CHAPTER 36
Edoardo
“I’m a bit busy now. Will call you back later tonight.” Caroline’s text sits on my screen longer than it should.
I check the time out of habit. Midnight in Milan. Six in New York.
I set the phone down, but the quiet doesn’t settle. Sleep won’t come easily tonight. It never does when I’ve been away from her for more than a couple of days.
She flew to New York on Monday evening. I stayed back in London, then came to Milan today to spend the weekend with my parents.
On paper, everything is normal. Routine.
And yet.
Her birthday weekend replays in fragments - the warm glow of it, the noise, the way she filled every room without trying. I adored meeting her parents officially as her boyfriend. They are kind and thoughtful. We talked about art, cities, the strange ways different lives can feel equally full.
I smile without meaning to when I think of Ethan mercilessly roasting her while she laughed like she loved every second of it.
The party was loud, bold, colorful, and chaotic in the best way. Her worlds collided in one place as we all drank too much, sang too loudly, and danced until the night dissolved into early morning.
Brunch the next day was a battlefield of sunglasses and orange juice. None of us functional, all of us pretending we were. Caroline and I spent the rest of Sunday in that soft, quiet recovery only weekends allow - half conversations, half naps, the comfort of simply existing side by side.
We kissed goodbye Monday morning. Normal. Easy. Us.
She texted me she’ll be back next weekend. The constant flying isn’t kind to her. I can hear it in the short pauses between her words lately, the way fatigue sneaks into her voice even when she’s laughing.
So, everything should feel steady. But it doesn’t.
There’s a sensation I can’t quite name. It’s low and persistent, like a static humming behind a wall. It’s not loud enough to confront but not quiet enough to ignore. It’s the kind of feeling that makes you check the weather even when the sky is clear. That kind of uncertainty. That kind of doubt.
Something is shifting. I don’t know if it’s distance, timing, or just the fragile nature of the relationship I’m hoping we can build.
We were happy. We are happy. So why does it feel like there’s a question that’s being avoided?
I rub my eyes, suddenly aware of how tired I am.
I should sleep. I’ll call her tomorrow and hear her voice properly, not compressed into pixels and punctuation. I’ll probably realize this is nothing - just exhaustion, just missing her, just the mind inventing storms where there’s only night.
I turn off the light, the room falling into soft darkness. Still, as I lie there, the feeling lingers, not exactly fear, just the quiet awareness that something between us is changing.
I force my eyes to close.
Tomorrow, I tell myself.
Tomorrow, it will make sense.
***
Caroline
I didn’t go back to London last weekend.
Edoardo wasn’t happy about it. He didn’t say it outright but I could hear it in the careful way he said it’s fine. The way disappointment dresses itself in politeness when you care about someone enough not to make them feel cornered.
It’s been two weeks. I miss him more than I let myself admit.
I wake in the middle of the night and instinctively reach to my right, only to find the cold sheet, the quiet space where he should be.
I miss the weight of his arm draped across me, the way his voice sounds softer in the dark, the steady presence of him, like an anchor I hadn’t realized I was using to keep me grounded.
I miss his smile. His warmth. The small, ordinary moments that made the world feel less sharp.
And yet, New York has become something else these two weeks.
A sanctuary. A pause button. A small, selfish pocket of air where I can sit with my thoughts without feeling the future staring back at me, waiting for an answer.
“Cara.”
A sharp knock on the table pulls me back.
Connor sits across from me, studying my face with that steady, unflinching attention of his - the kind that sees straight through whatever mask I try to put on.
It’s just the two of us tonight. Celina insisted, gently but firmly.
She always knows when something inside me has shifted, even before I do.
Connor and Celina are not quite back together but they’re moving toward it, carefully, like two people relearning a language they once spoke in their sleep. But it’s a progress, a real, fragile, but hopeful progress.
She’s let him back in just enough to try again, to see if love can be patient when it needs to be.
She’s been here with me these two weeks, and my convenient excuse to stay has given her time with Connor too.
Watching them slowly find their way back to each other has filled me with a quiet, aching kind of happiness.
What they have - that’s love. The kind you fight for. The kind that bends without breaking.
And then there’s me. What I have with Edoardo… what is it, really? And the question I keep circling but never quite touching: would he really fight for it?
I know he feels the shift. Even across time zones, through a screen, I can see it. I can see the fraction of a second where his smile hesitates, when questions linger just behind his eyes when we FaceTime. He senses me retreating, even when I pretend I’m not.
But I don’t know what to do with myself. With the noise in my head. With the quiet dread that every answer I reach feels like it might dissolve the moment I say it out loud.
I need to think, again. Always think. As if logic could chart the heart if I just tried hard enough.
“Tell me,” Connor says softly, refilling my sparkling water. “You’ve been somewhere far away all night. What’s going on? What are you thinking about?”
I let out a small, tired laugh. Thinking? I wish it felt that organized.
Why am I so useless at this? I make decisions every day, complex ones, high-stakes ones, decisions that move entire companies. So, rationally, this should be simpler: two people, one direction, yes or no.
But when it comes to Edoardo, my mind refuses to behave like the sharp, reliable thing I depend on everywhere else.
It slips. It spirals. It circles back to that conversation I overheard that evening, to futures I can’t quite see.
After a while, I stop trying to hold the thoughts. They’re too heavy and I’m too tired.
Connor exhales slowly. “What’s eating you, Cara?”
So, I tell him. All of it. The fear, the doubt, the fragile feeling that whatever Edoardo and I have is hovering in a space I don’t know how to protect.
Connor doesn’t interrupt. He just listens, eyes steady, present, like he’s holding the weight with me so I don’t have to carry it alone.
When I finish, he reaches across the table and takes my hands in his. His palms are warm, grounding.
“There’s no shortcut here,” he says gently. “You have to be honest, with yourself first, and then with Edoardo. Tell him what’s real. Whatever happens, you decide together.”
His thumbs brush slow circles over my knuckles, a quiet reassurance.
“Milan, his parents - those are logistics,” he continues. “Important, yes, but not the heart of it.”
“It’s not?”
“I don’t think so,” Connor says calmly but carefully. “The heart is the question about kids.”
My chest tightens instantly, like a door closing somewhere inside me.
“Do you want kids?” he asks, voice softer than I’ve ever heard it. “Start there. And if the answer is complicated, emotionally, or medically, whatever it is - we figure it out. I’ve gone with you before. I’ll go again. As many times as you need.”
I swallow, my throat suddenly tight. “I don’t know what I want, Con.”
He nods, eyes kind. “Most people don’t. And what happened wasn’t your fault. Not your body, not you. Life just… doesn’t always play fair.”
We sit there in a silence that feels safe, like a blanket instead of a void. After a while, he slides a small glass of whiskey toward me.
“One each,” he says with a faint smile. “If we have more, Celina and Gi will revoke our privileges.”
A small smile breaks through before I can stop it.
“Just think about yourself first,” Connor says, his voice soft but steady, almost brotherly.
“Don’t build a future around what you think Edoardo wants.
Figure out what you want. Then tell him.
You decide what works for you. He decides what works for him.
And then you meet in the middle, or you don’t. But at least it’s honest.”
“Okay,” I whisper. It isn’t certainty, but it feels like something solid enough to stand on.
He hesitates, then adds quietly, “I texted Dr. Phiri’s office. They can see you tomorrow.”
“I don’t need you to mother-hen me,” I say automatically, but my chest tightens because the truth is, part of me is relieved. I’ve been avoiding this for weeks, pretending I could keep it buried, I could muffle memory.
Only Connor knows everything. Only Connor has seen the parts of me I keep locked away from the rest of the world.
He was there the morning my hands wouldn’t stop shaking, when I stood frozen in the bathroom staring at those two pink lines like they might rearrange themselves if I just waited long enough.
He was there when shock turned to fear, and then to a fragile, terrifying hope.
And he was there when it all fell apart, when I broke in a way that felt quiet on the outside but deafening inside.
When I became convinced my body had broken, that I had done something wrong, that I had somehow failed at the gravest responsibility, even if I hadn’t fully realized I had taken it on.
He didn’t try to fix it. He just held me while I fell apart, steady and silent, the way he always has. We’ve moved through life like that, through the best and through the worst, shoulder to shoulder, no explanations ever needed.
Connor squeezes my hands again, firm and warm. “I’ll always show up for you, Cara. You don’t have to carry any of this alone. We’ll get through it, like we always do.”
“Love you, Con.” Emotion rises too quickly to hide as I tell him.
“I love you too,” he says, smiling softly. Then, gently steering us back toward light, “Now let’s get you a proper carbonara. You need strength if we’re hitting the punching bags later.”
I nod, letting the plan settle around me like a gentle structure I didn’t know I needed.
Tonight, I’ll work out until the noise in my head quiets. Tomorrow, Friday, I’ll see Dr. Phiri and face what I’ve been avoiding. And Saturday, I’ll fly back to London. I’ll give myself the space to think, without running, without hiding.
I’ll tell Edoardo on Sunday or next week if I can find the courage. Not to have all the answers, just to be honest about the questions. The path isn’t clear yet, but at least it feels like movement instead of circling.
And somehow, for the first time all day, the tightness in my chest loosens just enough for me to breathe.
Not solved. Not decided. But no longer alone inside it.