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"You already know."

"I know what Vittoria's told me. I want to hear it from you."

I let out a laugh. There's no humor in it.

"There's nothing to tell. That's the problem."

Valentino watches me for a long moment. Patient. Unmoving. Waiting me out.

"Amanda."

"What?"

"Nothing doesn't make people cry."

Damn him.

I pull my knees up beneath the sheet and wrap my arms around them.

"I don't know where to start."

"Anywhere."

I stare down at the blanket gathered around my legs and take a breath.

"Sometimes I miss something I never had."

Valentino doesn't interrupt. He doesn't tell me he understands. He doesn't rush to fill the silence. He just waits.

"I don't miss them. Not the way you miss your father. I miss the version of them I made up when I was a kid. The parents who came to school plays. The parents who remembered birthdays without being reminded. The parents who sat in the audience and looked for me. The parents who showed up because they wanted to, not because someone put it on a calendar."

My throat tightens.

"My mother's assistant puts my birthday on her calendar. That's how I get the text. My mother doesn't write it. She just forwards whatever her assistant sends."

Something shifts in Valentino's expression. Not surprise. Not pity. Something darker than that.

"I'm not trying to make it sound worse than it was," I say. "They didn't hit me. They didn't starve me. I had nannies. Money. I had every opportunity. Everything people point to when they want to prove a kid had a good life." I look down at my hands."I just never had them."

The words settle between us. Neither of us speaks for a moment.

"I hear you talk about your father coming home every night, and I can see it. The door opening. A kid running to meet him. I can picture it so clearly. Sometimes I think I miss that more than I miss my actual parents." The admission sits heavy in my chest. "Because I've never had that feeling, Valentino. Not once.

"I spent Christmases at Vittoria's. Thanksgivings at Vittoria's. Aria came to my high school graduation. My mother was in Tokyo. My father said he had a meeting in London. I looked it up later and there wasn't a conference. He was just... somewhere. I don't know where. Just not there." I keep talking because if I stop, I'll think. "And here's the really fucked-up part." My voice catches. "You lost your father, and it destroyed you."

Valentino doesn't say anything.

"If my father died tomorrow, I wouldn't feel that." I look at him through eyes that won't stop burning. "I'd be sad. I'd go to the funeral. I'd wear black. I'd say all the right things. And then I'd go home and my life would look exactly the same, because he was never really in it."

A tear slips free. I wipe it away with the heel of my hand. "Some days I hate myself for that. What kind of person thinks that about her own father?"

Valentino reaches for me. His hand settles around my ankle through the sheet, rough and warm.

"Nothing's wrong with you," he says.

I look at him.

"Nothing is wrong with you." He says it again, slower this time. Certain. "Having a child doesn't make someone a parent. They can't all do it, Amanda. Some people don't know how. Some people never learn. That's not your failure."