Page 86 of Chasing Hope

He brings his pointer finger and thumb together. “Needed a littleoomph.”

I prop my feet up on the seat, resting my head on the window as I try to get comfortable. “So cocky,” I mumble to myself.

Matteo, for once, doesn’t let the conversation die.

“Why do you love photography so much?”

Shrugging, I look down at the camera I bought myself yesterday, the one that is entirely all mine with no bad memories attached to it. A camera only I have touched. “Photos don’t lie. No one can warp the reality captured by the lens.”

I feel Matteo’s gaze on the side of my face like a hot brand.Through thick lashes, I watch him back, seeing a muscle tick in his jaw before he refocuses on the road, his grip tightening on the wheel.

“Do you think people warp things?”

The question startles my mind enough that I just sit there for a moment, blinking, trying to back track to what we were talking about.

“People can lie and twist things until your mind is so scrambled you don’t know which way is up or down. But a photo never lies, never changes. It captures exactly what occurred, no ifs, ands, or buts.” I study my new camera. “Memories will fade and your mind can trick you, but photographs are forever.”

“You like transparency.”

“I like honesty.”

Matteo looks from me to the road. “Was Carter someone who warped your memories?”

“All the time,” I answer honestly.

Matteo falls quiet for a moment, the only sound the low hum of the radio and the tires on the asphalt. Until he asks gently, “What was it like?”

Taking a deep breath, I stare at the mountains cocooning the highway, allowing the sight of them to ground me as I think back to what it was like being with him. “Tiring. Exhausting, actually. By the end of it I was constantly fighting, trying to defend myself. There was one time, our biggest fight, I was driving my car with him in the passenger seat and he said something. I verbatim repeated it back to him and he looked me dead in the eye and said, ‘I didn’t say that.’”

I can’t help but laugh but the sound doesn’t hold an ounce of humor. “I remember thinking to myself, this is it.Thisis gaslighting. Because it was so blatantly obvious, he then went on to accuse me of saying something that never came out of my mouth, but he was so good at manipulating me and believing his own bullshit that my mind got so scrambled I can’t even remember what it was. All I recall is the feeling that I was being gaslit.”

Matteo’s grip on the steering wheel turns his knuckles white,and his jaw is clenched so tightly I swear I hear the snap of a tooth.

“I despise him.”

The venom in his voice doesn’t surprise me.

“Me too,” I murmur sadly. Looking at Matteo, watching the anger coursing through him, I blurt out for some reason, “Why have you never had a girlfriend?”

His anger dissipates with the question, quickly replaced with shock. He sends a smirk in my direction. “You been holding on to that question for a while, Dove?”

Yes.

“No,” I snort.

The look he gives me screams that he doesn’t believe me, but he doesn’t call me out on it. He simply shrugs and says, “I haven’t met anyone that I could see myself with long term.”

My brows skyrocket. “Ever?”

The emotion that flashes through his gaze has my heart stuttering. I can’t decipher it, can’t put my finger on it, but it steals my breath and hits my body all the same, as if deep within my soul, it knows.

Matteo’s voice drops an octave. “No one that I could have.” His tongue darts out to lick his lips before he forces his eyes from mine and back to the road. “Honestly, though, if love is anything like what my parents had, I don’t want it.”

“Your parents are heartless bastards.”

“True,” he grunts.

Turning to face him, I attempt to gauge his reaction. “You know that what they had was…beneficial to them, and not what love is, right?” Cocking my head, I wait for any sign that my words have penetrated the shield around him. “I honestly don’t think they even have a heart to share love from.”