Page 74 of From Rome, With Hate

“I haven’t.”

“It’s been tenyears, Rome. That’s fucking insane.”

“You may think it’s insane, but that doesn’t make it any less true.”

“Seriously? You haven’t fuckedanyoneelse?”

I stare at her blankly.

She lets out another cynical laugh, but the moment she realizes I’m not joking, she stops. The muscles in her jaw ticks as she clamps her mouth shut and looks back at the stove. “Look, can we just make this mac and cheese and eat without talking?”

She’s running, hiding from our demons, but the structure disassembling in my chest won’t let her walk away easily.

“You never want to talk,” I press. “I try, and you shut me out every time.”

“Oh, and you’re the picture-perfect example of talking?”

“I’ve tried, Julianna.”

“What about the past eleven days?” She looks back at me. Her brows pinch and heat spreads to her cheeks as she raises her voice. “You ignore me for over a week after what happened on the bridge, then you take me out to practice shooting, and suddenly you have me bent over the bathtub, fucking me, demanding I scream your name. You still haven’t told me who is after us. You have me hiding out here without telling me a single detail as to why. Now, the only thing you’ve actually told me isyou haven’t been with any other women since me, and you just expect me to believe that? You expect me to open my soul to you? I did that before and it took me years to recover.”

“Well, we can’t keep up with this charade.”

“What charade?”

“Us.” I wave my hand between us. “Ignoring each other. Pretending we hate each other when we both know that’s always been furthest from the truth. All we’ve been doing these past ten years is live a lie.”

“I haven’t been living a lie,” she argues coldly. Her expression softens, eyes welling with immense pain and devastation. “I’ve been doing what it takes to survive.”

Her voice cracks, and I’m on the verge of breaking. Seeing her in pain after all these years tears me up from the inside out.

“I know, but I don’t think we’ll ever get past this if we never talk about it.” I feel like I’m talking to her as the old me. Eighteen-year-old Rome. The vulnerable one who went from hating Julianna Capuleti to worshipping the ground she walked on, hanging onto every word that came out of her pretty mouth.

“You don’t understand. It’shardfor me to talk about.” She raises her shaking hands, gesturing toward her chest. “It pains me to even think about it.”

“I get it, I do.” I press my hand to my chest.

Her gaze drops to the snake wrapped around my wrist and up the length of my arm. “I don’t think you do.”

“I lost her, too, Lark.” I raise my voice, emotion thick in my throat. I’m tired of holding back the darkness that’s lived inside me for years. “I lost her, you, my mother, all in the same fucking week. You don’t think that hasn’t fucked me up?”

“Losing me was a choice.” She points a stiff finger in my direction. “You did that. The other two you had no control over. But me? Losing me was a choice.”

I don’t argue with her on that point. She’s right.

“I know.” I fucked up and I owned up to it the day we agreed to separate. “But I won’t apologize for how seeing you, my wife, out with William Trent three days after we lost our daughter didn’t fuck with my head. I wasn’t even in my body when I went to that party. My heart and soul were with you, nowhere else.”

She grinds her teeth, her rage turning to anguish. “You know my dad spent years trying to set me up with William Trent. You knew I only went out with him because I had to keep Dad appeased until you and I were ready to tell him about us. I was practically a zombie when I got home, and he told me he had a date for me already set up. What was I supposed to do? I was a shell too, Rome.”

“Yeah.” I blow out a heavy breath and run a frustrated hand through my hair. “I get it. But you had a choice, too. You could have told him no.” It’s been years since I’ve spoken this out loud.

“Why?” She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes before lowering them. Her bottom lip wobbles as tears stream down her cheeks. “Why do you want to talk about the one thing that broke me?”

“Because I need to know how you truly feel. Not this version you’ve put on for the past ten years.” I gesture toward her, waving my hand over her entire body. “Before, when you hated me… at least then I knew it was the truth. When we fell in love, I knewthatwas the truth, too. But now, I have no fucking clue.”

“Fine, you want to know the truth about how I really feel?” She stiffens and rests her hand on the counter to support herself, her cheeks blushing. “You make me feel like a toy you pick up whenever you feel like it, whether it’s to torture or fuck. Then you toss me aside the second I’m no longer convenient or useful to you. You hate me, you love me, then you hate me again. The cycle never ends. Why don’t you just admit that your love for me will never be stronger than your hate?”

“That’s not true, and you fucking know it.” I curl my hands into fists at my sides.