Page 104 of The Wrong Man

When Dante looks at me, I feel seen. When he touches me, I feel wanted. When he remembers the small details, the chocolate digestives and the way I take my tea, I feel valued in a way I never did before.

Is that Stockholm syndrome? Or is it just what it feels like to be cared for by someone who pays attention?

I don’t know. I cannot tell anymore. The lines between trauma and tenderness have blurred beyond recognition.

The tea has gone lukewarm, but I drink every drop anyway.

The panic attack has faded now, leaving behind a hollow, wrung-out feeling that I recognize from last time. This is not my first breakdown. Will not be my last, probably. But each one is taking something out of me, leaving me a little emptier, a little more fragile.

How many more can I survive before there is nothing left?

I should try harder to escape. I know I should. If I had any sense of self-preservation, any shred of rationality left, I would find a way out of this flat and never look back. I would run as far and as fast as I could, put oceans between myself and Dante, and spend the rest of my life trying to forget any of this ever happened.

But I don’t want to leave. That is the terrible, shameful truth at the heart of everything.

I don’t want to go back to my old life. I don’t want to return to the crushing loneliness that I pretended was contentment. I don’t want to face my aunt and explain where I have been, don’t want to lie about what happened, don’t want to carry this secret alone for the rest of my days.

I want to stay here. In this flat with its ugly sofa and its newly broken bathroom door and its complicated, dangerous, inexplicably tender captor.

I want Dante. Despite everything. Because of everything.

God, I am so messed up.

I lie back against the pillows and stare at the ceiling. The sounds of the flat filter in around me. The hum of the refrigerator. The distant rumble of traffic. The occasional creak of floorboards as Dante moves around in the other room.

He is out there. Waiting. Probably drowning in guilt, if I know him at all.

I should go to him. Should tell him that I am okay, that I don’t blame him for the shower, that one panic attack does not erase everything else. That I was too hasty in saying last night didn’t mean anything.

But I can’t make myself move. Not yet. I need more time. More space. More distance from the terror that consumed me in that bathroom.

He will wait. He always waits. Patient and watchful and so desperately hungry for any scrap of connection I am willing to offer.

It should be pathetic. Instead, it just makes me want him more.

I close my eyes and try to quiet my mind. Try to find some peace in the silence, some clarity in the chaos.

A phone starts ringing.

Not my phone. I don’t have a phone anymore. This is Dante’s ringtone, sharp and insistent, cutting through the quiet of the flat like a blade.

I hear him answer. His voice is muffled through the walls, but I can make out the tone. Clipped. Professional. The voice of a man who is very good at compartmentalizing.

The conversation is short. A few words, too quiet to distinguish. Then silence.

Footsteps in the hallway. They pause outside the bedroom door, and I hold my breath.

He doesn’t knock. Does not speak. Just stands there for a long moment, a shadow visible through the crack at the bottom of the door.

Then he moves away, and I hear other sounds. Drawers opening. The rustle of clothing. The distinctive click of something metal being checked and secured.

He is getting ready for work.

The realization hits me like a bucket of ice water. Work. His job. The job that involves soundproofed rooms and screaming and all the things I have been trying so hard not to think about.

Someone called him. Someone needs him. And he is going to go, because that is what he does, because that is who he is, because the man who brings me tea and remembers my favorite biscuits is the same man who makes people beg for death.

I hear the front door open. Close. The click of locks engaging.