“
We emerge into the warm night air and I smell the honeyed wisteria, hear an owl hooting across the fields on the far side of the river. I’m eager to dive in; I love to swim. I’m picking my way down the little slope when, behind me, I hear a commotion, and look back to see Paige braced between Evan and Leo; she’s tripped on her wedge heels and is cackling like a banshee.
Kendra looks at me and rolls her eyes.
“Hopefully the cold water’ll sober her up a bit,” she says resignedly.
I don’t answer, even though I completely agree. Because, leaning against the wall of the club on our left, long legs crossed at the ankles, shoulders propped square to the stone, black hair falling over his face, is a silhouette that looks eerily familiar, like a ghost that haunts my dreams. There’s a book called The Beautiful and Damned, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, that I found in the villa’s library, and I’ve been reading it. I don’t quite understand it all; to be honest, I pulled it off the shelf because the title spoke to me, made me think of him. Luca. Definitely beautiful, and the damned part fits too, because he’s so dark, so brooding, so sad; it feels sometimes as if he doesn’t want to reach for happiness, as if he actually pushes it away--
But he saved me when I saw in danger, I remind myself. He saved my life. And then he told me he thought I might be his half sister. Which meant we couldn’t see each other anymore, in case that was true…
A red dot flashes in the blue-black night as the figure raises a cigarette to his lips.
It can’t be Luca, I tell myself. We’re beyond Siena, miles and miles from Chianti, where he lives. It can’t be him.
Everyone’s already passed me, brushing by as I stopped to stare at the lean boy draped against the roadhouse wall.
“Violet!” Kelly calls, her voice high and thrilled. “Come on! Wait till you see this!”
I turn back toward the river and plunge down the little path as if I were being chased by the hounds of hell. Away from a silhouette that’s making me think of things--want things--that I can never have.
”
”