I stay quiet. Give him space.
“He got killed when I was fifteen. Wrong place, wrong time. Some shit with another family that had nothing to do with him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. He wasn’t a good man.” Enzo’s jaw tightens. “He hit my mother. Hit me, when I got big enough to get in the way. I used to pray he wouldn’t come home.”
My chest aches.
“And then he didn’t come home. And I felt...” He stops. Swallows. “I felt relieved. And then guilty for feeling relieved. And then angry at him for making me feel guilty for being relieved he was dead.”
“That’s a lot for a fifteen-year-old.”
“Yeah.” He doesn’t look at me. Eyes locked on the screen like Vin Diesel has the answers. “The family took care of us after. My mother, my sister. Gave us money. Made sure we were okay. And I thought, this is what loyalty looks like. These people who barely knew my father, they’re taking care of his family because that’s what you do.”
“So you joined.”
“So I joined.” His voice is flat. “And I was good at it. The violence. The hurting. Turns out, all those years of being scared of my father taught me exactly how to make other people scared.”
He finally looks at me. His eyes are dark. Unguarded in a way I’ve never seen.
“I became him,” he says quietly. “The thing I hated most. I became it because I didn’t know how to be anything else.”
Nothing I could say would be enough.
So I do the only thing I can think of.
I reach out. Take his hand. Lace my fingers through his.
He looks at our joined hands. Then at me.
“You’re not him,” I say softly. “You’re not.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he hurt people who didn’t deserve it. People he was supposed to protect.” I squeeze his hand. “And you’re sitting on my couch, eating cold lo mein, checking on me every day to make sure I’m okay. That’s not the same thing.”
“I’ve hurt people, Stevie. A lot of people.”
“I know.” I hold his gaze. “And maybe I’m a complete idiot for not caring. But you’re trying to be better. That’s more than most people ever do.”
He’s quiet for a long moment.
Then he lifts our joined hands. Presses his lips to my knuckles. Soft. Brief. The gentlest thing I’ve ever seen him do.
“You make me want to be better,” he says against my skin. “You know that? You make me want to be someone worth...”
He doesn’t finish.
But my heart isnot okay.It’s doing flips. It’s building him a shrine out of soy sauce packets, cookie dough, and unsupervised emotions.
We stay like that. Holding hands on my couch. His past between us, but not separating us.
And I realize I’m falling for him. Not the dramatic cliff-dive I did with Dario. Not the slow inevitable pull of Saul’s steadiness.
This is different. Quieter. Like walking into your house and realizing someone’s been there, rearranging furniture, and somehow everything fits better now.
Terrifying.
