Relief hits so hard it almost buckles my knees. “Okay.”
I’ll circle back for it before dark. She doesn’t need to know that right now.
“And you do exactly what I say.”
“Okay.”
“And if I tell you to get out, you get out.”
“Yes.”
She studies my face for a long second. I don’t know what she sees there. Regret, maybe. Desperation. The truth, finally.
“Well?” she says, opening the door fully. “You want to talk, or do you want to stand out here until one of us freezes to death?”
For a second, I can’t move. She’s standing there making space for me after every reason in the world not to, and the mercy of it is so sharp it feels like pain.
Then I walk, every step measured, like one wrong move could send her reaching for the door again. I pass the gun where she left it and cross into the house.
Natalia watches me the whole time, wary and unsmiling.
The lock clicks behind me.
30
NATALIA
The beach houseswallows us in silence.
Luca stops a few feet inside the house and waits, hands empty, shoulders tight beneath his jacket. For a second, all I can think is that he is back in my house, and the sight of him there feels more right than it should. Which is its own kind of problem.
I turn away first, because standing here staring at each other like two idiots is not actually a plan, and because the fact that I let him inside does not magically mean I know what happens next.
“You can sit,” I say, nodding toward the couch. “If you want.”
He takes the far end of the couch, leaving the whole middle cushion empty between us. I sit at the other end and let the distance stay there.
A draft pushes through the house, and I suppress a shiver. Luca doesn’t say anything, just reaches behind him and pulls the throw blanket off the back of the couch. Leans across the gap between us just far enough to drape it over my shoulders, hisfingers brushing my collarbone for less than a second before he pulls back to his side of the cushion.
The touch is barely there. My skin registers it anyway, fast and disloyal, a spark I refuse to react to.
Eventually I break the silence. “So.”
He looks at me, waiting.
“You said I might not be safe here alone. What exactly does that mean?”
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, eyes on the coffee table. “Honestly? I don’t know.”
I stare at him. “That’s comforting.”
“I know, I’m sorry.” His mouth tightens. “Now that my brother and my uncle both know the situation’s gotten complicated, it’s only a matter of time until my dad hears. He doesn’t have the full picture yet. When he gets it—” He stops. “I don’t know how he’s going to react.”
The refrigerator kicks on with its low, familiar hum, and out beyond the windows the waves do their endless drag and retreat. A gust catches the loose kitchen pane, the one I reported twice to nobody who cared, and it shivers in its frame with that thin, irritating rattle I’ve been living with for months.
I turn back to Luca. “So what are you going to do about it?”
I watch him choose his words the way you’d pick your way across broken glass.
