“They care, you know?” Luca shrugged when Penny dared to glance upward at him. “That’s why my mom tries to start a conversation with you or why my dad forces himself to talk even though he’s not the type. They’ve already let you in—in the family sense. You wouldn’t be here otherwise. But now they’re trying to get you in, too.”
Penny didn’t reply.
Luca continued, anyway. “I think you’ve been around long enough now to know that we’re not the type of people who allow outsiders in. We just ... can’t afford to, Penny. But they do with you because again, they care.”
“Well, they shouldn’t.”
Finally, a response.
Not that it was one he liked.
Beggars can’t be choosers.
“I’m not worth that,” Penny muttered after a moment. “I’m not worth very much at all.”
Shit.
Luca knew that feeling all too well. He was still trying to deal with it, but that didn’t change the fact that feeling worthless wasn’t the same as actually being worthless to the people who loved him. Maybe that was the biggest difference between him and Penny. His self-doubt was created in his own mind while hers had been taught. He didn’t think they could unlearn it in the same ways, either.
“Not that you need me to say it, because I’m sure everybody else points it out more than enough,” Luca said, folding his arms over his chest while he eyed the family portrait hanging opposite to the stairwell, “but you know that isn’t true.”
“Feels like it.”
“Rough week?”
Penny scoffed.
Hard.
“Rough life,” she mumbled.
Yeah, he bet.
Penny went back to fidgeting with her fingernails and then the sleeves of her sweater. She made a great effort to keep every inch of her skin covered, but she tugged at the wrist band of the sleeve just enough for him to notice the patchwork of scars that started there and seemed to keep going beneath the gray fabric where he couldn’t see.
Luca should look away.
He didn’t.
Naz mentioned she was a cutter but hadn’t gone into details. The respect of the matter, really, and Luca understood. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder how far those scars went ... how many did she have? Had she stopped cutting yet?
Eventually, she noticed his staring.
“Stop it,” Penny told him.
Luca raised a brow. “Why? I’m just looking.”
Penny quickly fixed the sleeve of her sweater, hiding the scars in a flash. “Don’t pity me.”
“I don’t.” Then just as fast, he corrected himself with, “I don’t anymore. I did at first. And it’s not that I think you don’t deserve my pity, but more that I don’t think you want it. Why pity someone who doesn’t want it when that won’t help, right?”
She met his stare.
Luca only smiled back.
What else could he do?
What could any of them do for her other than smile and keep saying shit would get better? It was easier said than done, but it also wasn’t a lie.
“And stop that, too,” she whispered.
Luca arched a brow. “What?”
“The staring.”
“I—”
“You don’t look at me the same way everyone else does. Like they’re scared of me—or the idea of me. I like that.”
Luca blinked, unsure of what she was saying. “You like that people are scared of you or that I don’t see you the same way they do?”
Penny stood up from the stairs quick enough that he had to move when she passed him at the bottom of the stairs. It wasn’t fast enough that he hadn’t been able to see the pink tint coloring her cheeks even though she wouldn’t meet his gaze on the way by.
He still managed to hear her say, “You. I like you. And I don’t know what to do about that.”
Then, she was gone around the corner.
Luca was left confused.
He heard what she said.
Perfectly clear.
And he could still see the blush staining her cheeks even though she was long gone from his presence.
You.
I like you.
Did she mean ...
It didn’t matter.
Luca couldn’t entertain that thought.
He wouldn’t.
“EVEN IF YOU WERE LATE,” Luca’s mother told him after she walked him to the front door when he was leaving, “I’m still happy you showed up.”
Luca grinned.
It was the first time she even mentioned the fact he was late for dinner. As was Katya’s usual way.
“I’ll try to be on time for the next one,” he replied, kissing the apple of her cheek. “How’s that?”
“Better. And.”
“Hmm?”
Luca reached for the coat he’d left hanging on a hook in the hallway. Shrugging the item on while his mother glanced behind herself down the entry hall as though she were looking for someone who might be listening, he waited for whatever she had to tell him. He also wasn’t known for his patience.
“And what, Ma?”
Katya’s attention came back to him in an instant. “Penny. Thank you for ... talking to her. Everyone else seems fine to let her shrink away in the corner if that’s what she wants. You make an effort to actually talk. It does make a difference.”
He stiffened. “Did you follow me—”
“I went to check on her, actually. I thought I might have made her uncomfortable, and I don’t want her to feel that way around any of us. She’s important to your sister, you know?”
He did.
Too well.
“I don’t think she means to be rude,” Luca said about Penny, and stuffing his hands into his pockets. “But I don’t think she knows how to deal with ... people, either.”
For a brief while, his mother only stared at him, saying nothing. Her palm came up to find his cheek with a soft pat that had him smiling.
“She’s not rude. She’s hurting.”
“That, too,” he murmured. “But I don’t know ... she said something to me earlier, and it made me think.”
“About?”
“If I should be talking to her at all.”
Katya frowned. “Did she tell you to leave her alone or—”
“Not quite.”
His mother said nothing.
Luca sighed, admitting, “I think she might have a crush on me. Silly, right? I just ... she’s only seventeen, and I don’t want her to think I’m encouraging any—”
“Imagine,” Katya interjected, “what it must feel like to be the girl everyone knows was raped. Every person who looks at you knows that about you first. The one fact they do know is that you’re a victim. It creates a complex in your head almost ... every time you walk into a room, and people look at you, even if you don’t know them, you wonder if that’s the first thing on their mind. Your rape. Your constant victimhood.”
He swallowed hard, taking in his mother’s words. If anyone could relate to Penny at her current stage, it would be his mom. Before she came to be his father’s wife, she had been the property of a man who used her and her body as he saw fit. He allowed others to do the same to Katya without regret or regard for her.