Thursday night. Midnight. My brain did that cruel hamster-wheel thing: close eyes, fall into black water, surface gasping. Two days until Saturday. Two days until whatever this is crashes into my house wearing a nice jacket and a doctor’s smile. I needed air that didn’t have memories in it.
I padded through the sleeping rooms—barefoot, hoodie, pulse too loud. Every space felt wrong: the hallway where Mama taught me to balance a book on my head (“posture, tesoro”), the kitchen with Papa’s meticulous jars of oregano, the library that still smells like her perfume if I’m reckless enough to inhale.
All of it familiar; none of it safe. The house had shrunk around me.
Outside, the night tasted of stone and thyme. Crickets made a thin lace of sound. I drifted toward the little chapel without deciding to. Our family’s pocket of holy—whitewashed walls scarred by summers, a terracotta roof that always looks a bit tired, iron latch cold in the hand. Mama and Papa were married there.
The door complained—long creak, then a sigh. Moonlight slid through the cracked window like a silver ribbon. My knees found the kneeler by muscle memory. It was hard, and that felt correct.
“I don’t know if anyone’s listening,” I whispered, because prayer felt like putting a note in a bottle and throwing it at the ceiling. “But I’m so tired.”
Not praying, exactly. More like unscrewing the top of my chest. Words came out on their own: I can’t sleep. When I close my eyes I see scenes I can’t unsee.
“I’m scared,” I said, and the chapel didn’t flinch. “Scared of Saturday. Scared I’ll never be the girl who laughs too loud at the wrong part of a joke. Scared I’m… stuck like this.” My voice did the wobble thing I hate. “I don’t know how to be Bella anymore.”
Footsteps outside. Gravel hush, then a pause. My first instinct—run—stayed in my muscles, buzzing. I didn’t move.
The door eased open. Matteo stood in the doorway, shadow cut into squares by moonlight through iron. He didn’t say my name. Just came in, slow. The chapel held its breath.
He saw me kneeling and didn’t ask. He just knelt beside me like we were about to pass a test with no right answers. Our shoulders almost touched and we stayed quiet long enough to remember how.
His voice came low, like it belonged to the stones. “I don’t know what’s wrong,” he said. A pause. He doesn’t waste words. “But something is.” He kept his eyes forward, on the small chipped saint on the altar. “There’s a girl I—” he stopped, breath in, breath out, reset—“someone important is hurting. She won’t tell me why.”
Silence moved between us and sat down.
“She doesn’t eat,” he said after a beat. “Doesn’t sleep.” His hands were still. “Won’t meet my eyes.” The words were clean, stripped. “Something broke her.” He swallowed. The sound was loud in the chapel. The next breath dragged a little. “I can’t fix what I don’t understand.”
My throat closed around a mess of I’m sorrys that wouldn’t help. And because this was the place for saying honest things to a God I wasn’t sure I believed in, I let the truth spill.
“I can’t remember the last time I slept through the night,” I told the altar and the dark and maybe him. “I don’t remember what it felt like to be easy.” I picked at a splinter on the kneeler. “I’m ashamed. Of things that happened. Things I couldn’t stop.” The words crawled out in pieces. “Saturday is coming. I’m terrified.” I closed my eyes. “But I can’t run. I can’t hide. I can’t tell anyone why.”
Tears balanced at my lashes, then jumped. “I just want… to sleep. To stop jumping at shadows. To be me again.”
He turned his head then. Not much, just enough. “Bella,” he said, and my name didn’t hurt in his mouth. “What happened to you?”
I stood too fast. The kneeler bit my knees. The urge to bolt pressed against my bones. “I have to go,” I said, because that sentence is a shield if you don’t look too closely.
His hand found mine. Warm, callused, and gentle.
We stayed like that. “Please,” he said. Barely above air. “Let me help.”
I wanted to open my mouth and let everything out like birds. The words came to my teeth and pressed there, brave and shaking. “I can’t tell you,” I said.
He didn’t let go. Not for a second. “Then let me be here,” he said, breath steady. “You don’t have to explain.” Another quiet. “Just don’t shut me out completely.”
I pulled my hand back, slow enough to say it wasn’t about him. Regret stung like cold. “I’m sorry.”
I walked to the door. At the threshold I turned. The chapel made his profile into a painting—line of jaw, ear, the little concentration crease he gets when he ties vines. “Thank you,” I said. “For… praying with me.”
Outside, the courtyard wore moonlight like a veil. The lemon trees held their scent close. The gravel under my feet sounded like paper being torn carefully. The night felt a millimeter lighter, like a window cracked in a stuffy room. I had said pain out loud. Someone heard it.
On the way back I caught myself thinking of earlier that day—Matteo and Luisa standing close by the rosemary, heads together. She with her tote bag and her don’t-mess-with-me walk; him listening, jaw tight, hands in pockets so he wouldn’t reach for anything.
I’d watched from the upstairs window like a coward, stomach twisting into knots.
Maybe there’s something there, I’d thought, with that mean little voice I hate. Maybe she’s the one who gets his secrets now. The idea made me breathe wrong.
Back in my room, I curled around my pillow with the covers up to my ears like I was six and Mama was still in the next room humming. Sleep didn’t come running, but it stopped acting like a stranger.