“Boring.” She wrinkles her nose and goes back to her magazine, and I go back to pretending I’m not watching her brother.
Antonio finishes his laps and hauls himself out of the pool, water sluicing down his tattooed shoulders in a way that makes my stomach flip. He’s always been beautiful—I’ve known that since I was old enough to notice such things—butlately, looking at him feels different. Dangerous. Like staring directly into the sun.
He grabs a towel from the chair near the deep end and scrubs it through his dark hair before slinging it around his neck and walking toward us. Every step is unhurried, confident. He moves like a man who knows exactly who he is and what he’s capable of. I’ve seen grown men flinch when Antonio Rossi enters a room, but to me, he’s always just been…Antonio. Part of the family. As constant as the estate itself.
That’s the problem, isn’t it? I’m part of the family too. I have been since before I was born, since Mama came to work here and Antonia Rossi—God rest her soul—declared that the Conti children would be raised alongside her own. I grew up in this house. I learned to swim in this pool. I took my first steps in that garden, or so Mama likes to tell anyone who’ll listen.
Antonio watched me take those steps. He was nearly twelve years old, and I was a baby.
The thought makes my cheeks burn with something that might be embarrassment or might be despair.
“What are you reading, little star?” He drops onto the lounger on my other side, close enough that I can smell chlorine and something else—something warm and masculine that makes my heart stutter.
Little star. He’s called me that for years, ever since I was twelve and he caught me sneaking out to the gardens at midnight to watch a meteor shower. He’d found me lying in the grass, neck craned toward the sky, and instead of dragging me back inside like any reasonable adult would have, he’d laid down beside me and watched too. “You’re like a little star yourself,” he’d said, his voice soft in the darkness. “Small but bright.”
I’d treasured those words for six years. But now, at eighteen, the “little” part stings more than ever.
“Biochemistry,” I manage, grateful my sunglasses hide where my eyes really want to look—at the droplets of water still clinging to his chest, at the way his swim trunks sit low on his hips. “I’m getting a head start before classes begin.”
“Always the overachiever.” He grins, and God, that smile should be illegal. It transforms his face from dangerously handsome to devastatingly so, crinkling the corners of his hazel eyes and revealing a dimple I want to press my thumb into. “You know you don’t have to study every second, right? It’s summer. Your last summer before you leave us for California. You’re allowed to have fun.”
“This is fun for me.”
“Liar.” He reaches over and plucks the textbook from my hands, ignoring my noise of protest as he flips through the pages. His fingers are long and elegant, at odds with the calluses I know mark his palms. “Carbon bonds and molecular structures are not fun,dottoressa.”
The Italian word rolls off his tongue like honey, and I feel heat bloom across my cheeks that has nothing to do with the sun. He’s been calling me that ever since I announced I wanted to be a surgeon—teasing, affectionate, the same way he teases Gabriella about her fashion magazines or Lorenzo about his computers or Luca about his terrible taste in music.
That’s all I am to him. Another younger sibling to look after. Another kid who grew up underfoot.
“Give it back,” I say, reaching for the book, but he holds it just out of range, a playful smirk on his face.
“Come get it.”
I know I shouldn’t. I know that leaning across the space between our loungers will bring me closer to him than is wise, closer than my thundering heart can handle. But I’ve never been able to back down from a challenge—especially not one issued by Antonio Rossi.
I lunge for the book, and he laughs, pulling it further away, and suddenly I’m half-sprawled across his lounger, one hand braced on his shoulder for balance. The contact sends electricity sparking through my nerve endings. His skin is cool from the pool but warming rapidly under my palm, and I can feel the steady beat of his heart beneath my fingertips.
His laughter dies.
For one breathless moment, he just looks at me. Really looks, his hazel eyes searching my face with an expression I can’t quite read. My heart hammers against my ribs so hard I’m certain he must hear it. The world narrows to this single point of contact—my hand on his shoulder, his eyes on mine, the inches of charged air between us.
Does he see me? Finally, after all these years, does he see that I’m not a child anymore?
But then something shifts in his expression. A wall comes down behind his eyes, and he blinks, and the moment shatters like glass.
“Here.” He presses the textbook into my hands, his voice strange. Distant. He’s already standing, already moving away from me. “Don’t study too hard, little star. You’ll give yourself a headache.”
He ruffles my hair as he passes—the same way he’s ruffled it since I was five years old—and heads toward the house without looking back.
I stare after him, the textbook clutched to my chest like armor, and feel something crack inside me.
I love him.
The realization washes over me like a wave, stealing the breath from my lungs. I love Antonio Rossi. Not the childhood crush I’ve been telling myself it is, not the harmless infatuation that I’ll outgrow eventually. This is real and deep and terrifying, and it will never, ever be returned.
Because he will never see me as anything other than little Emilia. Luca’s twin sister. Silvia’s daughter. The little girl who grew up in this house, for God’s sake. I’m family to him—have been since the day I was born—and family isn’t something you fall in love with.
“You okay?” Luca has removed one earbud and is squinting at me. “You look weird.”
