I can't.
Her mother, on the other hand, is an entirely different story.
"I'm not sure," I answer. "I don't know when it happened."
"Bullshit."
I admire her bluntness and fight off a smile, knowing laughing at the moment will only cause her hurt. There's nothing funny about this situation. "It wasn't what I'd call a conscious decision. I saw you, I talked to you, I took you home with me… took you into my bed… and somewhere along the way I fell in love with you. And when the time came to actually see my plan through, I realized I couldn't do it. I realized I didn't want to. Maybe it happened later; maybe it happened the first time I laid eyes on you. I don't know, Karissa. All I know is it happened, and that's the truth."
She holds my gaze for a few seconds before breaking eye contact, ducking her head as she turns away to look out the window again. We ride in silence after that, neither of us saying a word the rest of the trip to the airport. She doesn't talk to me when we get out of the car, doesn't talk to me when our bags are unloaded, and doesn't even talk to me as we board the plane. It's smaller than the one Ray chartered during our trip to Vegas, but it's just the two of us now, so we don't need anything too fancy.
Karissa veers as soon as she's inside, plopping down in a single seat off to the side by herself. I pause, wondering if I've upset her, before taking a seat across from her, putting some space between us.
She doesn't look at me. Her eyes are fixed out the window, her elbow propped on the arm of the chair, her chin resting in her palm. I hate it when she drifts away. She looks lost, and I wish I could find her, bring her back where she belongs.
I exchange words with the pilot, and within a few minutes we're up in the air. I relax back in my seat, stretching my legs out. It's going to be a long flight... a very long flight.
Over eight hours from gate to gate.
I watch Karissa as she watches the morning sky. It's starting to lighten outside, but the lights in the cabin are dim, casting her in soft shadows.
Ten minutes.
Twenty.
Half an hour.
Time drifts away slowly.
It's an hour or so into the flight before I hear her voice again.
"Do you regret it?" she asks quietly. "Do you regret loving me?"
I don't answer. Not right away. I stare at her until she finally turns her head to look at me, until she breaks and can't keep her gaze away a second longer. In her eyes I see apprehension, the kind that tells me my answer might break her the way she once ripped me apart with the word red.
"I have no regrets," I say finally.
Her brow furrows. "None at all?"
"None."
"After everything you've done, you regret none of it?" she asks. "How can that be?"
"Because you can't go back and change things once they're done. You can't rewrite history. Dwelling on it, wondering what could've been different, wondering how things might be in a perfect world, is a waste of time. Because this world isn't perfect, life isn't perfect, and it never will be. I'm only one man, and I only have one life, and I'm not going to waste it regretting my decisions and wishing I could change things that can never be changed. Wishing gets you nowhere, sweetheart. Believe me—I know. I wish and I wish and I wish and it doesn't make a goddamn difference. I lost my life in a single moment that a hundred years of regret wouldn't ever give me back. So no, Karissa, I don't regret anything."
There's something in her eyes, something I don't expect to see: sadness. I don't know if she believes a word that just came from my lips, but it's clear what I said got to her. Her mouth opens, and she hesitates, before whispering, "Did you ever even grieve?"
"Of course I grieved. I've spent two decades grieving."
"No," she says, shaking her head. "You spent two decades plotting revenge. That's not the same thing. Anger's just a small part of grief. You can't just get angry and be done with it. You have to really feel it, Naz, or you'll never accept it."
I can feel my arm hair bristling. She's clawing at me, getting under my skin.
"You say you don't feel regret about anything, and maybe that's true. But if it is? I feel sorry for you."
Those words are a punch in the gut. My expression hardens, my muscles taut. "I don't need your pity."
"It's not pity," she says. "It's understanding. You don't like to hurt, so instead you inflict the pain on others. I get that now. But grief isn't something you can finish; it isn't something with a beginning and an end. Grief is something you absorb, something you accept. But in order to learn to live with it, you still have to live."
"I am living."
"You're avoiding," she says. "You're deflecting."
The more she talks, the more pissed off I get. If I wanted to be psychoanalyzed, I'd pay a fucking shrink.
She drops the subject, once again turning to look out the window.
One hour down, seven more to endure.
It takes the entire rest of the flight for me to push back my anger, for me to calm down enough to unclench my fists. She sleeps. I just stare at her, mulling over her words.
As soon as the wheels are on the ground and we come to a stop, I'm out of my seat. Karissa doesn't hesitate. She follows me off the plane, clutching hold of her brand new passport.
I had to call in a bunch of favors to get it for her.
We head through customs, flashing our passports, and are waved right through.
But Karissa hesitates.
Her feet root into the ground, blocking the line. She stares at the worker in silence, eyebrow raised, her passport still extended.
The man looks like he wants to strangle her.
She's an infuriatingly stubborn woman, I know it, but she's my stubborn woman, and my hands are the only ones that will ever wrap around her throat.
"Timbrare il passaporto," I say sharply, capturing the worker's attention. Stamp her passport. He scowls, digging in his drawer, and pulls out the small ink stamper. He pounds it against the first page in her passport before sliding it back to her.
"Thank you," Karissa whispers, smiling with satisfaction as she starts to walk away. I nod my appreciation, and he returns the gesture before moving on to the others behind us.
He just waves everyone else through.
There's a car waiting in front of the airport, a driver holding a sign with Vitale printed on it. We're staying at a hotel deep in the middle of Rome, just a few floors tall with a handful of rooms, small but luxurious, the kind of place where you get privacy but all the amenities you'd ever want.
Home away from home.
As soon as we step inside the hotel, I'm greeted with warm smiles and kind Italian words. I catch most of what they say even though I'm distracted, my attention continually drifting to Karissa.