"Maybe. But that's her fucking choice to make, not yours."
Silence.
The fire pops.
"There was a moment," I say quietly. "At the gala. We danced and I almost—" I stop. "I almost told her."
Rafael goes completely still. "What stopped you?"
"The O'Rourkes." I say it flatly. "Killian's men came through the doors about thirty seconds later."
He stares at me for a long moment. Then he lets out a breath that sounds like it was punched out of him. "Fucking hell, Enzo."
"Yeah."
He's quiet for a moment. Then: "And now you're here. With her. Alone. And you're still not telling her."
I don't answer.
"What the fuck are you waiting for?" He says it without heat, just tiredness, just genuine bafflement. "Seriously. What is it going to take?"
I don't have an answer for that either.
That's the thing I can't tell him, the thing I can't even fully admit to myself at midnight with the fire dying and her somewhere upstairs. It's not Matteo. It's not her deserving better. It's not my hands or my history.
It's that I'm terrified.
That if I cross this line and she looks at me the way I think she might and I let myself have it, let myself have her, and then lose it?—
I don't know what will be left of me after that.
I press my fist harder into the couch cushion until the ache travels all the way up my arm.
"Get some sleep, Rafe."
He looks at me for a long moment with something like pity in his face, which I like even less than his usual smirk.
Then he nods, standing, picking up his bag.
"She's not going to wait forever," he says quietly.
He heads for the stairs and I stay where I am, alone in the dark with the dying fire and my hands that still remember what her face felt like.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ican't sleep.
I've been staring at the ceiling for an hour, maybe more, listening to the cabin settle around me and trying to convince my body that it's tired even though every nerve ending I have is still firing from the day of being in the same small space as Enzo Bianchi and slowly losing my mind.
The sheets are too warm. Then too cold. The pillow is wrong. The darkness is too quiet.
I give up.
I sit up, push my hair back, and look down at what Rafael packed for me. A tiny, a thin-strapped cotton nightdress that barely reaches mid-thigh, soft and pale and completely impractical for a woman trying to convince herself she feels nothing. I put it on anyway because it's either this or sleep in Enzo's shirt again anddoing that is not something my sanity can survive another night of.
I pad barefoot to the door, open it quietly, and head downstairs.
The cabin is dark except for the living room, where a single lamp burns low, casting everything in amber. Rafael's door is closed upstairs. The fire has burned down to nothing.
