Chapter 65: Presence

Dante’s POV

I don’t move when she hits me the first time.

Or the second.

Or the third.

Not because it doesn’t register, but because I can feel what is behind it before I can even think of responding to the action itself. It isn’t anger in a way that needs correcting. It is not violence in the way I deal with violence every day.

It is something collapsing.

And when something collapses, you do not stop it by force.

You hold what is left of it.

Her wrists are in my hands before she even realises I’ve caught them properly, not tightly enough to hurt her, just enough to stop the motion from continuing, because if I let her keep going like this, she is not going to calm down—she is going to burn through herself trying.

She pulls once.

Then stops.

Not because I overpower her.

Because she runs out of resistance.

That is what I notice first.

Not the tears.

Not the shaking breath.

But the fact that she is no longer fighting me the same way.

I move her back slowly, deliberately, until there is nowhere left for her to step without meeting the wall. Not to trap her. Not to corner her in the way her body might interpret it if she were thinking clearly. Just enough space removed that she cannot keep pacing away from what is happening inside her head.

Her eyes don’t stay on mine for long.

They try to. Then fail.

And that is when I realized whatever was said to her did not just upset her.

It broke something she was using to hold herself together.

“Lucia,” I say again, but softer this time.

Not a command. Just her name, so she knows she is still here.

Her breathing is uneven, shallow in a way that tells me she is trying to regain control and failing at it with every attempt. Her hands slacken slightly in my grip, not because she trusts me fully at this moment, but because she simply cannot keep tension in them anymore.

I don’t ask again what happened.

I already know that asking twice is useless when someone is already past the point of language.

So I wait.

That is all I do.

Wait and watch.

Her head tilts slightly away from me like she is trying to hide her face, but there is nowhere for her to go, not in this room, not in this moment, not in herself. I see the exact second she stops holding it back.

It is not dramatic. It is not loud.

It is just a fracture that finally gives way.

Her breath breaks first. Then her expression follows.

And then she is crying.

Properly.

Not the controlled kind people do when they are still trying to be strong about it.

The kind that happens when control is no longer an option at all.

My grip loosens immediately on one wrist, slowly on the other, and I shift my hand upward instead, cupping her face carefully so she is not turning away from me anymore. Not forcing her. Just keeping her here with me in the only way that does not feel like pressure.

Her eyes don’t stay open.

They close, briefly, like even looking at anything is too much.

“Hey,” I say quietly.

It is the only thing that fits in the space.

She does not respond. She doesn’t have to.

I pull her forward without asking permission, slowly, giving her every second to resist if she wants to, but she doesn’t. Her forehead presses into my chest like her body has decided it is the only stable thing in the room, and the moment she leans into me fully, something shifts—not in her, in me.

Because this is not Lucia being difficult.

This is Lucia being stripped of something she didn’t know she was still standing on.

I don’t speak.

Not because I don’t have anything to say.

Because there is nothing that fixes this in words.

So I stay still.

I hold her properly, one hand steady at the back of her head, the other resting lightly at her shoulder, anchoring her without forcing anything, letting her cry into me without interruption, without instruction, without anything that turns this into something it is not.

And for once, I do not calculate what this means.

I do not label it.

I do not decide where it leads.

I just stay here.

Because whatever is happening to her right now is not something you win against.

It is something you endure until it passes.

And I have done enough things in my life that required control.

This is not one of them.

So I hold her.

And I let her fall apart properly.