I pause with my hands under the tray handles. “Sì?”
“Today is today,” she says, eyes on mine. “Tomorrow comes later.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. It’s her way of saying, take it one day at a time.
She knows me well.
I nod and pick up the tray.
The good dishes on the tray catch the morning light as I cross the room. She went to the china cabinet for these. Not the everyday stuff.
The little things matter to her. The things I would never have thought of, she does.
This is breakfast, yes. But to Clara, it’s more than that. It’s care and love, dressed like breakfast.
I remind myself I need to give her a raise and buy her something special.
Chapter Nineteen
Olivia
I wake up to the quiet.
Not silence, exactly. There’s the low hum of something mechanical in the walls, the faint clink of a pipe somewhere. Birds chirp somewhere close by.
But in here, it’s still. My body registers first. Sore. Pleasantly wrecked in ways I understand and in ways I don’t have names for. My neck feels tender in the best places. My thighs complain when I shift. The inside of my mouth is dry. My shoulders feel loose, like someone untied a knot that’s been sitting there for weeks.
Then the rest of it hits me.
Luxurious sheets that definitely aren’t mine. A mattress that’s firmer than mine. A faint scent of soap that isn’t mine.
I blink and try to focus. The room is dimmer than my apartment would be at this hour. I don’t know the layout yet. Bed against a wall, nightstand with a clock, still a bit blurry. A low dresser on the other side. A chair with a jacket folded over the back. My brain catches up in pieces.
Roberto’s room.
My stomach lifts, then drops, then settles uneasily. I shift again, and the sheet slips down enough to remind me I’m naked. I’m naked in Roberto’s bed. My heart does a small, hard flutter that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with awareness.
Images fire one after another, out of order. Roberto coming to my office. Claiming me, marking me. Owning me. Cleaning me up. Bringing me home. The shower with his gentle hands. The way he wrapped me in a towel and carried me to bed as if my legs didn’t work. The clumsy earnestness with which I climbed into his lap and then into his arms, like I didn’t want a single inch between us. Which I didn’t. The heat. The ache. The sound of my own voice saying his name without shame.
Another flash: my forehead pressed to his shoulder after, breathing hard, boneless, too tired to cry and too wound up to sleep until he stroked my hair from crown to ends and told me to let go. I must have let go. I don’t remember falling asleep. I remember feeling safe and then nothing.
I pull the sheet a little higher in reflex. My face warms. I’m not ashamed of wanting him; I am embarrassed by how much I wanted last night. How completely I gave myself over.
The words I said. How I begged. I know what we were to each other in that office and in the elevator. This was more. My throat tightens, not with regret, but with a light, prickly fear of my own intensity.
A door hinges softly.
Footsteps. Measured, unhurried.
I freeze because somehow being still will make me invisible. The steps come closer, and then he’s fully in my view. He’s only in drawstring pants. Hair a little mussed. He’s carrying a tray loaded with dishes. The whole effect is absurdly civilized and makes my eyes sting for no good reason.
He looks up and sees I’m awake. The change in his face is small. Concern loosens into relief. Then something like happiness, warm and quiet.
“Good morning,” he says, voice low.
“Hi,” I say. My voice comes out hoarse, and I clear it.
He pauses like he’s checking for signs of distress. He doesn’t crowd the room with noise to fill whatever he thinks I might be feeling. He just crosses to the bed and eases the tray over my lap with care.
