Chapter 485
Vito went still the moment my arms wrapped around him.
I didn’t notice at first. To me, he was the same person he had always been , the one constant on this island, the only person who felt like home. I had been leaning on him since I was five years old, and nothing in me had registered that things between us were supposed to be different now.
But Vito had noticed. He’d noticed before I had.
He was older in ways that went beyond age. Something had shifted in him over the past few years, some quiet internal change that showed up in the way he held himself , careful, measured, deliberate. Where I still moved on instinct, still reached for him without thinking, he had started to calculate every movement. I didn’t understand why then. I just knew that lately he kept creating distance where there didn’t used to be any.
He cleared his throat and turned back to the stove. “Food’s almost ready. Go rest for a bit.”
I pulled back, a little deflated, and went to sit at the table. My mind was already elsewhere anyway , circling around my family the way it always did when I wasn’t busy enough to ignore it. The feud between our families wasn’t something I could pretend didn’t exist. I knew what the Blackwells wanted, and I knew that knowing it and being stuck on an island with no phone and no contact meant I could do nothing about it. All I could do was hope, and occasionally press Vito for information.
We ate mostly in silence. I kept glancing at him. He kept not looking at me.
When I started shifting in my seat with the obvious intention of climbing back into his space, he finally set down his fork and reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. He slid a small envelope across the table.
Photos. Elena. My brothers. Alive, clearly, recently taken. I stared at each one for a long time without saying anything.
Something in my chest loosened for the first time in months.
Vito watched me go through them. He always knew what I needed before I asked, and I think he also knew that no amount of information would be enough to make me stop worrying. The feud was bigger than both of us. He couldn’t stop what was already in motion, and I think carrying that knowledge quietly was something he’d been doing for a long time.
I tucked the photos carefully against my chest and felt immediately better, which meant I immediately felt like being around him again. I moved my chair closer to his. He looked at me sideways.
“Assignments,” he said.
My face fell. “Dance first. I’ve been learning the waltz. Test me on that.”
He considered it for exactly one second. “Fine.”
He said yes because he genuinely wanted me to be capable of existing in the world outside this island. Not the world as he’d built it here , structured, controlled, isolated , but the real one, the one I’d be stepping into eventually if everything went the way he seemed to believe it would. He’d given me academics, music, finance, physical training. The dancing was part of the same picture. A girl who’d been kept on an island for most of her childhood shouldn’t walk back into society and immediately feel like an outsider in every room.
I ran to change, pulling on the dress I’d been saving for exactly this kind of moment , pale and full-skirted, the kind that moved when you moved. When I came back into the main room and saw his face, I stopped.
Vito was staring at me.
Not the way he usually looked at me, assessing, checking for progress or injuries or signs that I hadn’t been taking care of myself. This was different. He looked almost startled, like something had caught him off guard, and for a moment he didn’t move at all.
I waved my hand in front of his eyes. “Vito.”
He blinked. Something shifted back into its usual place on his face, and he crossed the room and held out his hand as the music started from the small speaker on the shelf.
I put my hand in his. His palm was faintly damp.
I noticed, but I didn’t say anything.
He led well , better than I’d expected, which I shouldn’t have been surprised by because Vito was good at everything he decided to do. I, on the other hand, was less impressive. I miscounted twice, lost the rhythm once, and stepped directly on his foot at least three times before I gave up and slumped down onto the floor, arms wrapped around my knees.
“I’m sorry. I keep messing up.” I stared at the floor. “What’s even the point? I’m on an island. There’s no one here to dance with, no one to talk to, nothing to use any of this for. I might as well stop.”
Vito crouched down in front of me. He reached out and ruffled my hair, the way he used to do when I was small, and something about that familiar gesture made the frustration in my chest feel sharper instead of better.
“What if you leave one day?” he said. “Everyone in that world knows how to move in a room. You don’t want to be the one person standing at the edge of every gathering, unsure of yourself.”
I looked up at him. “Stop pretending that’s going to happen. We both know I’m not leaving.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Then take me.” I grabbed his sleeve before he could straighten up. “Take me off this island. Just let me see the outside, even once. Please, Vito.”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then he sighed , the resigned kind, the kind that meant I’d worn him down without him wanting to admit it. “Then learn the dance properly.”
I sat up straighter immediately. “Okay. I have an idea. I won’t step on your feet this time.”
“What idea?”
I reached down and pulled off both my shoes. Then I stood up, stepped directly onto the tops of his feet, and wrapped my arms around his neck, closing most of the space between us in one move.
He went very still again.
“There,” I said, looking up at him. “Now you lead, and I just follow. No more missed steps.”
His jaw tightened slightly. His ears had gone red again at the tips, the same way they had earlier in the kitchen, and I still hadn’t figured out why he kept doing that.
The music was still playing. After a moment, slowly, he began to move.