11. Laney
LANEY
I saw him before he saw me.
Massimo stood at the corner across from the café, his dark suit sharp against the warm stone of the buildings.
He looked out of place in Rome, too formal, too Sicilian, and my stomach flipped before I could stop it.
His shoulders were tight, his hands in his pockets, and he was scanning the street like he expected me to materialize out of thin air.
I stopped walking. My heart kicked up, hammering against my ribs, and I wanted to turn around and disappear into the crowd before he spotted me. But my feet wouldn't move. God, even now, even after everything, seeing him still pulled something loose in my chest.
He turned his head. His eyes found mine across the street, and the world went quiet.
For three seconds neither of us moved. Then he stepped off the curb and started toward me, weaving between the cars, and I forced myself to breathe. In. Out. Like I was preparing for surgery.
When he reached me, he stopped close enough that I could smell the faint cedar scent of his cologne, close enough that the heat off him made my skin prickle. I stepped back. Just one step, but enough.
"Laney." His voice was low, careful, like I was something breakable.
I lifted my chin and met his eyes. "Massimo."
My voice came out flat, smooth, and I was grateful for it. I'd spent ten years learning how to wear the mask his family demanded, and it slid into place now without thinking. No cracks. No give.
He searched my face, and I watched him catalog everything — the way I held myself, the careful distance I'd put between us, the fact that I wasn't asking him why he'd followed me to Rome. His jaw tightened.
"What are you doing here?" I asked.
"I needed to see you."
"You could have called."
"Would you have answered?"
The question sat between us, heavy and unanswerable.
We both knew I wouldn't have. I looked past him, at the street, at the people walking by with their shopping bags and their easy laughter, and my throat went tight.
Normal people. People whose husbands didn't have to track them across the country to have a conversation.
"Laney." He said my name again, softer this time, and when I looked back at him his expression had shifted into something I recognized. Earnest. Determined. Like he thought sheer force of will could fix whatever had broken between us. "Whatever is wrong, I can fix it. Just tell me what you need."
The words landed like a slap.
I stared at him, and something hot and vicious rose in my chest, clawing its way up my throat. Fix it. Like I was a problem. Like I was a deal that had gone bad and needed renegotiating.
"How?"
He blinked. "What?"
"How are you going to fix it, Massimo?" I crossed my arms, my nails digging into my palms hard enough to sting. "What exactly do you think is wrong?"
"I—" He hesitated, and I watched him reach for an answer, watched him scramble. "You're upset. You left without telling anyone. You came to Rome, and you won't answer my calls, and I don't—" He stopped. Ran a hand through his hair. "I don't understand what happened."
"And what?"
"And I want to make it right." He stepped closer, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to keep looking at him, and my pulse kicked up against my will.
God, I hated that my body still responded to him, still wanted to lean into the solid warmth of him even when everything else in me was screaming to run.
"Let me help, Laney. I can get you a real team for the dig.
Professionals. Archaeologists who know what they're doing.
You wouldn't have to manage it yourself anymore. "
I went very still.
"And if you want to teach," he continued, his voice picking up speed like he thought momentum would carry him through, "I can arrange a position.
Something permanent, in Sicily. You'd have your own office.
Graduate students. A real department, not just—" He gestured vaguely, like the dig was something he couldn't quite name.
"Stop."
He stopped.
I couldn't look at him. If I looked at him I was going to lose it completely, so I stared at the cobblestones under my feet and concentrated on breathing. My chest was so tight I thought my ribs might crack.
"No," I said.
"Laney—"
"No." I forced myself to meet his eyes. "I don't want your money, Massimo. I don't want a team or a position or an office."
Confusion flickered across his face, followed by frustration. "Then what do you want? I'm trying to help you, and you won't even tell me?—"
"What have I been doing at the dig all these years?"
The question came out sharp and sudden, and he frowned.
"What?"
"The dig." My voice was shaking now, and I couldn't make it stop. "The work I do. What is it?"
"You're—" He paused, and I saw him reach for the answer, saw him pull up something he'd memorized once and never thought about again. "You're researching the family history. Tracing the Lombardo line back."
"And?"
"And your papers connect the site to the family's name." He said it like he was reciting a fact he'd read in a briefing, something dry and distant. "It's important work. The family's proud of what you've accomplished."
I laughed. The sound came out ugly and bitter, and his whole face went hard.
"The family's proud," I repeated. "Of course they are. God forbid the American embarrass them by digging up the wrong thing."
"Laney, that's not?—"
"Tell me what I've found." I cut him off, and my hands were shaking now, my whole body vibrating with the effort of holding everything in. "Tell me what any of it means."
He stared at me. His mouth opened, then closed, and the silence stretched out between us like a canyon.
"You don't," I said. It wasn't a question. "You have no idea. Because you've never asked, Massimo. Not once. Not in years."
"That's not fair." His voice was tight, defensive now. "I've supported your work. I've made sure you had everything you needed?—"
"No." The word came out flat. "You haven't."
"Then tell me what you want!" The frustration in his voice cracked into something louder, angrier. "Tell me what I'm supposed to do, because I'm trying, Laney, and nothing I do is ever good enough for you."
The unfairness of it hit me like whiplash. He thought he was the one being wronged. He thought offering me things I'd never asked for made him generous, and he had no idea what he'd taken from me.
"The last time you came to the dig was four years ago," I said. My voice came out low, steady. "Sofia's sixth birthday. You stayed twenty minutes."
His jaw tightened, but he didn't say anything.
"Laney—"
"Laney!"
The voice came from behind me, bright and American, and I turned. Nate was walking toward us from the café, his messenger bag slung over one shoulder, a book tucked under his arm. When he saw Massimo standing next to me, his expression shifted. Went carefully, deliberately blank.
Massimo went very still beside me.
I felt the change in him before I saw it, the way his whole body tensed, the way the air around him seemed to sharpen. When I looked at him, his eyes were locked on Nate, and the expression on his face made my stomach drop.
He was looking at Nate like he was sizing him up. Like he was deciding whether Nate was a threat, whether Nate was the reason I'd left.
Oh, God.
"Massimo, this is Nate Prescott." I forced the words out quickly, my voice too bright, too sharp. "We were at university together. Old friends. Nate, this is my husband, Massimo Lombardo."
Nate stopped a few feet away. He nodded once, polite and distant. "Massimo."
"Nate." Massimo's voice was flat. Cold. He didn't offer his hand, didn't move, just stood there radiating tension like a coiled spring.
The silence between them was unbearable. I wanted to step between them, wanted to shove Massimo back and tell him to stop looking at Nate like that, but I couldn't move. My whole body was locked up, caught between fury and something that felt dangerously close to panic.
Nate's fingers tightened on the strap of his bag. "I should go," he said, looking at me. "I'll see you later, Laney."
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, and he turned and walked away. Massimo watched him go, his eyes tracking Nate's back until he disappeared around the corner.
When Massimo finally looked at me again, the suspicion was still there, sharp and ugly and completely unfair.
"No." The word ripped out of me. "Don't you dare, Massimo. Don't you dare make this about him."
"Then what is it about?" He was angry now, really angry, his voice low and dangerous in a way that would have made anyone else back up. "I've tried everything I can think of."
My voice cracked when I answered. "Tell me one thing I'm working on right now, Massimo. One thing. Tell me anything about the work I've been doing for ten years."
He opened his mouth. Closed it. And the look on his face — lost, bewildered, like I was speaking a language he didn't understand — broke something in me.
"I'm coming home," I said.
The words felt like stones in my mouth, heavy and sharp-edged.
"But I'm doing it on my own terms," I continued, and my voice was steadier now, harder.
"Not because you followed me here. Not because you offered me a team or a job or anything else I didn't ask for.
When I come back to Sicily, it's going to be because I decided to.
And you're going to have to live with that, Massimo.
You're going to have to live with not being the one who fixed it. "
He stared at me. The anger drained out of his face, replaced by something I couldn't name, something that looked almost like fear.
"Laney—"
"I need to go." I stepped back, putting more distance between us, and my hands were shaking so badly I had to shove them in my pockets. "Don't follow me. I mean it."
I turned and walked away before he could answer.
My heart was hammering so hard I thought it might crack a rib, and my vision blurred at the edges. I didn't look back. I couldn't. If I looked back I'd see him standing there, and I didn't know if I could keep walking.
Behind me, I heard nothing. No footsteps. No voice calling my name.
Just silence, stretching out between us like a wound I didn't know how to close.
I kept walking.