, but because it felt so different and SO much darker than what I felt for Val, I kept trying to find a different word for it. I used to think love was pure. I saw my parents' marriage and I thought, 'oh this is love'. 

Building a foundation together, being loyal, showing affection, making the commitment of marriage, wanting children, wanting to put in the effort year after year. There is nothing dark about my parents' love for each other. 

You hear songs and read poems, or see the movie's depiction of love, and again it didn't look like what I had with Renzo. And can love be one sided? He doesn't love me. I know that.

It's a physical connection for him, but for me...love is not that twitch you feel in your pants. It's the feeling of a thousand hands crawling up your throat, it holds down your tongue so you can't scream out loud. It's that ripple down your spine that punches your gut, making you wonder if it's all worth crying for? Love is not a twitch. It's paralyzing.

        I thought about what I did to Sven. I'll never be okay with it, but I have come to understand why I did it. Maybe somewhere in my subconscious I knew that Renzo wouldn't judge my actions, he wouldn't look at me differently knowing I had blood on my hands, because he does too. I think I came to understand Renzo a little bit better after reflecting on my actions, and thinking more on his too. 

He said he deals with bad men and so bad things happen sometimes, and I know that to be true because Sven was a bad man and I'm not even in the mob and still he was so keen on killing me. A bad man made me do a bad thing. 

Maybe that made me feel a little bit better about myself, but mostly about Renzo. I felt better knowing I love a dark man, and yes, it's a dark love, but it is love.

        Maybe I shouldn't have told him for the first time by shouting it from the chapel's steps. Maybe I shouldn't have surrounded my love confession around the topic of murder. There is no right time to tell someone you love them because you don't know how the other person is going to react. 

I wasn't going to light candles, spread rose petals, and tell a man like Renzo Revello that I love him. No. My only explanation for both giving multiple chances to a guy like Renzo, and also murdering someone for Renzo, is that I love him. 

That's the only reason why I've let Renzo and his crazy world consume me. It's why I let the darkness place its hand on my shoulder. I told God, and I meant it. Renzo is my sin. And I love him.

You don't love someone so they can love you back. I love Renzo in spite of myself.

-

        I was swinging my leg from the stool of my breakfast nook eating cereal and spacing out. I've tried to stop kicking myself so hard and thinking such dark thoughts in response to the incident. Let's just call it that because I don't want to think about the word 'killing' or 'murder' for a long, long time. I'm sick of it. 

After leaving the church I went to my apartment instead of his. Honestly, if there are any more Van Dijk's looking to kill me then they'd probably never stop. I won't become a prisoner of some secure location because I've already become a prisoner to my own mind, So I ate my cereal and thought about nothing. Until the knock on my door.

        I opened the door and already knew who to expect. Dante knocks in a very specific way. "Hello" I nodded to him and turned back for my stool. He walked himself in and leaned his hip into my counter, crossing his arms over his chest to look at me.