But then he stops. Actuallystops, mid-breath, and I watch the realization crawl across his face in real time.
Because even Jino—optimistic, solution-oriented, let's-just-make-it-work Jino—finally sees what I've been staring at all night.
A house halfway between here and there doesn't solve a goddamn thing.
Even if we found the perfect location, some compromise coordinates on a map where drive times balance out mathematically, it doesn't address the fundamental impossibility of what we're talking about.
The entire arrangement becomescomplicated—that special kind of complicated that corrodes everything it touches. Nothing stays contained. Nothing runs smoothly. It all requires constant orchestration, endless negotiation, perpetual management.
I can already picture it with painful clarity: splitting days of the week like divorced parents with a custody agreement, arguments erupting over whose turn it is and how much time each person gets, resentment building every time someone feels shortchanged. Schedules becoming weapons. Proximity becoming currency. The whole delicate dynamic we'd need to maintain—the precise balance of power and submission, dominance and care—reduced to a logistical nightmare of calendars and compromises.
It's a recipe designed specifically for failure.
No amount of careful planning or good intentions will overcome the basic mathematics of distance and human nature.
And that sucks.
Because I'm falling for Emmaleen Rourke.
No. I fell for this woman that first day. When she babbled about PowerPoints and Starbucks.
When she stood in those red shoes—too big on her feet, absurd and beautiful—alphabetizing invoices like her life depended on perfect order.
When she forced herself behind the wheel of my Lamborghini, hands shaking, determined not to let fear win.
Every single time I pushed, she pushed back harder. She never just survived my tests—she escalated them.
That's when she stopped being a project and became something I couldn't afford to lose.
And she writes mepoetry—actual fucking poetry.
Maybe I wasn't down on one knee planning a wedding or picking out china patterns. But somewhere along the way, without consciously deciding it, I started seeing her as a permanent fixture.
Not just in my bed or at my table, but woven into the fabric of whatever life I was building here in Riverview. Long-term. Years kind of long-term. The kind where you stop imagining scenarios that don't include someone.
And now—now I'm standing here watching that entire imagined future crumble into ash and dust.
Because suddenly, impossibly, I'mobsolete.
Replaced before I even realized I was competing.
Rendered irrelevant by someone who apparently understands exactly what she needs in ways I never even tried to comprehend.
And the worst part—the absolute worst, most fucked-up part of this entire catastrophic situation?
Rico fucking LaRiccia is the one who did this to me.
Even dead, buried in an unmarked grave in Bucks County, Rico LaRiccia is still ruining my fucking life.
He's the reason Emmaleen can't come home.
He's the reason Lorcan was here in the first place.
He's all nine circles of my own personal Hell.
I walk away.
"Giovanni—where the hell are you going?"
