Chapter 13
Birdie
We don’t have sex.
I should be proud of that.
Instead, I wake with the taste of him still haunting my mouth and a low, restless ache curled deep inside me, one I’m ashamed to recognize for what it is.
It isn’t just hunger. It’s the awful knowledge that if he had touched me a little longer, kissed me a little deeper, pressed a little harder, I would have let him take me all the way to ruin.
And some traitorous part of me wishes he had.
Maybe that’s the ugliest truth of all.
Not that I wanted him.
That I still do.
Because Lorenzo has always known exactly where I’m weakest. Exactly how to touch the emptiness in me until it feels like something other than grief. Other than loneliness. Other than the hollow, aching thing I carry around like a second heartbeat.
I hate that he can still do that when no one else ever could.
By the time I make myself get out of bed, he’s already gone.
For one disorienting second, I stare at the empty side of the mattress and feel something dangerously close to disappointment. Then I hate myself for that too, grab the oversized hoodie tighter around me, and force myself out of the room.
I find him in the kitchen.
Fresh clothes. Dark trousers. Black sweater.
Coffee in one hand like he didn’t nearly unmake me with that same hand last night.
Morning light spills through the tall windows behind him, painting him in pale gray and gold, and he looks maddeningly composed.
As if he slept just fine. As if I wasn’t up half the night replaying every word, every touch, every breath I gave him.
His gaze lifts the second I walk in.
“I left some clothes for you in the bedroom.”
“I don’t want your clothes,” I mutter, brushing past him to go to the fridge.
That part, at least, is true.
The clothes he left are beautiful in the way expensive things often are—sleek, clean lines, soft knits, tailored pieces that whisper money instead of shouting it.
They also cling in all the wrong places.
The tops skim too close. The trousers are too fitted.
The dresses are absolutely out of the question.
There is no chance in hell I’m putting them on.
Not when they would show too much.
Not when I still don’t know whether he chose them because he wants me polished and presentable at his side, or because he thinks we’re boarding another plane today and I’m about to be dragged back into a version of my life that no longer fits.
The thought has me frowning as I pour orange juice into a glass.
Behind me, Lorenzo takes a slow sip of coffee.
“No coffee?”
I turn and meet his gaze over the rim of the carton. “Fuck off.”
That earns a real laugh from him.
“Oh, you’re going to be loads of fun today,” he says. “I can already tell.”
I set the juice down harder than necessary and cross my arms over my chest. “I’m thrilled you’re enjoying yourself.”
His eyes drift over me once, catching on the hoodie, my bare legs, the irritation I know is written all over my face. Something dark flickers there before he looks back up.
“I’m not enjoying myself.”
“Right.” I take my glass and lean against the counter, putting as much space between us as the kitchen allows. “You only look like that after kidnapping women from their weddings and then acting smug in expensive kitchens.”
His mouth curves. “You think I look smug?”
“I think you look very pleased with yourself.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“It is when I’m looking at you.”
That gets another almost-smile. Smaller this time. Sharper.
I hate how good he looks when he’s amused. I hate even more that part of me remembers exactly how that mouth felt against mine only hours ago.
I take a quick drink of orange juice just to have something else to focus on.
Lorenzo watches me over the rim of his coffee cup. “We’re not going to Chicago today.”
I lower the glass slowly. “Then where are we going?”
“Nowhere. Today, we’re staying here.”
I narrow my eyes. “And tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow isn’t here yet.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting this early.”
My temper sparks. “You know, for someone who hates being told he doesn’t think things through, you do keep proving my point.”
That wipes the amusement from his face. Good.
I push off the counter and step closer, juice still in hand. “What exactly is the long game, Lorenzo? Lock me in a London townhouse until Stockholm syndrome does the rest? Parade me around in clothes that scream money and control until I forget you tore me off an altar?”
His gaze hardens. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“I think you took me without having the slightest clue what comes after.” My voice drops colder. “And now you’re improvising.”
He sets his coffee down with deliberate care. “You’re still here.”
I bark out a humorless laugh. “What a compelling strategy.”
His jaw tightens. I should stop there. I don’t.
“Do you know what’s really bothering you?” I ask softly. “It isn’t that I was going to marry Dante. It’s that he made me look happy.”
Something dangerous moves through his face. There. That struck true.
I take another step, reckless now, because I’m tired and angry and still aching in ways I don’t want to examine too closely. “You could handle me frightened. You could handle me angry. But happy?” I tilt my head. “That must have felt unbearable.”
His eyes lock onto mine with a force that should make me step back.
Instead, I hold his gaze.
“It killed you,” I whisper.
The room goes very still. For one stretched-out second, all I can hear is the faint ticking of some unseen clock and the blood rushing in my ears.
Then Lorenzo says, very quietly, “Do you want to know what killed me?”
I shouldn’t answer. But I do.
“What?”
He moves then. Not fast enough to startle.
Slow enough to make it worse. He closes the distance between us until I can smell coffee and clean soap and the darker, more dangerous scent that is simply him.
He reaches past me to set my glass on the counter, his fingers brushing mine just enough to send a small, treacherous current through my hand.
Then he leans in.
“What killed me,” he says, voice low and velvet-dark, “was the way you looked at peace like you didn’t believe it would stay. Like part of you was already bracing for it to be taken.”
My breath catches.
He lifts one hand, hooks a finger lightly into the hem of the hoodie at my hip, then lets it fall without tugging. The gesture is nothing. The gesture is everything.
“And I knew,” he continues, “that even if you smiled for him, some part of you was still waiting for the world to turn cruel again.”
My pulse stutters.
“If I looked that way, then it’s because of what you did to me,” I whisper.
His eyes darken.
“Maybe,” he says.
We stand there in the morning light with too much history and too little distance between us, and I become excruciatingly aware of the fact that I am not wearing enough beneath this hoodie to survive him looking at me like this.
I move away first.
Because I have to. If I don’t, I’ll do something stupid, like ask him to finish what he started last night.
I hate that the thought even exists.
I fold my arms again. “You still didn’t answer my question.”
His expression smooths back into something more controlled, though not entirely. I’m not the only one affected by that moment. I can see that much.
“You need clothes.”
“I have clothes.”
“You have a wedding dress and a hoodie.”
“I’m making it work.”
His gaze drops briefly to my legs, then returns to my face. “Barely.”
Heat flashes under my skin, hot and immediate. “That sounded like a you problem.”
A slow smile touches his mouth. “Trust me, it is.”
I should not react to that. My body, clearly, didn’t get the memo. He notices. Of course he notices.
The smile deepens, dark and infuriatingly satisfied. “There she is.”
“Don’t start.”
“I haven’t started anything this morning.”
The reminder lands low in my stomach like a lit match.
I glare at him. “You’re impossible.”
“And yet,” he says softly, “you’re still standing here.”
I look away before he can see too much.
Because that is the problem, isn’t it?
I am still here.
Still in his house, carrying the memory of his hands and the humiliating truth of how badly I wanted more.
“Get dressed. We’re going out.”
My head snaps back. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
I set my jaw. “I’m not putting on any of those clothes in the bathroom. They show too much.”
Shit! I didn’t mean to say that.
He stills. Then, very carefully, “Shows too much of what?”
I force a shrug. “Of me.”
He studies me for a beat too long, and for one awful moment I think he’s going to push or ask or, heaven forbid, notice.
Instead, he inclines his head slightly. “Fine.”
The relief that floods me is so sudden I nearly sway with it.
“We’ll buy you something else,” he says.
I blink. “You’re taking me shopping?”
“I’m taking you somewhere you can stop looking at me like I committed a crime by having taste.”
“You committed several crimes. Your taste is lower on the list.”
That earns a genuine laugh, and this time it catches me off guard enough that I almost smile back but then I remember Dante, and I shake my head.
The kitchen grows quiet again, but it’s a different kind of quiet now—less sharp, more dangerous. The kind that remembers what happened in the dark and wonders what might happen in daylight if either of us gets careless.
Lorenzo lifts his cup. “Ten minutes.”
I pick up my juice and stare him dead in the eye. “You are not the boss of me.”
“No,” he says, and there’s something disturbingly intimate in the way he says it. “But you’ll still be ready in ten.”
I hate that he’s probably right. I hate more that as I turn toward the bedroom, I can still feel his gaze on me—heavy, hungry, and patient. Like whatever happened last night is nowhere near over. And the worst part is that the ache inside me agrees.
He takes me shopping that afternoon.