I’m glad you came back at all.
For one reckless moment I wanted to close the distance between us regardless of who might see. Then reality returned all at once: federation offices, my father’s careful voice over the phone, every invisible boundary waiting for me beyond Milan.
I swallowed hard.
“So am I,” I admitted.
Warmth crossed his face so quickly I had to look away before the sight damaged whatever fragile composure I still possessed.
Ahead of us, Ethan called loudly, “Okay, if you two stare any harder we’re gonna need emotional supervision.”
“Shut up, Ethan,” Brooke said with a groan.
Dean laughed under his breath, and the familiarity of that sound hit unexpectedly hard because my mind had already begun imagining impossible things around it: hearing it across a kitchen, across years, across a life no longer built around fear.
Nearby, Donna squeezed Mila’s hand before reluctantly stepping back. “Tonight?”
Mila met her eyes directly. “Yes.”
The ease of it stunned me every time. There was no hesitation, no coded language, no instinctive retreat from honesty.
I wanted that more than I knew how to admit aloud.
Dean looked at me again then, and I realized with painful certainty that he would let me walk away permanently if he believed staying beside him would destroy my life.
That knowledge lodged somewhere beneath my ribs and stayed there.
“We have practice tomorrow morning,” I said eventually because practical details felt safer than anything else available to me.
“Yeah.”
Neither of us moved.
Then Noah shouted from several yards ahead, “If we leave Ethan unsupervised any longer, he’s absolutely marrying an Italian stranger.”
“I deserve romance!” Ethan yelled back.
Mila rolled her eyes and headed toward the entrance. I followed automatically, resisting the urge to look over my shoulder because I already knew Dean would still be standing there watching me leave.
The laughter and movement from the day faded behind us, andwe stood together, waiting for the elevator. Mila glanced at me but said nothing.
The elevator ride passed in silence. Mila waited until we reached our floor before speaking.
“You understand what today really was, yes?”
I did. The hours with Dean and the others had not been about sightseeing or distraction, but proof that another version of life existed beyond the narrow one I had spent years forcing myself to accept.
Mila squeezed my arm once before disappearing into her room.
I stood alone in the corridor afterward longer than necessary because the thought of returning to my room suddenly filled me with a bleakness I could not ignore anymore. Hours earlier I could still pretend the life I wanted belonged entirely to fantasy.
Now I had walked through it.
I unlocked my door and stepped inside. My reflection stared back at me from the mirror across the room: same face, same posture, same carefully maintained composure.
Yet none of it fit quite the same anymore.
Images from the afternoon kept returning whether I invited them or not. Donna holding Mila’s hand openly in the middle of Milan. Pride flags rippling over crowded streets. Dean beside me through all of it, never asking me to become anybody except myself.
