I blinked.
“I don’t hate you.”
He smiled faintly. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“It’s easier,” I admitted before I could stop myself. “To pretend you get under my skin for all the wrong reasons. To write you off as a reckless driver with too much charm and not enough substance.”
He didn’t flinch. He just waited.
“And is that still what you think?” he asked, voice soft now.
I looked away. “No.”
A beat passed. Two.
“But that’s what scares me.”
The confession left my mouth like it’d been waiting there all night, and for the first time, the space between us didn’t feel charged—it felt fragile. Like if I breathed wrong, the moment would slip through my fingers.
Matteo shifted beside me, his voice low. “I don’t want to scare you.”
I didn’t answer, too lost in thought till he looked over to me. Gianna was still asleep in his lap between us.
“Have you ever been in love?” he asked.
My breath caught.
He said it casually, like he wasn’t asking this huge momentous thing. Something I didn’t talk about freely.
I leaned back against the couch, folding my arms.
“I thought I was once,” I admitted, voice quieter than I meant it to be. “But I think I was just in love with the idea of being wanted. Or maybe just mattering to someone. Guess I know how to pick ’em since the only long-term relationship I ever had was with a man who was cheating on me the whole damn time.”
Matteo didn’t say anything, instead his jaw ticked, and I watched him swallow. But he gave me the space, waiting for me to finish.
“Turns out,” I whispered into the night, voice cracking, “love shouldn’t make you feel smaller.”
“No one deserves that.” His voice was low, brows creased.
I only shrugged, shoving back down the emotions that rose too quickly. “What about you?”
He let out a breath, running a hand over his mouth.
“I think I’ve come close,” he said after a moment. “But I always held something back. I told myself it wasn’t the right time or the right person. Maybe that’s on me. But I think I might trust too easily. I’ve been burned a few too many times now by those I thought I could trust.”
I studied him then, the curve of his shoulders, the dip of his brow. It was like the weight of his own honesty surprised him. And something deep inside me ached because we were two people who learned how to survive first and love second—if ever.
“Maybe it just hasn’t been the right kind of love,” I said, surprising myself.
He looked at me.
And whatever was in his eyes, it made it hard to breathe. Not because it was intense, but instead shocking me yet again with that softness.
“I think…” he started, then stopped, glancing down at Gianna’s tiny fist curled in sleep against his arm. “I think the right kind of love makes you feel like more of yourself. Not less.”
The only sound was the hum of the city outside and the gentle tick of the heater. Matteo was maybe the only person I had ever felt comfortable with in companionable silence. When he quietly hit me with this rather poignant remark, it showed me that Matteo DeLuca had layers. That there was something beneath that mask of the ever-smiling golden boy.
I thought about what he said earlier—about chasing the version of himself his sister used to believe in. About how he’s trying to stand beside her now, instead of shielding her from everything.
