She stood there as still as stone. “You—” she started with a brief pause. “Youloveme?”
And just like that, every instinct of mine screamed at me to walk it back. To reel it in. Because I didn’t say that word. Not because I didn’t feel it—I wasn’t some cold machine who didn’t feel things—but because when you said it, it meant something, and once it was out, you couldn’t take it back. It became this thing people could either hold or throw back at you.
I’d had enough thrown back at me for one life.
I should’ve kept my mouth shut. Should’ve nodded, said something safe—some joke to pull the heat off it. But I couldn’t, because it was true. I was tired of pretending like it wasn’t.
But Jesus, the second she asked it out loud, I felt like I was seventeen again, standing on a doorstep I didn’t belong to, holding everything I owned in a garbage bag and waiting for someone to tell me I could come inside.
I didn’t know how to do this.
Not love. Not the kind that mattered.
I knew how to want people. I knew how to be useful. I knew how to make someone think they could depend on me. But being the person someone stayed for? That was foreign territory.
She stared at me like she wanted to cut me open and find the rest of the answer buried in there somewhere. And maybe she would find it if I let her. God knows, I wasn’t good at saying the things I actually felt—not unless someone dragged it out of me.
Finally, she said almost gently, “You look like you’d rather die than say that again.”
“I would,” I said, honest, a little hoarse.
“You’re not exactly easy to love either.”
I couldn’t help but smile faintly at that. “You love me?”
She rolled her eyes in irritation. “If I didn’t, I’d be in Sebastian’s bedsheets by now.”
Sebastian wouldn’t even know what to do with her.
“He still sniffing around?”
Valentina tilted her head at me. “He left. Said he was heading back to Chicago.”
“And what—he gave you an open invitation?”
She hesitated just long enough to make me want to hit something. “Said I’m always welcome. Told me I know where to find him.”
“You want to go?” I asked. “You want to follow him?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t act like this is a choice between you and him.”
“That’s exactly what this is.”
She stepped closer, lifting her chin like she was ready for a fight. “Then you’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”
I almost laughed. Almost. “You didn’t say no.”
“I didn’t say yes either.”
I moved toward her. “So say it.”
She rolled her eyes again, but this time it was softer. Almost reluctant. “I’m not going to Chicago, Marco.”
“Why not?”
