“I don’t mean to.”
He sets his glass aside and turns to face me.
“Come here.” He pulls me gently into his lap, settling back against the cushioned bench so that I’m straddling him sideways.
One of his arms wraps around my waist, like muscle memory, and the boat gently rocks beneath us. The skipper, tactfully, turns his back to give us privacy.
“Stop thinking about tomorrow,” Gabriel says quietly against my temple. “Right now, you’re here with me, and that’s enough.”
It shouldn’t undo me, but it does. I instinctively press my lips to his, slow at first, but then his hand slides to the small of myback and tightens. His mouth deepens against mine, like he’s memorizing me too.
My fingers curl into the collar of his linen shirt as the world narrows around us. When we finally break apart, we rest our foreheads together.
“You taste like wine and pasta,” he murmurs.
I snort and he smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes this time, and I can’t shake the feeling that we’re suspended in something fragile—beautiful, but temporary—and he’s just as aware of it as I am.
TWENTY-FIVE
GABRIEL | FLORENCE
I wakeup to the rhythmic sound of the ocean through the open balcony doors. Zalea is on her back next to me, quietly staring up at the ceiling deep in thought. Even without touching her, I can feel the stress humming off her skin, and I know it’s because today’s the day she promised to answer my question.
She’s been coming completely undone over it since she made that promise, and a part of me almost wants to take it back and pretend I don’t need to know.
But I do.
Not just for me, but for her too.
Whatever this is, she can’t keep carrying it alone. And I can’t keep being the villain in a story I don’t fully understand, especially when her brother is convinced I ruined her life.
But this isn’t how I imagined our last morning in Positano. This weekend was supposed to be a stress-free, laidback time with just the two of us. When I started researching PCOS, every article said that reducing stress was key to lowering hormonal dysfunction, so that’s what I’ve been trying to do for her.
In just this week alone, I bought her a home so she’d never have to worry about money piling up in some hotel. I put it in her name so she’d never doubt where she stood with me. I plannedthis trip down to the smallest detail—a luxury resort, shopping, Vespa rides, pasta-making classes, a sunset cruise.
And yet somehow I’ve only made her more anxious.
I sit up and lean against the headboard. “You okay over there?”
Zalea turns her head toward me, and she looks almost too calm now.
“Want to go swimming?” she asks.
I arch a brow. “Swimming? Right now?”
She nods. “We used to do morning swims before we hit the waves.”
A slow grin pulls at my mouth. Some habits don’t die. “Let’s do it.”
Forty minutes later,we’re far enough from shore that the world feels small and distant. Zalea flips onto her back and floats, arms loose at her sides, staring at the clouds in the sky. It reminds me of a game we used to play as kids, lying in the grassy fields of Saltwater Springs and calling out the shapes the clouds would form above us.
“See anything interesting up there?” I ask, drifting beside her.
She points to a cloud above us shaped like a cat. “Banana.”
I bite back a laugh, quickly reminded that she was never good at this game.
I lace my fingers through hers and we float in comfortable silence, the water rocking us. For a moment, everything feels peaceful. The calm before the storm.
