"I know."
"I'm going in." A pause, deliberate. "You could join me. If you wanted."
Every functioning cell in my brain lines up to say no. Matteo's face appears in my head. Rafael's voice. The conversation on the porch this morning and every reason I've been cataloguing for four years.
"Yeah," I say.
She blinks.
Actually blinks, like she's not sure she heard correctly.
"Yeah?"
"Give me five minutes."
She stares at me for one more second, her expression changes so quickly that she couldn’t hide it before she turns and heads back down the hall.
I stand at the bottom of the stairs alone.
Yeah.
What the hell is wrong with me.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Five minutes into the jacuzzi and I already know inviting him was a mistake.
Not because it's bad. Because it's exactly as unbearable as I should have known it would be, sitting three feet across from Enzo Bianchi in steaming water with nothing between us except the jets running low and whatever this thing is that's been pulling tighter and tighter since the other night.
I stare at the hills beyond the tree line and try to look like I'm relaxed.
I'm not relaxed. I'm acutely, painfully aware of every single inch of him across from me, the width of his shoulders above the waterline, the way the steam catches on his jaw, the column of his throat when he tips his head back slightly. His arms are resting on the edge of the jacuzzi and the water runs down his forearms and I am not thinking about those forearms.
I invited him because I was certain he'd say no.
That was the plan. Ask, get rejected, at least feel like I tried to be normal about this, like I'm capable of sitting in the same space as him without combusting. He was supposed to say no and I was supposed to come out here alone and have twenty minutes of peace and quiet and cold air on my face.
He said yes.
I don't know what to do with that. I've been sitting here for five minutes trying to figure out what to do with that and I still have nothing.
"This is weird," I say, because apparently I've run out of ways to stay quiet.
He looks at me. "What is?"
"This. Us. Sitting here and pretending."
"We're pretending?" He raises his brow.
"Yeah, you know? That nothing happened." I keep my voice easy, like this is a casual observation, like my pulse isn't doing something embarrassing. "Between us. Years ago. We've never actually talked about it."
Something shifts in his expression, subtle and controlled, the way everything about him is subtle and controlled.
"No," he says. "We haven't."
"I've always wondered." I look at the water instead of him, at the way the jets move the surface in slow patterns. "Do you remember that night on the porch? As clearly as I do?"
He goes very still.
