I Crossed the World for Him, But He Chose Her Chapter 08
Dante’s POV
The rain in Lyon doesn’t fall. It stabs, like needles.
Tiny, ice-cold drops soaked through my coat and seeped into my bones, a fitting punishment for a man accustomed to taking warmth from others.
I sat on the steps across from Jo’s apartment, my back against the damp brick wall, watching her windows go dark one by one.
It was 11:47 p.m. I’d been here since dusk.
The jar of ointment in my pocket felt heavy. Grandma’s ointment.
I’d driven three hours to the village where she lived just to get it, because I remembered the way Jo winced the second her feet hit the floor that morning. I’d watched her swallow those pills through gritted teeth and thought: She’ll be fine.
How many times had I told myself that? She’ll be fine. She’s strong. She doesn’t need me to worry.
I pulled out my phone. The screen was cracked, a souvenir from when I’d hurled it at the wall in that empty apartment.
Mia’s name was gone from my contacts. Good. I didn’t deserve to say the things I’d said, let alone speak to her again.
I scrolled to a photo from a few months back.
—
Jo, laughing, her head tilted back. She looked radiant. Luminous.
For years, I’d treated that light like a spotlight that existed for my benefit, instead of a gift I was supposed to protect.
I still remembered the winter I first met her.
I couldn’t afford the bus fare, so I was walking back to school. My feet felt like blocks of ice.
Then her car pulled over. She rolled down the window, glass fogged with condensation, and said, “Get in, Rossi. You look like you’re about to freeze to death.”
She saved me that day. And in return, I left her standing in the snow for ten hours while I went sightseeing with the friend who’d stabbed her in the back.
I sacrificed her safety for my pride. I chose the circus Mia created over Jo’s quiet endurance.
The worst part wasn’t the lying. It was the way I’d looked at her in those final days, thinking: Why won’t she fight harder for me? I’d deliberately fed the chaos Mia manufactured because I wanted to see if Jo would crack, if she’d scream, if she’d prove she cared about me as much as I needed her to.
But she didn’t crack. She just let go.
A light came on in Jo’s bedroom. I held my breath.
I saw her silhouette against the blinds, a brief shadow before she
—
pulled the curtains shut. She was home. Safe. Probably making tea,
or reading, or doing anything at all except thinking about the man
shivering in the dark outside her sanctuary.
I wanted to knock. I wanted to beg. I wanted to tell her that the rock
anthem was gone, replaced by the jazz she loved, because now every
snarling guitar riff felt like a slap across my face.
I wanted to tell her I’d stepped down from the family, not because I
was reckless, but because I couldn’t breathe in a city that didn’t have
her in it.
But I stayed rooted to the porch.
Because I finally understood. My presence wasn’t romance. It was
contamination.
I was the noise that drove her away, the cold draft seeping through
the window she’d finally shut.
I pulled my collar up over my face as a neighbor walked past, eyeing
me warily.
I was Dante Rossi, a man who had already seized power, and yet here
I stood like a ghost, haunting the edges of a life I’d destroyed with my
own hands.
I sat there until the sun began to rise, staining the sky a pale,
indifferent gray.
I watched the birds begin their morning songs. I watched the city
—
wake, oblivious to the fact that my world had ended on this sidewalk.
Before I left, I took the jar of ointment from my pocket and placed it carefully on her doorstep, weighed down with a loose pebble so the wind wouldn’t carry it away.
I didn’t leave a note. What was there to say?
“I’m sorry” felt too small.
“I love you” felt like a threat.
So I broke the silence I’d imposed on her and hoped that someday, my mistakes would stop being the gift she deserved.
I was about to walk away when the jazz ringtone I’d set for her number sliced through the morning quiet.
I froze. It was her. She was calling.
I fumbled for the phone, heart hammering so hard my cheetahched.
I hit answer, pressed the phone to my ear with trembling hands, desperate to hear her voice.
But all I heard was the dial tone fading into nothing.
She hadn’t called at all. It was a hallucination, a phantom conjured by guilt.
I lowered the phone and stared at the screen until it went black.
Then I walked into the bustling city and became a stranger in the
—
crowd, exactly as she’d asked me to.