Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78155 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 391(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Nothing.
I sighed and set it down, and the moment I looked up, I stilled.
Luca was sitting in the armchair in the dark—like a shadow of the night.
“Oh Jesus, you scared me.”
He rose to his feet and walked toward me, and I could tell there was something different about him. Nothing overt like a glare, but something internal. His eyes flicked past me to the door and then back to me.
Maybe I’d drunk too much, but all I could do was stare at him.
“This is the part where you explain what the fuck is going on.”
There was a fog in my mind, a storm of clouds that circled my head and suppressed my ability to think. In that moment, all I felt was confusion. “Explain what? Dominic—”
“We agreed that it’s just the two of us,” he snapped. “I see his name on your phone all the time, and I gave you the benefit of the doubt. But now I see you’re going out with him and he’s calling you beautiful—”
“Whoa, Luca—”
“I told you I’m not good at this.” Now, his voice rose. He was actually angry, a version of him I’d never seen before. “You’re mine. How can I be any fucking clearer? A committed fucking relationship. You and me. That’s it. I don’t want anyone else in my mind, my bed, or my heart. I thought you felt the same way.”
“I do.”
“This is not casual. This is fucking real, alright?”
I almost didn’t want to interrupt him because everything he said gave me a rush. That maybe I wasn’t the only person slipping under the haze. That maybe he felt all the heavy and complicated shit I felt too.
He raised his voice louder, the volume piercing the walls into the apartments of my neighbors. “Then are you in this with me or not?”
“Luca…” My hands moved to his arms, and I gently applied pressure in an attempt to calm him. But he breathed hard like he’d run all the way across Paris to get here. My hand moved to his chest next as I came closer. If he’d been anyone else, I’d probably have a different reaction, but I understood that Luca had never ventured into domesticity before and simply didn’t understand how to conduct himself. How to do anything else but yell and make demands like I was in the gangs he policed. “He’s just a friend.”
He grabbed my wrists and gently pulled me off him, but he trembled like it took a bout of strength not to handle me aggressively. “Don’t insult me.”
“Luca, he’s gay. We met working together at Septime and kept in touch.”
He paused as his eyes hardened. The anger was still packed inside, but it slowly started to deflate.
Maybe I was just blinded by the way he made my heart ache, but I gave him a free pass. I would have held another guy to a higher standard, but with Luca, I just pitied him. I understood that I was really his first relationship and he didn’t know how to handle it. “You’re the only man I want.”
He was quiet for a while, processing the situation from a different perspective. “When I saw his name on your phone…I thought he was some guy you were seeing before me, and he couldn’t take no for an answer.”
At least he didn’t go through my phone.
“I tried not to let it bother me.”
I could tell it bothered him a lot. “I wish you’d just asked me.”
“I’m trying really hard not to fuck this up.” His eyes were elsewhere as he spoke. “And I ended up fucking it up anyway.”
“You did not fuck it up, Luca.”
He still wouldn’t look at me. “When you said you were going out, I wondered if he was who you were going out with, but I didn’t want to ask. But then I also assumed that was the case, and I came here wondering what I would see… I should have just called Bastien.”
“No, you should have called me.”
His eyes remained on the window, the curtains still open. “I apologize.” His eyes dropped, the shame closing over his face like the curtains that should be drawn across the window.
I felt no anger whatsoever toward him. “It’s okay, Luca.”
He shook his head slightly, like he wouldn’t forgive himself so easily. “It’s late.” He turned to the door and stepped around me. “I should go.”
I grabbed him by the arm and tugged him back toward me. “No.” I was already in my highest pair of heels, so I could kiss him so much easier. I hooked my arm around his neck, and I pulled him close. He was reluctant and uncooperative until I said, “I want you to stay.” I pulled away slightly to look at him, to see the way he slowly shed his self-loathing as he looked at me. “I’ve missed you…so fucking much.” Every day since we’d been apart. And I felt like I could say that out loud, say just about everything, because he seemed to be as deeply invested in this as I was.