Old Flame: Dante’s Story by Sam Mariano
5
Colette
I watch out the window,leaning my head against the hard surface as the driver navigates us toward Dante’s house. From a few nostalgic, wine-fueled research sessions I’d never admit to in an unaltered state, I know he still lives in the same place he bought when we were together—the house I helped him pick out, back when we both envisioned our future together.
Growing up, we never owned our own home. My family moved around a lot, and while we made each rental our own while we were there, it was always disheartening when we inevitably had to leave. I didn’t like never having a back yard to play in as a child, or a place I knew we’d never have to leave as I got older. I told myself that when I grew up, I’d buy a great house to raise my own kids in. As soon as I got my first job at 17, I started saving money out of every single paycheck to make it happen.
When I outgrew my first job, I made a more risqué choice for my second—I applied for a position as a cocktail waitress at a swanky strip club. I wouldn’t have to take off my clothes, but I could work fewer hours and make more money. Since I was thinking about going back to school and trying to find something I was passionate enough about to pursue, that sounded like a win-win.
I got the job, but Dante’s family owned that strip club, so I also got much more than I bargained for. I was only there for the better pay, the ability to save more money toward my future, but I got caught up with the distractions.
I had dated before, but I had never been pursued by anyone very impressive. When I started at the club, I drew the eye of not just Mateo Morelli, but his brother Dante, too. Dante seemed more reluctant to strike. He would eye me from a distance but he never even talked to me. I had no idea he liked me—at first, I actually thought he hated me. His brother was a different story. Mateo isn’t the least bit shy, and it wasn’t long before he was cornering me in darkened hallways, running his hands along my body in ways no man ever had.
Mateo’s attention finally forced Dante out of the shadows. He didn’t like his brother pursuing me, didn’t like that I liked being pursued, and even though he had no right and no claim to me whatsoever, he had no problem telling me so.
He was an absolute brute with an awful lot of audacity to be telling me who I was allowed to hook up with when we’d never even communicated beyond wordless stares from across the room. But it turned out, I liked that. Turned out, I liked him.
I started dating Dante and everything changed. My once-small world began to expand.
For a while, I kept sight of my goals and still saved house money from every paycheck, even after he told me I didn’t need to. The problem was, Dante loved to travel, so he was less interested in being tied to a house than I was. Back then, he lived at his family’s home—more compound than home, really. Living there with his brothers meant as long as he could get the time off work, he could easily surprise me with a spontaneous trip to Barbados, or a week holed up in a beautiful seaside Mediterranean villa.
As he and I grew closer, as we went on adventure after adventure together in place after place, my idea of ‘home’ began to shift. It became less about a specific building to raise my future children in and more about a person to have those kids with. As fondly as I’d always dreamed about a home of my own, my adventures with Dante became more important. Wherever I slept, as long as Dante was there sleeping beside me, I was at home.
Then on my 22nd birthday, Dante told me he was going to buy us an actual house.
I was ecstatic. Home shopping together was an amazing experience, too. In addition to being crazy in love with the man himself, I was in love with the house we picked out, in love with the life I thought we’d build together inside those walls. I’d walked dreamily through the bedrooms I believed would belong to our children someday. The bedroom where we would read our daughter stories each night was yellow, but her bathroom was princess pink. Our son’s bedroom was blue, and there was a basketball hoop in the driveway where he and Dante would play ball in the summer. The child in me who had never had even a small one was thrilled with the spacious back yard ours would have to play in. Dante would set up a swing set with a treehouse and a slide for them to play on. We would still have adventures, they would just be different ones. We would be a perfect little family, and I knew nothing could make us happier.
Back when I didn’t think his danger mattered, or at the very least, I refused to believe it was a dealbreaker.
What a fool I was back then. Young and in love, recklessly devoted to a dream I had of who he was instead of the reality. Now his reality has bankrupted me and countless others, and I don’t know how I’ll ever escape that guilt.
The car veers left sharply and I look up, my heart dropping in expectation of seeing something alarming. I don’t think my aunt would have been crazy enough to call the police after Dante took me, but if I’ve learned anything in the past few years, it’s that you never really know what people will do.
The driver doesn’t appear to be alarmed though. He’s taking a sharp turn, but his face is relaxed. A glance out the back window shows no blue and red flashing lights, nothing to get excited about.
As if reading my thoughts, Dante replies casually, “He’s just an aggressive driver.”
The spike of alertness pierces my Valium-fog and brings me over the threshold into awareness. Awareness is terrible and heavy and it expands like anxiety in my chest. I regret not thinking now, not at least telling Dante before he hauled me out of the house to please bring my medication. Then again, I’m sure Dante Morelli will have no trouble procuring drugs for his captive ex-girlfriend—he just has to know I need them.
Swallowing and sinking back into the seat, I turn my face to look out the window again. “If you’re planning to keep me for a while, I need Valium.”
Apparently thinking I’m joking about the hardship of being in his company, a short, scoff-like laugh escapes him. “Sure you do.”
“I’m not kidding,” I snap. “I don’t take it all the time, but I have anxiety attacks and when I do, they help calm me down.”
Since he dismissed my initial request, I look at him to make sure he’s taking me seriously. My chest tightens up just thinking about being in that situation, trapped inside my own fears with no escape, nothing to ease the intensity.
Dante’s face is set in a ferocious scowl. “What are you talking about? You never had anxiety when we were together.”
“I’m aware. I do now.”
“Why?” he demands, like if I just tell him, he can scare off whatever demons sneak inside me and fix it for me.
I can’t help but shake my head at his obliviousness. He really has no idea the effect he had on my life, does he? It’s normal to him that I found my friend dead, that I comforted her murderer with whom I once had a romantic entanglement. He doesn’t understand how terrifying it was to leave him after all that, and he clearly doesn’t understand that even after I left him, he was never really gone. Instead of a warm, physical presence in my bed each night, he became a terrifying ghost, haunting me, living inside my mind as an ever-present threat that no amount of hours spent in therapy or a considerate boyfriend-turned-fiancé doing his best to understand what I’d lived through could fix. Nothing the normal world had to offer could heal the wounds Dante and his family left on me. I may have gotten out alive, but I never truly escaped them.
Now I know I probably never will.
In a sick, twisted way, it’s almost reassuring. I didn’t want to be, but boy, was I right. I wanted Declan to be right. I wanted my therapist to be right. I wanted it to be true that my fears were a mere result of an unhealthy experience, scary scars from a dormant trauma, but the threat wasn’t real. It was all in my head.
Now the threat is sitting beside me, so what the fuck did any of them know?
Still oblivious to all this, Dante demands, “Did that lawyer get you hooked on fucking drugs?”
“Please don’t,” I say quietly, shaking my head as much as I can with it leaning heavily against the back of the seat. “Don’t talk about him. Declan didn’t get me hooked on anything. I have a prescription from my psychiatrist, but I don’t imagine you’ll let me see her anymore, and my bottle is back at my aunt’s house.”
Dante is completely lost by all this new information about my reality. Maybe it should reassure me that he wasn’t full-on stalking me, but it doesn’t really matter now. “You see a psychiatrist?”
“Don’t worry, I was careful not to talk about anything that could implicate anyone in your family in any of the criminal bullshit I know about. There’s doctor-patient confidentiality to begin with, but… I covered your asses, anyway.”
“That wasn’t…” He trails off, still frowning, and shakes his head. “That’s not why I was asking.”
I know he doesn’t get it. I’m furious at him about a lot of things, but not about that. I’m aware that it’s not his fault and he doesn’t know any better. I know Dante’s family isn’t normal; I know his way of thinking isn’t normal. I lived that life with him for a while, and when I left, I remember the jolting culture shock of ordinary reality afterward, but Dante has never been removed from his way of life.
Morellis do not see therapists. They need to more than most of us, but they don’t. Any therapist worth their salt would try to help them unravel the layers of their dysfunction, and their way of life depends too much on preserving it. Normal has no place in their world, and if you live there with them for long enough, it becomes worthless in yours, too.
I can’t let that happen again. I can’t let him pull me back in. Not now. Not after what he has done.
Somehow, some way, I need to keep my heart closed this time—no matter how forcefully he tries to get back in.
