Dante Blackwood's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

Scarlet came back to the square the next morning. She sat on Dante's bench and drank coffee she'd bought from the café down the row. Dante set out water for the wolf. He wanted her to see more than his scars and ink. But he owned nothing that showed the softer man underneath. His pockets held keys and coins. That was all. She watched him work. "You don't talk much," she said. "You build things and stare. It's kind of a lot." She finished her coffee. "I've got a stall to open. Books." She nodded toward the connected storefronts across the way, the line of shops with their painted signs. "If you're just a scary statue, I'm not wasting my mornings." Dante's chest tightened. She was slipping. He had one day, maybe less. He had no photo, no letter, no keepsake to hand her. Then the wolf pressed her nose into his palm, and he understood. He didn't need an object. He needed to show her a thing he did that no one saw. "Wait," he said. "Come with me." She raised an eyebrow but followed. He led her past the shops to the flower bed he tended behind the bakery. Nobody knew he kept it. White lilies leaned over clusters of red-capped mushrooms with pale spots. He knelt and cleared dead leaves with careful fingers. The wolf lay in the shade beside him. "I plant these every spring," he said. His voice came low and rough. "The lilies for my mother. She died when I was young. The mushrooms because they made her laugh. She said they looked like they belonged to fairies." He didn't look up. "I've never told anyone that." Scarlet went quiet. She crouched beside him. Her fishnet knees pressed the dirt. She touched a lily petal, then looked at his hands, big and scarred, moving so gently in the soil. "You did all this for her," she said. It wasn't a question. "For her. And to have one place that's soft." He met her teal eyes. "People see the ink and the face. They run. I built the square so they'd stay. But this I built for me." Scarlet reached out and traced the split in his eyebrow with one finger. He held still. "There he is," she said softly. "The guy under the armor." She smiled. "I like him better than the statue." Something in Dante's chest cracked open and stayed open. She had seen it. She hadn't run. "Show me the rest sometime," she said. She stood and brushed dirt from her jeans. "But I still have a stall to open. Walk me?" He rose. The wolf followed. For the first time, the softer man walked in the open, beside the one person who wanted to see him. But now she wanted more than he'd shown, and Dante had no idea how much of himself he was ready to give.