She’d met “Johnny”. She’d seen the way he watched me across the bar that afternoon at the fish shack, the way his hand found the small of my back when we left. Ronnie doesn’t miss things like that. But she also doesn’t push when I shut a door, and I shut it hard enough that she let it go.
I’m not ready to tell her I lost my virginity to the man staying in my house. She’d have questions. I can’t share the answers.
I kick off my sandals inside the front door, dropping my purse on the catch-all table.
My body warms, a completely different kind of buzz starting up low in my belly. I left Luca here, sketching on the couch, a lazy smile on his face. The memory of our afternoon, of his hands and his mouth, is a vivid, electric thing. I’m sore, exhausted, but my mind immediately leaps to the possibility of a repeat performance.
Get a grip, Natalia. You can’t get addicted after one time.
But the living room is empty. The couch holds nothing but a discarded blanket. A flicker of disappointment, sharp and unwelcome, cuts through me. I find him in the guest room, still shirtless, hunched over his sketchbook on the bed.
The lamp on the nightstand throws his shadow long across the wall, catching the planes of his face, the hard line of his shoulders. He doesn’t look up when I lean against the doorframe.
“Hey. There you are.”
Nothing. His pencil moves in short, deliberate strokes, and I watch the muscles in his forearm flex with each one. I’ve seen him draw before, loose and easy. This isn’t that. His grip on the pencil is white-knuckled. His jaw could cut glass.
I cross the room and sit beside him. He still doesn’t acknowledge me, so I look at the page instead.
A man’s face stares back. Older. Handsome in a severe way, with deep-set eyes and a mouth that looks like it’s never once been uncertain. There’s something in the bone structure that reminds me of Luca, the same broad forehead, but this face is harder.Colder. The kind of face you’d see across a negotiation table and know immediately that you’d already lost.
“Who is he?”
“My uncle.” His voice is rougher than usual. The words seem dragged out of someplace deep.
I look at the drawing again. The man stares back with eyes that could audit your soul and find it lacking.
“He looks intense.”
A humorless breath leaves him. Not quite a laugh.
“Yeah.”
I wait, hoping he will offer more. He doesn’t.
The silence stretches. I can hear the ocean outside, the scratch of the pencil, my own heartbeat. There’s a part of me that wants to reach for the easy thing, to tell him about Ronnie, about the bar, about nothing. But that would be pretending not to feel what is sitting in the room with us.
“You’re really talented, Luca.”
That gets me a look, finally. A real one this time. Not soft, exactly, but present.
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
His mouth shifts almost imperceptibly. “I used to draw a lot.”
I turn toward him a little more. “You remember that too?”
He nods. “I’ve been drawing since high school. Never showed anyone.” He pauses. “You’re the first.”
“Me?” The word is a breath. My pulse stutters. He’s showing me a part of himself he’s kept hidden his whole life. “That’s… Thank you, Luca.”
His gaze slides away, finding a point in the middle distance. I can almost see the gears turning in his head, the memories slotting into place, faster and faster now. But they don’t seem to be bringing him peace.
“Kept it secret,” he says, his voice flat. “It wasn’t… encouraged. My family has other priorities.”
“That sounds ominous.” I try for a light laugh, but it catches in my throat. Something is wrong. This isn’t just a new memory. This is a shift in the very ground beneath my feet.
