"Progress." I kissed him back. "But I really do need to go home today. Check my mail, water my plants, prove my apartment still exists."
"What if I come with you?"
The offer surprised me. "You want to come to my tiny Brooklyn studio?"
"I want to come to where you live. Where you go when you're not here." He brushed hair back from my forehead. "I want to know all of you. Not just the version that exists in my penthouse."
Something about that made my chest ache. The persona would never have cared about my apartment or my life outside his control. But Luca—the real Luca—wanted to know me. All of me.
"Okay," I said. "Come with me. But don't judge the size or the neighborhood or the fact that you can hear my neighbors through the walls."
"I would never judge your apartment." He paused. "I might judge your neighbors if they're too loud."
I laughed despite myself. "Deal."
My apartment looked smaller than I remembered with Luca in it.
He stood in the center of my studio, taking in the cramped space, the futon that served as both couch and bed, the makeshift desk covered in research and coffee-stained notebooks. Everything I owned fit in this one room and probably cost less than one piece of furniture in his penthouse.
"This is cozy," he said finally.
"You don't have to be polite. It's tiny."
"It's yours. That makes it important." He moved to the bookshelves I'd constructed from cinder blocks and boards. "And you have good taste in books."
He wasn't wrong about that. My limited money went to two things: food and books. The shelves were packed with everything from literary fiction to journalism textbooks to true crime.
"This is where you were the night I showed up," Luca said, looking around. "When I threatened you. This is the kitchen counter I backed you against."
The memory sat heavy between us. That night felt like a lifetime ago even though it had only been two months. I'd been terrified, furious, trapped. Now I was standing in the same apartment with the same man and feeling completely different things.
"Does it bother you?" I asked. "Being here? Where it started?"
"Yes and no. I hate what I did. How I started this. But also—" He turned to face me. "I'm grateful you gave me the chance to make it into something different."
I moved closer. "I'm still figuring out how to reconcile those two things. The beginning and now."
"Me too. But I think we're doing okay." He caught my hand. "We're here together and you chose it. That matters."
We spent the afternoon at my apartment. I caught up on mail—mostly bills and junk. Watered the plants on the fire escape. Did laundry in the building's basement machines while Luca insisted on helping even though I kept telling him he didn't need to.
"I want to," he said, feeding quarters into the ancient washing machine. "This is part of your life. I want to be part of all of it."
Around three we got hungry and ordered food from the bodega on the corner. I introduced Luca to the concept of a bodega sandwich and he looked at it with deep suspicion before taking a bite.
"Okay, this is actually good," he admitted.
"Bodega sandwiches are a New York staple. You can't live here and not appreciate them."
"I've been living here for over a decade and somehow avoided them."
"That's because you live in a Manhattan penthouse and eat at expensive restaurants. This is how normal people eat."
We sat on my futon eating sandwiches and it felt more intimate than any fancy dinner. Luca fit into my space somehow, even though he was completely out of place. He asked about my neighbors, about the building, about the neighborhood. Actually cared about the details of my life beyond the parts that affected him.
Around five, I opened my laptop and drafted the email to Agent Reeves.
Agent Reeves,
