Dark Saint [Romano Brotherhood, #1]

32 | Santo

When she opens the door, it's clear that she's been crying. The sight of her eyes, reddened and puffy, hits me in the center of my chest and I'm pushing into her room without a word, forcing her to step back.

My knuckles sting from the aggression with which I pounded on her door, and I drag them through my hair. Shock registers on her face from my sudden and violent entrance. Probably not how I want to set the tone for this conversation.

As the seconds tick by, it's clear she's not going to say anything, and I'll have to be the first one to talk. I try to scrape the words together, to gather the pieces into something that resembles sense. But inside me, there's a small boat pitching back and forth on an angry sea, and I don't know how to anchor it.

Frustration boils over and I'm turning towards the door. To leave, to hit it, I'm really not fucking sure.

But a light touch on my elbow stops me and I whip around, Nina's small hand stretched out tentatively, her face expressionless.

"You shouldn't be with me," I say on a harsh exhale, and her face pales.

I curse, yanking my hands through my hair again. Off to a great start.

"I should send you away, set you up somewhere safe, anywhere you want. Anywhere that would make you happy. Give you the life you always wanted before I dragged you deeper into all this."

Her face isn't betraying anything. "Nina, I made you cry, fucked you, and didn't notice when you stopped fucking breathing. That's a problem." I used her in a way that completely disgusts me. That should disgust her.

"I wasn't a victim. I wanted you to fuck me, and the temperature of the hot tub wasn't your fault," she says stubbornly.

"You don't get it. There's something inside me that's wrong," I force out. "I don't know how to be right for you. I might treat you alright for a little bit but this shit is always going to happen. I'm always going to hurt you."

She averts her eyes to the ground, her frame looking so small in this room. This room with my big anger choking the air and wrapping around her. Everything about me overpowers her. Her smallness makes me want to hold her, but the reality is that I'd just fucking crush her.

"Most things in my life are likely to hurt you, Nina, myself being the biggest one. It makes me panic. In that room with Mantus... I fucking panicked. I have to keep you safe. But I don't..." I falter. How would I keep her safe from myself?

I wouldn't, and that's the problem. 

Her eyes focus on me with a little more emotion, a little less of that blank stare. That's good. Fuck. I need to keep going. The words are like knives as they crawl out of my mouth. 

"I grew up knowing... exactly who I am. That there's no changing it, even if I wanted to. It's never bothered me before but now it does and I don't know what to do with that. Do you get how fucking confusing that is?" A knot in my chest begins loosening, so I don't stop. "I can't change anything I've done." 

"Do you want to?"

Airy panic makes my chest fizzle with nerves at her question. "No." 

And isn't that the problem?

"Okay," she says easily, casually, like she's not holding my whole world poised between her small fingers. "So don't. Now, who gave you that idea of yourself that you can't stop holding onto?"

Her calm directness hits its mark, and I fight the urge to trace her soft cheek with my rough fingers and push back those stubborn flyaways, fold her lips gently between mine and breathe her in because that's the only way I can see myself getting enough air into my lungs. Even as the violent thing in me rears its head, as if to remind me, as if I could ever forget.