My Stepbrother's Dirty Little Secret novel Chapter 641

Chapter 641

There wasn’t a single dramatic word, no speech, no grand declaration, just simple facts that Raphael believed more than feelings.

I continued to stare at Mom, “…I can’t cry. I want to but nothing is happening. Everyone else cried. I just… I stand here. I keep waiting for it. I keep thinking maybe the next second… and then nothing.”

Raphael answered after thinking for a while, “Your brain knows she’s gone. I don’t think the rest of you has accepted it yet.”

I frowned slightly.

“When something hurts enough… the mind sometimes slows everything down. It lets you function first, breathe first, stand first. The feelings usually arrive later. They don’t disappear. They wait.”

I listened carefully.

“You aren’t failing to grieve. You simply haven’t reached it yet.”

I wanted to believe him. I really did but another thought slipped into my head. I looked up at him.

“You told me that when your mother died, you never cried. You still haven’t.”

He nodded once.

I searched his face, “Then, how do I know I’m not becoming like you? How do I know I’ll ever cry?”

His eyes lowered to Mom, then he looked back at me, “You don’t but you aren’t me. You feel everything, sometimes too much. I usually understand my emotions after I’ve already made decisions. You understand yours while they’re happening.”

He looked down at me carefully, pulling me closer if that was possible.

“I don’t think your tears are gone. I think they’re still trying to find their way through everything else.”

I looked back down at Mom.

Her hands were folded exactly the way she’d always folded mine whenever I fell asleep as a little girl.

I waited for the tears, for the pain, for anything but nothing came. I simply stood there beside my mother, staring at the woman who had loved me first.

And wondering why my heart felt so unbearably full…

Yet my eyes remained completely dry.

Footsteps approached behind us. Salvatore stopped beside me. For a few seconds, he simply looked at Mom. His shoulders seemed lower than they had ever been. There were dark circles beneath his eyes.

Very carefully, he rested one hand against my upper arm.

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