There is something awful about a dead body. A cold stiffness that everyone instinctively shies away from. And it smacks you in the face that, whoever or whatever this lump of cold flesh and stiff bones was, they're not there any more. It may look like them, but it's as real as a doll, or a stickman scribble.
All of the anger, all of the determination, all of the fire that made Lovino himself was gone. His face was empty, the muscles slack. Antonio had never seen that before, not even those unguarded moments when he was asleep. There was always something in the stubborn set of his lips, or the way his eyebrows were dragged down.
So why couldn't he let go?