Page 95 of Knight
I do not need him to be innocent.
I need him to be honest.
He was.
That is enough.
What Choosing Means
I hear him before I see him.
The bedroom door. The pad of bare feet on hardwood shifting to the deliberate stride of a man who has put his shoes on before leaving the room — because Romeo Rivas does not walk into a fight without his armor, and he has decided that this morning is a fight. I can track the assembly from the sound alone. Shoes. Belt. The rustle of a shirt pulled on and buttoned with fingers that have probably already pushed his hair back from his forehead in the mirror.
He appears in the kitchen doorway and I was right about every piece of it. Dressed. Hair pushed back. The collar open one button because complete formality would betray how carefully he prepared. And the smile — already forming, already loaded, the mechanism clicking into place like a round chambered so smoothly you would miss it if you did not know what a gun sounds like when it is being readied.
"Morning." His voice is warm. Easy. The voice of a man who did not shatter in this kitchen twelve hours ago. The voice of a man who is already building the version of today where last night was intense but manageable and the woman standing at his counter with coffee in her hand is going to let him skip to the part where everything is fine.
I watch the performance assemble and something in my chest catches fire.
I cross the kitchen. Six steps. He has a mug in his hand — he must have poured it while I was lost in my own head, or maybe he poured it before he dressed, a prop to hold, something to do with his hands so they do not shake.
I take it from him. His fingers release it with a half-second delay — surprise, the first crack in the costume. I set it on the counter behind me without looking.
I step into him. Close. Close enough that my chest is inches from his and I can smell the cedar and soap he scrubbed into hisskin as if he could wash last night off the surface while the truth stayed soaked into his bones underneath.
"I'm not going anywhere."
The grin sharpens. "Nova, listen, about last night — I know that was a lot. And I want you to know that whatever you need, whatever you're feeling—"
"Stop."
The word cuts his sentence clean. He blinks. The grin wavers — a bulb flickering before the filament catches again.
I put my hand on his chest. Over his heart. I press my palm flat against the fabric of his shirt and beneath it I can feel the beat — fast, faster than the easy voice and the loaded smile would suggest, the gallop of a man whose body cannot keep up with the lie his mouth is telling.
"I'm not going anywhere." I say it again because he needs to hear it twice. Once for the performance to intercept. Once for the man behind it to catch. "Stop performing. Stop bracing. Stop waiting for me to leave."
His lips part. The charm flickers — I can see it reaching for the next line, the next pivot, the next smooth redirection that converts my sincerity into something he can manage from a safe distance.
I press harder. His heartbeat hammers against my palm.
"I heard you, Romeo. Every word. The Vescari. The phone call. The door. Your father on his knees. I heard all of it." My voice is steady. The voice I use when I am telling Marisol something that is true and permanent and will not change no matter how many times she tests it. "I'm choosing you. The real one. The one who sat on that stool last night and told me the worst thing he has ever done without a single excuse."
The smile dies.
I have watched Romeo's grin load and fire a hundred times. I have watched it deflect Santino's fury and Fabio's disapprovaland the weight of a dead man's empire pressing down on him from every direction. I have never watched it die. It does not fade. It collapses — the architecture folding inward the way a building falls when the charges are placed at the foundation instead of the roof. From the bottom up. The mouth first, the muscles around it releasing. Then the eyes, the calculated warmth draining out of them, leaving something raw and unfinished behind. Then the whole face, every rehearsed angle surrendering at once until what is looking at me is the man from last night. The real one. The one he keeps sealed in the dark because every time he has shown that face to the world, the world has confirmed his worst belief about himself.
His eyes are wet. He is blinking against it — fighting it — because Giovanni's sons do not cry and even with the wall down that particular brick is mortared deep.
What replaces the smile is something I have never seen on him.
I have seen Romeo vulnerable — glimpses, fractures, the cracks between performances where the real man flashes through for half a second before the charm floods back in. This is different. This is the expression of a man who has just been told something impossible and is standing completely still while his brain catches up to whether it might be true.
Belief. Fragile. Terrified of its own weight. Like a man stepping onto ice he expects to break, feeling it hold, and not yet trusting his legs to take the next step.
His hand comes up. Covers mine against his chest. His fingers curl around my knuckles and his grip is tight — too tight, the grip of someone holding a rope over a drop — and he does not speak because speaking would require choosing words and whatever is happening inside him has moved past the place where language lives.
I hold his gaze. I do not soften. I do not smile. I do not give him the gentle version of this that would let him file it as kindness instead of what it actually is.
