Page 86 of Damiano De Luca (The Five Syndicates)
“Everyone in my life has lied to me, and it was easier to run from you than accept that our relationship isn’t as perfect as I wanted it to be. But the thing is, I conflated my relationship with you back then to my relationship to you now. That’s not fair to either of us. We deserve a second chance, not a continuation of a first chance that was destined to fail.”
“I can’t give you another chance, Damsel. I can’t handle it. I like to pretend I’m strong, but I’m human, and nothing drills that into me more than when I’m around you.”
We were silent for a moment. Too much needed to be said, but none of it would be easy.
He broke the silence first. “For what it’s worth, I thought it was hot when you stole my phone. No one else in the town had the guts to go against me. Except maybe my dad.”
“Fuck Angelo De Luca.” I bit back a smile when he barked out a surprised laugh. This got too friendly for my liking. I needed to remind him that we weren’t friends. “You and my mom seem cozy for someone who accused me of being her coconspirator.”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
I wasn’t even going to dignify that with an answer.
He paused for a response, but when I didn’t reply, he continued, “I talked to Bastian. He came to visit me in Oklahoma.”
“Did he find out about Ariana being your sister?”
“Yes. He wanted me to talk to her.”
“Have you?”
“She’s here, but we haven’t had a moment alone. I think I’d like to get to know her sometime. Not today when I’m being leveraged into defending a mad woman,”—I snorted—“but later. When I’m ready to talk to her.”
“I’m happy for you.”
And I was. I didn’t question why he told me this. I chalked it up to instinct. While I’d only ever had Maman and Damian, Damian had only ever had me. I wanted to be here for him like I wanted NBC to stop canceling my favorite shows, but we were too fractured to be together… maybe, at the very least, we could be friends?
Friendship.
It was a good goal.
His silence encouraged me to ask, “Why don’t you seem mad at me?” Not that I did anything worth his anger in the first place, but last I checked, he still thought I had a part in Maman’s scheming and lied to him about it.
I watched as he rounded the car and got into the passenger seat.
He shut the door as he settled into the leather seat. “Bastian also said something that’s kind of stuck with me. I’ve got to own my lies before I can own my truths.”
“Lies?”
“I’ve told a lot of them to a lot of people. Some on purpose. Some unintentionally. Those are the worst. They take the longest to realize.”
I leaned my head back against the headrest. I understood what he meant. I’d been telling myself I didn’t love Damian since the moment I started falling for him. I’d also been lied to over and over again. It didn’t feel good to be on either side of the deception.
I glanced at him and took in the severity of his expression. “So, you’re owning your lies right now?”
“Yes.”
“Confess away.”
“I first liked you when you stood up to my dad on your seventeenth birthday. I heard what you said to him when anyone else would have cowered in that bath. I wanted you when you turned a debate of Freud’s “Dostoevsky and Parricide” into a flirting opportunity—and don’t deny you were flirting, because I was, too. I fell in love with you when my dad punched me in the face, and you told me to get back up because you knew I was stronger than self-pity. Every moment after that, from our library dates to the dance to that night in my bedroom, I fell in love with you more.”
Holy hell. How did he expect me to survive this conversation with my ovaries intact if he kept going on like this?
Friendship, Renata. Pull yourself together, woman.
He continued, unaware of my inner turmoil. “When you left, Cristian would ask me, ‘How do you know you even like her? How do you know what love is?’”
I remembered why I’d never liked Cristian.
