I’d raised an eyebrow at him, trying to hide my amusement. “Marco, I don’t exactly do lawyer work.”
“You don’t need to,” he’d replied, shrugging. “You just have to sit there.”
“Just sit there,” I repeated dryly. “And do what, exactly?”
He paused. “Motivate me.”
I laughed at that, unable to keep a straight face. “I motivate you?”
“Something like that,” he said quietly, the corner of his mouth twitching up just slightly.
It was those little things. Those stolen smiles. Those casual requests that were anything but casual. And he’d started doing it more often—asking me to be with him in places where I didn’t belong, where it didn’t even make sense for me to be there. He wanted me close, even if he’d never said it outright.
But that was just how Marco was.
It was the subtle things—the things no one else would notice. Like the way his hand would linger on the small of my back when we walked through a crowd as if to make sure no one got too close, or the way he’d keep his eyes on me from across the roomat those awful parties, like he couldn’t bear to look away for fear I’d slip through his fingers.
Or the day I found him at the kitchen table, running through files that meant nothing to me, surrounded by notes and scribbles and too many cups of coffee. He lifted his eyes when I walked in, and without saying a word, he pushed the chair beside him out with his foot. Just a quiet invitation, a small gesture that meant more than I’d ever admit. So I sat there beside him tracing absent patterns on the edge of the table while he worked, wondering if he could hear how loud my heart was beating in the silence between us. And every once in a while, when he thought I wasn’t looking, he’d glance up, his attention lingering on me for a second too long before dropping back to his papers.
And maybe I was imagining it—maybe I’d lost my mind somewhere between the sobriety and Max’s never-ending rules—but it felt like he was always searching for me even when I was right there. Like he needed to make sure I was still beside him, still safe, still his, even if he never said it.
One night, curled up together on the couch, wrapped in a comfortable silence broken only by the muted sound of the news in the background, I finally gathered enough courage to nudge at those carefully guarded walls.
“Tell me about Louisiana,” I said softly, leaning my head against his shoulder. “What was it like growing up there?”
Marco didn’t answer right away, but I knew he’d heard me. His hand tightened slightly against my waist, fingertips tracing gentle circles through the fabric of my shirt.
“Humid,” he finally said, his voice low, like he was pulling memories from a faraway place. “Small. Quiet.”
I smiled softly, not daring to lift my head. He’d stop talking if I moved. I knew that much by now.
“Show me sometime,” I said quietly, staring at the blank television screen. “I’d like to see where you grew up.”
He exhaled slowly, his chest rising and falling under my cheek. “I don’t think you would.”
“Maybe not,” I admitted lightly. “But show me anyway.”
Marco was quiet for so long I thought the conversation was over. It wouldn’t surprise me; he avoided talking about his childhood the way most people avoided the dentist. Or jury duty.
“You really want to see it?” he finally asked, his voice cautious.
“I want to see it with you,” I clarified softly. “I want to understand where you come from. Maybe it’ll help me understand you.”
“Maybe.”
I smiled. “You’ll plan it?”
“If you want me to.”
“I do,” I said softly, settling back into him, curling tighter against his side.
There was a long stretch of silence between us after that. The kind that didn’t feel awkward, just full. Like we’d both run out of words, but not out of weight.
My head rested just above his heart, and I could hear it—it was calm, a little too steady for a man with as much buried under the surface as him. Marco didn’t hesitate when I asked about things anymore, but he didn’t exactly volunteer information either. I knew better than to push when the silence was doing more work than either of us could.
Still, the thing with Marco was, once he let the door crack open, I couldn’t help but pry it wider. It was pathological, probably.
“Did you have any siblings in that house?” I asked eventually.
