A massive estate.
With a small building set against the shoreline . . .
A boathouse.
My boathouse.
“That . . .” My voice comes out thin. “That’s . . .”
Lorenzo’s gaze stays fixed on the horizon. His hands remain in his pockets, and his posture is too still.
“Yes. It is.”
I turn sharply toward him. “That’s my parents’ house. Why?”
He looks at me with those dark eyes.
“Why?” I ask again. “Why would you—”
“Because I could.” His mouth twitches. “And because I wanted to...”
His words hang in the air. The meaning of them, though, is a bit more complex . . .
My head spins with what it could mean, but no matter how much my brain circles around the words, it always comes back to the same thought: he wanted me close.
He wasn’t over me.
He’s still not.
My heart beats rapidly in my chest.
I gesture wildly at the view. “You bought an estate across from my parents just to—what? Stare at them? Torture yourself?”
His eyes flicker. Something dark passes behind them. He looks out at the water again.
“I bought this place with my father’s inheritance.” Lorenzo’s voice is softer than I expected. “The one my uncle gave me when my father died.”
My throat tightens.
“I’d been saving for years,” he adds, looking down at the snow under his boots. “Every paycheck. Every scrap. Every dime. I didn’t buy much. Didn’t go out. Didn’t waste money.”
I stare at him, stunned.
He glances back at me. “Don’t look at me like I’m noble. I’m not. I’m obsessive.”
My voice cracks. “You were . . . here?”
His jaw flexes once as the question hits him somewhere unpleasant.
“Yes. I was . . . always here.”
My chest feels too tight. I swallow. “That’s insane.”
A faint smile tugs at his mouth. “Yes.”
I stare at the estate across the water. The boathouse is visible from here. A small structure, white and gray. A speck at this distance.
But my brain fills in the details anyway. I turn back to him. “You watched me?”
