“But I guess ducks are safer,” I said quickly, snapping my eyes back toward the pond. “Low risk. Low stakes. Unless you count the one that bit me last summer—which, for the record, was an unprovoked attack.”
He still didn’t laugh, but I caught the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth. The kind that almost meant something. The kind that told me he wasn’t ignoring what I’d said, he was just letting it sit there.
Which was somehow worse.
We hadn’t talked about that night.
It sat between us, impossible to ignore, but it was easier to pretend it wasn’t there if we both stared in the other direction. Like if neither of us acknowledged it, it couldn’t touch us.
What was there to say anyway?
He’d come back, and I’d let him. That was it. That was what we did, wasn’t it? No conversation. No confrontation. Just silence where all the messy, complicated stuff should go.
We were both cowards in our own way—him with his stillness, me with my sarcasm. He pretended it didn’t matter. I pretended it had never happened.
I didn’t bring it up, because I didn’t know what I’d do if he looked me in the eye and said it was a mistake. And I think he didn’t bring it up because he wasn’t sure what I’d do if he said itwasn’t.
So we ignored it.
We talked about ducks. About Lucia. About whatever bullshit filled the space and kept our hands from touching again. But underneath it—underneath every look, every breath, every almost—there it was.
That night.
I couldn’t handle the silence anymore. I hated that he was standing right there, pretending I hadn’t basically chased him out of my apartment a week ago.
I finally caved and asked, “So where were you?”
It came out softer than I meant it to, which irritated me. But whatever. The silence was getting ridiculous, and I was already halfway in my own head, so what was one more slip?
Marco glanced over at me. That look he always gave—like he already knew I’d ask and had just been waiting for me to get tired of pretending I wouldn’t. Not smug, not condescending. Just ... patient. Like he understood why I was asking and didn’t plan to make me beg for the answer.
“Chicago,” he said.
“What’d you do there?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“Handled a few things,” he said calmly. “Castello’s legal team is a joke. Their counsel kept trying to slide clauses past me as if I didn’t write half the framework myself two years ago.”
“And now you’re back?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he murmured gently.
“Why were you in my apartment?”
He took a deep breath and then said, “I figured we should talk about?—”
But Lucia chose that exact moment to swing around with the bread bag as if she were waving a white flag. “We’re out!” she announced like it was a full-blown emergency. “The ducks are still hungry!”
Marco looked at her. Smiled. And I watched the moment slip between us.
Like always.
He’d said he’d come back to talk to me.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
What did it mean?Talkabout what? About that night? About what he’d said? About what he hadn’t? Because he’d never finished his sentence, and I’d been trying to fill in the blanks ever since.
He looked at me like he wanted to say something else. It was still there, hanging between us, just waiting for the right moment to drop. Maybe I was supposed to ask. Maybe I was supposed to make it easy for him.
