7. The Man Who Treats Me Like I Matter
Chapter Seven
THE MAN WHO TREATS ME LIKE I MATTER
The next day, the floral installation for the rehearsal dinner is missing. Not misplaced or delayed. Missing.
The event coordinator is close to tears, the bride’s mother is pale with controlled panic, and Ethan, who was supposed to confirm the vendor delivery three days ago, is nowhere to be found.
Matteo finds me in the ballroom, standing between two long tables covered in ivory linen while staff move around us with the hushed urgency of people trying not to alarm rich guests.
“We have a problem,” he says.
“I gathered.”
“The floral arch was delivered to the wrong property on the other side of the lake. Ethan confirmed the address incorrectly.”
“Of course he did.”
A flash of humor warms his face despite the tension. “Can you help?”
The question hits me somewhere tender.
He’s not saying fix this because you’re useful, or handle this because I have more important things to do. He’s asking, can you help?
“Yes.”
For the next three hours, I do what I’ve done for years, except this time, my work belongs to me.
I review the event deck. I find photos of the original arch.
I suggest moving the ceremony arrangements from tomorrow’s storage area to tonight’s ballroom and replacing tomorrow’s flowers overnight with a simplified design that won’t look like a compromise.
Matteo approves the extra cost in ten seconds.
The florist cries in relief over the phone.
The bride’s mother kisses both my cheeks and calls me a miracle.
When the room is nearly fixed, Ethan walks in with Willow behind him, takes in the staff, the flowers, Matteo beside me, and the bride’s mother thanking me with damp eyes, and his expression curdles.
“Sophie,” he says tightly. “Can I speak with you?”
Matteo looks at me. “Your choice.”
Ethan hates that too.
I follow Ethan to a side corridor, and he turns on me the second we’re alone. “You’re enjoying this.”
“I enjoyed solving the problem you created.”
“You’ve been waiting for a chance to humiliate me.”
“No, Ethan. I spent years preventing your humiliation. You mistook that for weakness.”
He runs a hand through his hair. It’s less perfect than usual. “Listen to me. Marriages go through things.”
“Things.”
“Yes. Affairs, distance, stupid mistakes. People recover.”
“People recover when there’s remorse.”
“I’m trying to talk to you.”
“You’re trying to contain me.”
His mouth flattens, then he changes tactics. He softens his eyes and lowers his voice. “Soph. You know me.”
“I do. That’s why this isn’t working.”
“Matteo is using you. He’s punishing me through you because he’s been looking for an excuse.”
His words stop me for a moment, not so much because I believe them, but because a woman who’s been managed long enough can still feel the old tug of doubt even after she’s cut the rope.
“What if you’re just useful to him?” Ethan asks. “Did you think about that?”
I don’t answer immediately, and he sees the hesitation and presses. “He’s rich, powerful, charming. You think he hasn’t done this before? Picked up some wounded woman and made himself feel noble?”
My stomach tightens, but then I remember Matteo asking what I wanted, Matteo sitting across from me instead of beside me on the plane, Matteo arranging a separate suite, and Matteo telling me desire wouldn’t make him careless.
“You know what’s interesting?” I say.
Ethan waits.
“You can only imagine people using me because that’s what you did.”
His face hardens again. “You’ll regret this.”
“I regret a lot already, but this won’t be on the list.” Then I walk away.
I’m trembling, and I don’t like it. I don’t want my body reacting like Ethan still has authority over it, but bodies keep old records even after the mind has filed new ones.
I stand beneath a lemon tree, pressing my palms together and trying to slow my breathing.
“Sophie?” Matteo’s voice is careful.
I don’t turn. “I’m fine.”
“You don’t have to be fine.” He doesn’t come any closer. “What do you need?”
That’s what he asks. He doesn’t demand to know what Ethan said, and he doesn’t rush in to fix things. He simply asks what I need.
The question breaks through the last hard shell of the day.
“I don’t want to feel like this,” I say. “Like he can still get in my head.”
“He’s spent years learning all the ways in.”
I turn then to find Matteo standing a few feet away, his jacket off, his face open and serious in the afternoon light.
“I hate that he can still make me doubt myself,” I say.
“That isn’t failure. That’s the echo of being trained to question your own discomfort. This is all very fresh, and change takes time.”
Tears gather, but I don’t let them fall.
Matteo offers his hand, and I take it. His palm is warm and sure around mine. He lifts my knuckles to his mouth and kisses them once, and the tenderness of it touches me deeply.
“I want you,” I whisper.
His eyes darken, but he stays still. “I need you to be certain that wanting me is about me,” he says.
“It is.”
“And about you?”
I breathe in. “Yes.”
His thumb moves over my knuckles. “Then tonight,” he says. “After the dinner. If you come to my suite, it’ll be because you choose to. If you don’t, I’ll still be at breakfast tomorrow asking how you slept, and I’ll wait until you’re ready.”
My heart aches in a way that feels nothing like damage.
That night, after the rehearsal dinner, after the restored floral arrangements glow beneath chandeliers and Ethan drinks too much while pretending not to watch me, I walk to Matteo’s suite.
I don’t knock right away. I stand outside the carved wooden door, feeling the weight of my wedding ring on my finger. Then I take it off.
I don’t throw it or make a scene. I slip it into the small pocket of my evening bag because some endings don’t need to be dramatic to be complete.
Then I knock, and Matteo opens the door.
For a moment, he only looks at me.
His suite is lit by lamps and moonlight, the balcony doors open to the lake. He’s removed his tie. His shirt is open at the throat. He looks less polished than usual, which somehow makes him even more beautiful.
“Come in,” he says, and I do.
The door closes behind me with a soft click.
He doesn’t touch me immediately. He stands in front of me, searching my face. “Sophie.”
“I’m here because I want to be.”
His gaze drops to my mouth, then returns to my eyes. “Tell me again.”
“I want you, Matteo.”
The restraint in him breaks, but gently.
He steps forward and cups my face with both hands, then kisses me.
It isn’t cautious or careful in the way of a man afraid of wanting too much.
It’s full, warm, and certain. But even as his mouth opens over mine, even as heat rushes through me and my hands grip his shirt, there’s no demand in it. Only invitation.
I kiss him back, and the sound he makes is low and rough, and it sends a shiver down my spine.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says against my mouth.
I tense, old insecurity rising fast, and Matteo feels it. He draws back just enough to look at me. “Don’t leave me alone in that sentence.”
A startled laugh catches in my throat. “What does that mean?”
“It means I say you’re beautiful, and you stay here with me while I mean it.”
No one has ever flirted with my fear before and made it feel lighter. “I’m trying,” I whisper.
“I’ll help.”
He kisses me again, slower this time, walking me backward until my legs meet the edge of the bed. His hands move to my shoulders, sliding the straps of my dress down with aching patience. He watches me as he does it, giving me every chance to stop him, but I don’t.
The dress falls to my waist, then to the floor, and I stand before him in lace and heels and the body I’ve spent too many years treating like something that needed forgiving.
Matteo’s eyes move over me with open admiration. There’s hunger there too, and reverence.
“Sophie,” he says again, like my name has become his favorite word.
He kisses my shoulder. My collarbone. The upper curve of my breast. I thread my fingers into his hair, and when his mouth closes over my skin through the lace, I gasp.
He smiles against me. “I like that sound.”
“You’re very pleased with yourself.”
“I’m pleased with you.”
I laugh, then moan when his hand slides around my waist and brings me closer.
He undresses me slowly enough that I feel each piece of myself being noticed. Not stripped. Revealed. His shirt follows. Then the rest. When I see him, broad shoulders and warm skin and the hard evidence of his desire, I feel a pulse of nerves.
He catches my hand and places it over his heart. “We go as slowly as you want,” he says.
“I don’t want slow forever.”
His smile turns wicked at the edges. “Excellent clarification.”
This time, my laugh is breathless.
He lays me back on the bed and follows me down, his body warm over mine. He kisses me until I forget to be self-conscious. Until the only thing I know is the weight of him, the brush of his mouth, the way his hands learn me like he’s grateful for every discovery.
When his fingers slide between my thighs, I close my eyes.
“No,” he murmurs. “Stay with me.”
I open them, and he watches my face as he touches me, patient and devastating, finding what makes my breath break, what makes my hips lift, what makes my hands clutch at the sheets.
There’s no hurry in him. No selfish rhythm.
He builds pleasure with the same careful attention he gives everything else, except this feels less controlled and more intimate, like he’s letting me see how much he enjoys giving.
“Matteo,” I whisper.
He lowers his mouth to me, and the world narrows to heat.
I come with his name in my mouth, my body arching, my fingers tangled in his hair. He stays with me through it, one hand spread over my stomach, holding me as if the force of pleasure is something he’s honored to witness.
When he rises over me, I reach for him.
“I need you,” I say.
His expression changes. It softens, then it burns. He reaches for protection in the bedside drawer, and the small practical motion steadies me, making this feel real and chosen rather than reckless.
Then he settles between my thighs. “Look at me,” he says.
I do.
He enters me slowly, his jaw tight with restraint, his gaze locked on mine. I feel every inch, every careful pause, every tremor in his control. My body stretches around him, welcomes him, and something in me that had been clenched for years opens.
Not because he saves me, but because he meets me.
He moves with a tenderness that doesn’t dilute the heat. Slow at first, then deeper, stronger, his mouth finding mine when my breath catches. I wrap my legs around him and take him closer. He groans into my neck, and the sound makes me feel powerful in my own skin.
“You feel incredible,” he says, voice rough. “Do you know that?”
I answer by moving beneath him, by dragging my nails lightly down his back, by letting myself want without apology.
The room fills with the sounds of us: breath, skin, whispered names, the lake wind stirring the curtains. Pleasure gathers again, darker this time, deeper. Matteo feels it coming, changes the angle, slides a hand beneath my hip, and keeps his eyes on me as I fall apart.
He follows moments later, his face buried against my shoulder, whispering my name against my skin.
Afterward, he doesn’t roll away. He gathers me against him, both of us damp and breathing hard, my cheek resting over his heart.
I wait for regret, but it doesn’t come.
Only quiet. Only Matteo’s hand moving slowly along my back.
“I’m not a consolation prize,” I say into the dark.
His arms tighten. “No. You’re the woman I was fortunate enough to see clearly when another man was too foolish to look.”
My eyes sting. “That was a very good answer.”
“I have more.”
“I’m sure you do.”
He kisses the top of my head. “Sleep, Sophie.”
Before dawn, I wake in his bed with the balcony doors still open and the lake silver beneath the early light. Matteo is asleep beside me, one arm across my waist.
I’m not ashamed. The realization comes gently, like morning.
I’m not ashamed of wanting him. I’m not ashamed of being wanted. I’m not ashamed that Ethan’s betrayal no longer owns every corner of me.
Later, we eat breakfast on the balcony: strong coffee, peaches, warm bread, butter, honey, and eggs with herbs. Matteo wears a robe and looks indecently comfortable and beautiful with the morning sunlight in his hair.
He watches me spread honey on bread.
“What?” I ask.
“You look peaceful.”
“I feel …” I search for the word. “Present.”
His smile is slow.
Below us, the lake glitters.
Today, Ethan loses the stage.
And I’m ready to watch.