Would there ever be a time when I didn’t think she was beautiful? Another month? A year?
A lifetime, maybe?
Then her eyes went to the girl straddling my back, and she ripped her gaze away in disgust.
“Sophia.” Her mother appeared behind her. “Come back in here and talk like an adult.”
“An adult gets to choose her own path. You want to treat me like a child, so I will act like a child. I’ll be in the pool house, alone. Don’t follow me.” She stomped away, and her mother shook her head.
“Sorry about that.” She forced herself to smile. “Teenage girls. She will come around.” The back door shut behind her, and silence swirled around us.
Turning my head, I found Gio staring at the pool house.
“What was that about?” I asked quietly. “Sophia is in love with someone.”
“Looks that way, but she will get over it. Girls her age don’t know what’s best for them.”
I stared at the pool house. “I didn’t even know she had a boyfriend.”
“She doesn’t,” he hissed. “Anymore.”
I didn’t know how much time had passed, but we had moved from the pool to the house, and Gio and his date for the night had left to go to his bedroom. The girl I was left with kept making doe eyes at me.
“Shall we go up as well?” she asked. Clearly, the time for being coy was over, and now she was asking me outright. The answer was going to be the same, though. I wasn’t interested. Even less so now that I had seen Sophia. She was all I could think about.
“You go on up,” I said without thinking, because Gio would get suspicious if I didn’t. Not that I was going to sleep with her. Therewas no way my cock would rise to the occasion. But I was counting on the fact that she would pass out drunk before I had to make some excuses.
“I’m just going to go for a smoke and then I’ll be up.”
“I would mind…”
I stood, heading toward the door. “Just go and make yourself pretty for me,” I called back over my shoulder, but didn’t turn to look at her. This was all for show. “I won’t be long.”
Stepping out into the balmy summer night, I took a deep breath. My eyes instantly found the orange rectangle of light coming from the pool house.
She was in there and she was awake.
Was she waiting for me? It didn’t matter whether she was or not. I needed to see her, and we needed to talk, because I wanted to know if the man she was in love with was me.
Keeping to the shadows, I crept around and tapped once on the door. When there was no answer, I pushed it open and closed it softly behind me. Scanning the small living room, I found it empty.
The bedroom wasn’t, though. She was in the middle of the bed, lying on her stomach. Her legs were swinging back and forth as she hummed along to the music playing on her headphones.
“Hey,” I said softly. Nothing. The music was loud. Creeping into the room, I touched her ankle.
Letting out a scream, Sophia rolled until she was sitting cross-legged and staring at me with wide eyes. “Matteo.” She said my name too loudly, and I winced back. It wasn’t that anyone would be able to hear us, but I still needed to be careful. I didn’t have a good excuse to be here.
She ripped the headphones out of her ears.
“Hey,” I said again, a smile playing over my lips.
“What are you doing here, Matteo?”
“I wanted to make sure you were okay.” I took a step forward, closing the distance between us. She didn’t move backward away from me, but her face did tilt up as I loomed over her.
“I heard what you said earlier.”
She swung her legs over the bed and stood. “That was a private conversation.”
