“What about your parents?”
For a moment, the only sound is the hiss of meat as it cooks. Then he shrugs, a small, guarded gesture. “My mother tried but died when we were young. My father…didn’t make it easy.” His voice is calm, but there’s something sharp under the surface, something he doesn’t invite questions about. “I learned early that if I wanted things to stay standing, I had to hold them up myself.”
Lucien slides a glass of red over toward me. “Thank you.” I trace the rim of my glass with my fingertip, thinking about that. It explains so much — his constant vigilance, the way his attention never really rests, not even here. “It sounds like a lot to carry.”
He glances at me, eyes steady. “It was,” he admits quietly. “But I’d do it again. My brothers and I…we look out for each other. Always have.”
There’s a weight to his words that settles in my chest, heavier than I expect. Family, for him, isn’t just blood. It’s survival.
“My family’s different,” I say, offering him a small smile. “Middle-class, small town in the middle of Ohio. My parents still live in the same house they bought before I was born. I used to think I’d never leave. Sundays were for big lunches at my grandmother’s, Dad always falling asleep in front of the football after.”
Lucien listens without interrupting, one hand resting casually on the counter, the other watching the grill. His expression doesn’t change, but I catch the subtle softening around his mouth, the faint crease at the corner of his eye.
“It sounds…” He hesitates, almost like he’s searching for the right word. “Safe.”
“It was,” I admit, a little wistful now. “For a long time. I thought that’s what life would always be like. Simple. Predictable. Then…” I trail off, shaking my head as memories of Spain creep in like unwelcome shadows.
Matteo.
I don’t need to finish the sentence. Lucien doesn’t push.
“You still talk to them?” he asks after a beat, surprising me.
“Every Sunday,” I say. “Mom calls. Dad pretends he’s not listening in the background, but I can hear him. My sister emails me pictures of my niece every week.” A laugh slips out despite the ache in my chest. “She’s four now. Wild curls, attitude for days.”
His mouth curves faintly, the closest I’ve seen him come to a smile tonight. “Sounds like she takes after you.”
Heat creeps into my cheeks, and I roll my eyes, trying to hide it. “I don’t have attitude.”
“You do,” he says, flipping the steaks with an ease that borders on smug. “You just hide it better than most.”
I stare at him, caught off guard by the unexpected teasing. “Says the man who scowls for a living.”
That earns me the faintest huff of amusement, almost a laugh but not quite. It’s there and gone in a heartbeat, like a ghost.
The silence that follows isn’t uncomfortable. It’s…companionable. There’s an ease here I haven’t felt around anyone in a long time. We’re two very different people, from very different worlds, and yet — somehow — we both ended up here, sitting across from each other in his sleek kitchen, bound by bruises neither of us asked for.
“Family matters,” he says finally, turning off the heat. “Everything I’ve done, everything I’ve built…it’s for them. To make sure none of them ever have to crawl through the same shit we did growing up.”
I swallow hard, my throat tight. “I get that,” I say quietly. “I came back to New York for a fresh start, but part of me came back to prove I could stand on my own again. Stand up for myself. My family would’ve let me move back home, wrappedme up in bubble wrap if I asked them to. Perhaps I should have taken up their offer after all the trouble I’ve put everyone into.”
“You didn’t ask to go home,” he says. Not a question.
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head. “I couldn’t. I had to do this myself.”
Lucien studies me for a long moment, his gaze searching but not prying. There’s something there — respect, maybe. Understanding. “You’re no trouble to me or mine.”
I let his words fill a part of me that hurts and I marvel at his kindness. We sit in silence as the steaks rest, the air between us warmer now, softer somehow, threaded with something unspoken neither of us wants to name.
But I have a feeling I know what it is. Respect, definitely desire, and maybe, just maybe, the craving for more…
Finally, he places a plate in front of me and gestures with his chin. “Eat. You need it.”
I smile faintly, picking up my fork and steak knife. “Yes, boss.”
He shoots me a look — sharp, unreadable — but doesn’t correct me. The weight of it lingers, because for the first time, I’m starting to wonder what it would feel like to call him my own.
FOURTEEN
