Chapter 27
MARCO
Iwoke up pissed off.
Or maybe “annoyed” was the better word.
The tight pull, the dull ache that hadn’t been this bad in months, reminded me exactly why Dr. Carter lectured me about posture, sleeping positions, and whatever else she felt like nagging about. I’d been avoiding those calls and emails too.
Mornings always dragged me back. Every tight muscle, every sore joint, reminded me of being fourteen again—running mile after mile with Gerard in the car behind me, yelling.
My chest would burn from the cold air he forced me to run through every morning.
It didn't matter if it was freezing or raining, dark or bright—he’d wake me up at five sharp, standing in the doorway with his arms crossed.
“Get up, Marco. Discipline is earned,” he’d say, like it was something profound rather than just another stupid command from a man who couldn’t even earn his own respect.
My shoes had never fit right. Gerard wouldn’t buy new ones until my toes were bleeding through holes, and even then he’d complain about the cost. My shirts hung loose, sleeves too short, my body never quite filling out the way he thought a “real man” should.
But still, he pushed. He made me run until my lungs felt like fire, my legs shaking, weak.
He’d push until my vision blurred and I tasted blood and bile, bent over and sick, knowing he wouldn’t comfort me or help me back inside.
He’d just wait, disgusted that I wasn’t strong enough yet.
Dr. Carter kept pushing therapy. She said running might help—something about exercise clearing my head.
But the truth was, I hated running. The moment my feet hit the pavement every miserable memory surged back.
Gerard’s disappointment, his dark stare, his voice always telling me I wasn't enough, that weakness was something to run away from—literally.
That’s why I avoided her calls. That’s why I avoided everything. Because mornings still felt exactly like that—bitter, exhausting, and something I’d never outrun, no matter how many years passed or how far away I got.
I glanced at the bedroom door. It was still closed.
Valentina was probably still asleep, comfortable as hell in my bed, oblivious to the fact I was out here questioning my entire decision-making process.
She wasn’t the problem—not really—just the consequence of my own choices.
Loud, stubborn, and reckless as she was, this was on me.
I rolled my shoulder again, trying to loosen the tightness, but I knew damn well the ache wasn’t entirely from the couch. No—the tension had settled deeper, and it had a name that started with “V.”
It had been like this at her place too.
Her place. Now that was an experience.
She’d filled that space with so much noise—arguing over pointless TV shows, eating cereal at midnight, singing badly in the shower—yet somehow made it comfortable.
But now she was here, and I could finally get my life back in order.
I moved her purse to the side to work while I had my morning coffee.
It was sitting right in the middle of the counter, wide-open.
Leopard-print. She’d dropped it there the second we walked in last night and hadn’t touched it again.
I didn’t look inside; I just moved it far enough to open my laptop and ignored the shade of lipstick smudged across the zipper.
Two shots of espresso and one unread case file later, she still wasn’t up. It had been hours.
She was still sleeping. Probably. The bedroom door stayed shut. She’d gone to bed early—not that I blamed her. She’d looked tired last night. Not the usual kind, the deeper kind. The kind you didn’t sleep off. I recognized it.
It was the alcohol. Or the lack of it.
I’d seen it before, that drained look. The twitchy restlessness underneath it, like her body wanted something her brain was trying to forget.
My foster mother used to get like that when she tried to quit.
Couldn’t stay awake for more than a few hours.
Couldn’t sleep either. Just existed in this weird in-between state where nothing felt right.
I was twelve the first time she tried. Told me she was “getting her life back.” Then drank half a bottle of something brown and passed out on the porch two days later.
Valentina didn’t look like her, but there were similarities.
The inconsistency. The volatility. The way her moods shifted in degrees, like weather fronts you could see coming but couldn’t avoid.
She had that same look in her eyes sometimes: wide, deflecting, a little too snappy when she was trying to pretend she wasn’t unraveling.
I didn’t want to make the comparison. But I did.
And I hated it.
Because the last thing I needed in my apartment, in my space, was someone else who couldn’t figure out how to live inside themselves without making a mess of everything around them.
I didn’t need another person forgetting my name.
The door finally opened.
I didn’t look up. Instead I took a slow sip, watching steam curl above the cup like it could give me some sort of answer.
But, of course, I eventually did look up—because self-control only went so far, and I clearly didn’t have much of it around her.
Valentina stepped into the living room, hair messy from sleep, dressed in an oversize shirt that brushed her thighs when she stretched her arms above her head. No bra, of course. Because God forbid she make anything easy for me.
“Is there coffee?” she asked, skipping right past “good morning” and heading straight into demands.
I exhaled slowly, placing my mug down and trying to look unaffected. “Kitchen. Help yourself.”
I forced my gaze back down to my coffee as if I could pretend I hadn’t just memorized exactly how long her legs looked under that shirt or how soft her voice was first thing in the morning.
This was going to be harder than I thought.
She wandered in, her bare feet padding against the cold tile, immediately frowning. “Where’s the sugar?”
“Don’t have any.”
Valentina froze. She turned around slowly, like I’d just confessed to something horrific. “You don’t have sugar?”
I just looked at her. “No.”
“No sugar,” she repeated, as if I’d said I kicked puppies in my spare time.
“You want coffee or not?”
She mumbled something I probably didn’t want to hear—definitely an insult—and grabbed a mug from the cabinet, pouring herself a cup. One sip, and her entire face scrunched up.
“This is awful,” she said, setting the mug down dramatically. “How do you live like this?”
“Like what?”
She waved a hand at the coffee pot, the apartment, me, like I was personally responsible for every injustice she’d ever experienced. “Black coffee. No sugar, no cream, no . . . anything. Just pure bitterness.”
“I manage just fine.”
She smiled sweetly, but sweet on her always felt like a warning. “You’re moody.”
“Am I?”
“Yeah,” she said, eyeing me over the rim of her mug. “You are.”
“Then maybe you should give me some space.”
She arched a brow, clearly unimpressed. “Don’t you have enough of that already?”
“Apparently not.”
“Explains why you’re always alone then. I guess even your own company gets old.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. She always did this to me—left me feeling off-balance, scrambling to find my footing.
I knew how to argue. Hell, arguing was my profession.
I could twist evidence, sway juries, and dismantle witnesses without breaking a sweat, but one sentence from her about my personal life, and suddenly, I had nothing?
Maybe it was because deep down I knew she was right. And I hated that she saw it so clearly—saw past every argument I’d ever made. She saw through me, and it unsettled the hell out of me.
I stared into my coffee, irritated by how easily she exposed the parts of me I’d rather keep hidden. Parts I wasn’t even ready to face myself.
She watched me for a long moment, a smug, self-satisfied little smirk pulling at her lips. Then she shook her head slowly, as if I were beyond help. “You really need sugar in this place.”
Before I could respond—or even figure out what the hell I wanted to say—she turned and walked away, leaving behind a bitter aftertaste that had nothing to do with the coffee.
My damn blood pressure was climbing, and it wasn’t even 9:00 a.m.
I had work to do. Meetings. Calls. Things that didn’t involve whatever the fuck this was.
I grabbed my keys and slid my wallet into my pocket before making my way to the bedroom door—the one she’d left cracked open.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed, scrolling through her phone, completely oblivious to what she was doing to me.
She always made it seem like I was the one approaching her.
Like it was my idea to get close. She never gave me the satisfaction of believing she might actually need something from me.
No—she left that burden entirely on my shoulders.
She looked up as I placed a card on the table. Then she looked down at it, eyebrows pulling together. “What’s this?”
“You’ll need money,” I said simply. “Use it.”
A smile tugged at her lips. “I have my own now.”
“Save that for when you need it. Use mine instead.”
“What’s my limit?”
“Try to keep it reasonable.”
Her smile widened. It was dangerous—the kind of smile that usually got men into trouble. “Reasonable according to me, or reasonable according to you? Because there’s a very big difference.”
I had zero interest in debating finances with her, especially when it was the one thing I had plenty of.
She wanted independence? Fine. She had it.
But as long as she was here, she was my responsibility, and I could at least make sure she didn’t need anything.
Hell, maybe that was my way of being useful.
I wasn’t sure why that mattered, but for some reason, it did.
“There’s no limit on the card. Spend whatever you need.”
“Is this the part where I ask if your money is clean?”
“It’s as clean as it needs to be.”