He Let Me Bleed So I Let Him Go Chapter 17
Elena remembered all the times she had wanted to have a real conversation with Dante.
But each time, the words would rise in her throat, only to be swallowed back down.
She was afraid of disturbing him, afraid of sounding like a demanding wife who only knew how to ask for things.
Eventually, she just stopped asking.
She stopped asking what time he would be home.
Stopped asking where he had been.
Stopped asking why the perfume on his shirts always matched Bianca’s.
She would just leave messages: [Dinner’s in the oven. Heat it up when you’re ready.]
All those careful gestures, all those messages she had composed and recomposed—they might never have even reached him.
Bianca had always been there, in the middle.
She decided which messages were deleted, which were delayed, which life-altering illness was dismissed with a simple, “It’s nothing serious.”
But Elena couldn’t lay all the blame on Bianca.
Dante was the one who had handed her that power.
He had never questioned why his wife’s voice was slowly fading from his life, never asked why she was growing quieter and quieter.
Elena looked back over their five years together.
Before that “ten thousand days” photograph, her marriage had been so weightless it was as if it had never existed at all.
Tears soaked into her pillow.
She took a deep, shuddering breath.
Enough.
It was over.
From outside the door came the soft scrape of a chair.
Luca’s voice was quiet but clear. “Stop thinking about them. You have that meeting with the project owner tomorrow. Instead of losing sleep over the past, get up and have an extra slice of avocado toast.”
Elena paused. A faint smile touched her lips.
His way of offering comfort was strange.
But it worked. The images in her mind slowly began to recede.
She pulled the blanket up to her chin and closed her eyes.
From now on, the name Dante De Luca had nothing to do with her.