Chapter 26
VALENTINA
He knocked once, as if he were the police or the Grim Reaper or someone who had never, in his entire life, been told to chill out.
And there I was, standing in the middle of my very unpacked apartment, still wearing the shirt I’d slept in, sipping on coffee. Because no, I hadn’t packed. Not a single thing. Not a sock. Not a candle.
Oops.
Not that I was going to apologize for it. He’d told me to be packed. He hadn’t asked. And I didn’t do well with orders before I’d had caffeine or a reason to care.
I opened the door with the mug still in my hand, sipped dramatically from it, and raised one eyebrow. “Morning,” I greeted passively.
He looked around me. Took in the mess—the boxes that didn’t exist, the books still stacked on the shelves, my shoes still scattered in the exact same chaotic corner as yesterday.
His mouth pressed into a line. “You’re not packed.”
“Wow,” I said, “look at those lawyer instincts at work.”
He stepped inside without being invited. “I told you—”
“Yeah. You told me,” I cut in. “You barked some instructions, assumed I’d follow them, and then magically expected results. Not how I operate.”
“So what’s the plan then?”
“Easy,” I said. “You move in here.”
His silence was the loudest thing in the room. “You’re serious.”
“Deadly.”
And we argued. Obviously. Because that was what we did.
He said his place was better suited. I said his place wasn’t mine.
He said I was lazy. I said he was complicated.
He said I was exhausting. I said he’d picked me.
Eventually, he stopped arguing. He just stood in the middle of my apartment with his hands in his pockets, brow drawn like he was debating whether or not murder charges were worth it, and said, “Fine. I’ll stay here.”
Like it physically pained him.
I wanted to say, “Good.” Wanted to roll my eyes or make some kind of snide comment. But instead I just stared at him, because a part of me was shocked he’d actually folded, and a part of me hated how satisfying it felt.
At first I thought he was bluffing. I expected him to return with one sad overnight bag and a stack of legal documents outlining mutually agreed-upon sleeping arrangements and “acceptable volume levels after 10:00 p.m.” But no.
He showed up the next morning with two suitcases and a dry-cleaning bag.
He didn’t ask where to put his things. He just . . . made space.
It wasn’t like the man even had a lot of things—only the basics.
Marco lived like a robot. An expensive, emotionally stunted, hyper-efficient robot who didn’t understand the concept of relaxation.
He woke up at 5:00 a.m. every morning. Not because he had to, just . . . because. For no reason. Like his body had never experienced joy or a soft pillow.
I asked him once—half-asleep, completely annoyed his unnecessarily loud movements had woken me, “Seriously, Marco, why? Who hurt you?”
He just shrugged, tugging on a shirt. “I’ve always woken up early. Since I was a kid.”
“Yeah, well, most kids grow out of that,” I grumbled back into my pillow, not caring if he heard me. “They learn how to appreciate sleep.”
But not Marco. He just left the room quietly. Whatever normal kids did—sleeping in, cartoons, basic human happiness—he’d clearly skipped that part of childhood.
And it showed.
We clashed over everything. The thermostat. The laundry. The way I left my phone charger plugged in. The way he folded towels as if he’d trained in the military and I was disrespecting his homeland by folding mine in thirds.
He didn’t understand why I left half-read books in every room. I didn’t understand why he needed to separate his pens by ink color.
We clashed over the kitchen sink too. Or rather, he stared at it every time I left a plate soaking. I told him it was called “letting it marinate.” He didn’t laugh, just rinsed it himself and dried it with a dish towel as if that would erase the offense.
He hated my rugs. Not that he said it out loud, but I caught him nudging the one in the hallway with his foot like he thought it might crawl away if he didn’t tame it. I asked him what his problem was, and he just said, “Trip hazard.” As if my throw rugs were a landmine.
Mornings were the worst for him. I liked to talk.
I mean, not deep, philosophical stuff, but normal things.
Thoughts. The weather. Why eggs tasted different in my kitchen than at the bodega down the street.
I’d always been like that, ever since I was a kid.
My mother hated it, my sister tolerated it, and Cillian had usually just left the room to avoid it altogether. I didn’t really blame him.
But Marco didn’t say anything. Just sat at the table like a statue drinking black coffee.
Honestly, I didn’t need a response. Talking filled the space. It made me feel less alone, even if I was technically talking to myself. I’d learned early that my own voice was better than silence, and maybe that was why I kept doing it despite Marco’s obvious disdain. Old habits and all that.
Living with Marco was harder than living with Sasha. At least Sasha didn’t mind my things.
Marco did.
He didn’t like that I had two types of toothpaste on the sink—one for mornings, one for nights. He said it was inefficient. I told him he was inefficient for spending five minutes a day pretending not to wince every time he saw my makeup bag unzipped.
He started collecting my hair ties. He found them on doorknobs, on drawer handles, and hanging off the corner of the TV. One day I caught him dropping a handful into a ceramic bowl.
He closed every cabinet I left open. Dramatically. Like maybe if he did it enough, I’d eventually feel ashamed and change. I didn’t. I opened them again the next morning just to grab my cereal and left them that way out of spite.
He stacked my mail. Neatly. In one corner of the counter.
I let it sit there until it towered, just to see if it would bother him.
It did. He added a binder clip and slid it closer to the fridge.
I told him if he touched my mail again, I’d scatter it across the floor and make him read every overdue notice aloud.
He moved my shampoo into the corner of the shower. Aligned the bottles as if we were running a salon. I moved them back. Not because I cared, but because I knew he did.
It was constant. This quiet war. This silent competition of control in my own apartment.
It wasn’t bad. Not really. It was just . . . living with someone who didn’t fit. Not because he was wrong for the space, but because he treated it like he was renting it from the universe and couldn’t wait to give the keys back.
He never fully unpacked, even though he made room for a few of his things. That was the part that got to me. His bags stayed by the door for days. Like he didn’t trust the floor to hold him. Like any second now he’d pick his bags up, dust off the quiet, and slip out without needing to say goodbye.
He always looked ready to leave.
I couldn’t stop wondering if this was what it felt like from the other side. To live next to someone who never really arrived. To watch them move around your home like it was a hotel room. To know they could leave and probably would, and you were just a stop on the way to whatever came next.
I wanted to be angry. Wanted to yell at him for how present he wasn’t.
For how quiet he could be in the loudest moments.
But I couldn’t be angry. I’d been like that for years.
With Isa. Lucia. With my mom, before she got sick.
With every man I’d ever called temporary even when I wanted them to stay.
I’d made sure nobody got too used to me, because God forbid they expected something I couldn’t give.
But the thing about Marco was that he never left, even if he looked like he wanted to.
He just . . . stayed.
Silently. Awkwardly. Uncomfortably.
It was like he didn’t know how to be a part of something without standing slightly to the side of it.
But he stayed, and I didn’t know what to do with that, because for the first time, I wasn’t the one waiting to leave.
I was the one watching the door, waiting for it to open and close again.
And when it didn’t—when he kept coming back, when his shoes stayed lined up by the wall and his toothbrush stayed beside mine—I had to admit, I didn’t hate it.
I didn’t like it either. Not fully. Not yet.
But it made me think. Made me wonder what life would look like if I’d stuck around more. If I hadn’t made myself small enough to slip through the cracks. If I’d let people expect things from me without resenting them for it.
That was in the back of my head for the rest of the week. And maybe because of that, I started to notice more things about Marco.
Small things, like the way he moved. There was this weird stiffness in his left side. His shoulder, mostly—sometimes his leg. It wasn’t huge. You wouldn’t clock it unless you were watching him carry a grocery bag or bend down to pick something up—which, apparently, I was doing now.
Watching him.
It was subtle, but it was there. The way he winced slightly when he twisted too far. The way he leaned into his right leg just a tad more, as if he didn’t trust the left to hold all of him.
I didn’t ask at first, because it felt .
. . intimate. And if there was one thing Marco and I were violently allergic to, it was anything that felt like caring on purpose.
But one morning, while he was stretching his neck like someone who’d spent the night fighting demons on the couch, I said, “You know, Sasha would tell you to run it out.”
He glanced at me, blinking as if I’d just suggested we take up ballet together.
He just shook his head. “No.”
“No, you’re not stretching?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Or no, you’re not listening to Sasha?”
“No, I’m not running.” He said it fast, like he needed to shut it down before I could ask why.
So I didn’t.