Bodhi huffed a quiet laugh and nudged my shoulder with his nose.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “We can switch to something lighter. Like what coffee you want. Or how good you look naked.”
I smiled, the last of the tension easing out of me, and rolled onto my side until we were nose to nose. I met his gaze, those sapphire eyes steady and kind.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “For not looking at me like I’m fragile.”
Bodhi didn’t hesitate.
“You’re not,” he said simply.
And for the first time in a long while, I believed it.
By our third night in Milan, the pain in my hip had reached a fever pitch.
After my heart-to-heart with Bodhi, we’d spent the day with Riff and Ghost, wandering the city and stuffing ourselves with pasta and arancini. We toured the museums in Castello Sforzesco, stood in quiet awe before Da Vinci’s Last Supper at the Basilica di Santa Maria delle Grazie, and watched the sun bleed orange and gold across the skyline from the top of the cathedral.
It had been a good day.
It had also involved a fuckload of walking.
Normally, I wouldn’t have thought twice about being on my feet all day. But after back-to-back shows, nights folded into acramped tour bus bunk, and an impromptu ballet performance on the stage of Milan’s opera house, my hip was screaming for mercy. And because I am, at my core, a stubborn prick, I ignored it completely.
By the time we reached the cathedral steps, I was practically dragging myself upward. There was a lift, sure, but the queue stretched on forever, and when Mick suggested taking the stairs instead, I agreed without hesitation. Pride is a hell of a drug, and I was an addict, after all.
Bodhi asked me more than once if my hip was okay. Every time, I smiled and lied through my teeth. I could’ve told him the truth. But I knew if I did, he’d drop everything and march me straight back to the hotel without a second thought.
I didn’t want to be the reason he missed out. And after the third time he asked, I snapped at him.
He didn’t bring it up again, and what should’ve been a romantic sunset view was instead spent with guilt curling tight in my chest, sitting heavier than the pain I was hiding.
Everything was forgiven later that night, after I blew him in the shower.
On our final day off, Thump decided he wanted to take a pizza-making class. The rest of the band agreed it sounded like fun, and Clara approved on the basis that it would look good on social media. As much as it was Thump’s idea, he was hopeless with logistics, so the actual planning fell to Clara.
Even last-minute, she was a force of nature. She booked out a popular family-run restaurant in the Navigli district, and thanks to a generous payout from the boys, we had the place to ourselves. No fans. No phones. Just dough, sauce, and an obscene amount of cheese.
I’d assumed it would just be the band, and I’d resigned myself to a quiet night in with room service and my heat pads.
Then Bodhi knocked on my door an hour before they were due to leave, where he found me in pyjamas.
“Get your ass dressed,” he’d said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Of course you’re coming. You’re part of Noctis, Iggy. Same as the rest of us.”
His words hit harder than I expected.
It had been a long time since I’d truly felt like I belonged anywhere. My family had fractured under my parents’ ambition and neglect. School had never fit. Even the Royal Ballet, a place I’d thought was home, had slipped through my fingers far too quickly. So hearing Bodhi say that, knowing he meant it, knowing it wasn’t just because we’d recently started fucking, filled a hollow place inside my chest I hadn’t even realised was empty.
And for a moment, despite the pain, despite everything, I felt... seen.
“Iguana, pass me the mozzarella!”
Thump’s voice yanked me back to the present. I looked up to find him pointing dramatically at the bowl of cheese in front of me.
“Iguana?” Mick chuckled, spreading marinara over his dough with surgical precision.
“Yeah,” Thump said, entirely unapologetic. “I’m trying out new nicknames.”
He grinned when I slid the bowl across to him. Not that he needed it. His pizza was already more cheese than anything else, but who was I to judge a man living his truth?
