Page 151 of Valentino

Some things should stay exactly as broken as you left them.

She's sitting cross-legged against the headboard with a bottle of red that costs more than my first car. She pats the duvet beside her.

"Get up here," she says. "You've got that face."

"I don't have a face."

"You do. The one that says you're either about to deflect with a joke or accidentally tell the truth."

God, I hate that she knows me.

I climb up beside her and take the glass she's already poured. The wine is dark and warm, and I drink too much of it on the first swallow.

Vittoria shifts over, tucks her feet under her, and waits.

She doesn't fill silence. She never has. It used to make me talk just to get away from it.

Tonight, I don't.

"I learned some things," I say finally. "Through all of this. Things I genuinely didn't think I'd ever get."

"Such as?"

"The ability to say no."

The word still feels strange in my mouth.

"Vee, do you know how long I've been sick of myself? Someone asks me to do something. Someone steers me somewhere. Someone decides what I want before I've even opened my mouth, and I just go. Smile. Comply. Hate every second of it. Hate myself harder after."

She doesn't say anything. Her thumb moves slowly around the rim of her glass.

"And then the next time it happens, I do the exact same thing." I take another drink. It doesn't help, but it gives my hands something to do. "Twenty-five years of treating everyone else's comfort like it mattered more than my own."

Vittoria's mouth tightens.

"Francesca said come meet someone important, and I knew. I knew something was off. The room was wrong. She was wrong. All of it was wrong, and I followed her anyway because saying no felt rude." I laugh once, but there isn't anything funny in it. "Rude, Vee. I was worried about being rude."

"Amanda."

"No, let me finish."

I set the glass on the nightstand because I need both hands free.

"For a while, I thought what Aldo did was the thing that fixed it. Like the worst night of my life taught me a lesson. Congratulations, here's your trauma, now you have boundaries." My throat tightens. "And I hated that. I hated that some part of me believed it."

Vittoria goes very still. I can see how badly she wants to interrupt. She doesn't.

"But it wasn't him," I say. "It wasn't what he did."

I look down at my hands.

"It was Valentino."

Vittoria's face changes, but she stays quiet.

"He was careful with me. From the first night, when I couldn't walk straight and didn't know what world I was in, he never pushed. Not once. He asked before he touched me. He stopped when stopping was the last thing either of us wanted, and he meant it."

My eyes burn. I blink hard and keep going.