“I’m fine.” The lie tastes like ash on my tongue. “Just hot.”
“There’s a pool right there.”
“I don’t feel like swimming.”
He shrugs and puts his earbud back in, dismissing my mood with the ease of someone who’s known me his whole life and learned not to push. Gabriella has abandoned her magazine to wade in the shallow end, and through the glass doors, I can see Antonio disappearing into the house.
I’m leaving for California in three weeks. Medical school, across the country, where I won’t have to see him every day and pretend my heart isn’t splintering. Where I won’t have to watch him date women—real women, grown women, women he actually sees—and smile like it doesn’t destroy me.
Maybe distance will cure me. Maybe four years and three thousand miles will be enough to kill whatever this feeling is.
It has to be.
Because staying here, watching him live his life as if I’m invisible, as if I’m still the little girl who used to beg him to push her on the swings—I can’t do it. I won’t survive it.
The sun beats down on my shoulders as I stare at the space where he stood, memorizing the phantom warmth of his skin beneath my palm, the way his eyes had looked in that single, suspended moment before reality crashed back in.
He’d looked at me like he was seeing someone new. Someone unexpected.
But then he’d ruffled my hair and called me little star and walked away, and I’d understood with brutal clarity that whatever I’d seen—or thought I’d seen—didn’t matter. Antonio Rossi has known me since I was in diapers. No single moment is going to erase eighteen years of viewing me as a child.
I’ll go to California, and I’ll stay there. I’ll build a life so far from this place that maybe, eventually, I’ll forget what it feels like to love someone who will never love me back. The California sun will bleach out the memory of his smile. The Pacific Ocean will wash away the sound of his voice calling me little star.
And when I finally come home—years from now, when I’m someone different, someone whole—I’ll look at Antonio Rossi and feel nothing at all.
That’s the plan, anyway.
But plans have a way of falling apart…
I startle awake, my eyes snapping open even as the echo of that long-ago summer whispers in my mind. Christ, that was eight years ago, but it still feels like yesterday—the memory is so vivid. I suppose that was the beginning of this unrequited love.
A groan snaps me out of my thoughts, and I turn to find Antonio awake, pale and sweaty, clearly in pain.
Shit.
I jump up and rush to him, placing a hand on his forehead. Holy shit, he’s burning up. I pull back the covers to check the wound and notice a little crimson on the bandages. "Jesus, Antonio, why didn't you wake me?"
“Y-you looked t-tired. D-didn’t wanna wake you,” he hisses through clenched teeth.
“I’ll up your painkiller dosage and then change your bandage,” I tell him as I do it. Air rushes out of his lungs with a heavy sigh when I give him the meds, and he sinks back into the covers, quiet as I change his dressing. I grab a wet towel from his en suite and walk back into his room, laying it on his burning forehead. “It’s just like you to get shot while your family doctor is on vacation.”
“Maybe I wanted to see you in action, Dr. Conti,” he drawls.
My breath hitches at his words, and when I lift my eyes to his, I feel something move in my chest. His eyes are a little loopy, and he looks almost like he’s drunk. I know I should not take to heart the words from a man running a fever and high on pain meds, but I can’t help it.
“So, what’s your verdict?”
“That you look so goddamned sexy in scrubs and acting all bossy.”
I bite my lip, trying and failing to talk myself out of falling back in love with this man. “And what did you find sexy about the woman back at the bar? You were all over her that night."
"What woman?"
Stop. Change topic. Let it go!
“At Matteo’s wedding,” I say despite myself. “You were flirting with her.”
His brows furrow in confusion before he grins, the smile a little crooked. “Oh her? I wasn’t flirting,” he slurs. “I was trying to send her away. I didn’t want anyone’s attention on me but yours,dottoressa. You looked so damn beautiful that night. In that blue dress. I…I wanted to walk up to you and…”
