18. Senna
— ? —
Senna
I wake up in my own bed - the small one in the rental apartment - with Rocco’s arm draped across my waist and the morning light turning the ceiling gold.
For a moment, I just lie there, feeling the weight of him against my back, the steady rhythm of his breathing, the impossible reality of his presence in a space that wasn’t supposed to include him.
We left the studio sometime after midnight, after we’d finally finished the song and also finished each other, and came here because it was closer than the house we used to share and I wasn’t ready to go back there. Not yet.
The song is good.
That’s the thing that keeps hitting me, even through the fog of post-intimacy confusion.
The song we made together - his voice, my arrangement, our combined instincts working in harmony for the first time in years - is genuinely, undeniably good.
Better than anything I’ve made with Matteo.
Better than anything Rocco made with Fiorella.
Better than anything either of us has ever made apart.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Rocco murmurs against my shoulder. “I can hear it from here.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just tell me what’s going on in there.”
I turn to face him, and the sight of him - rumpled and sleepy-eyed, looking at me like I’m something precious - makes my chest ache in a way I don’t know how to handle.
“I don’t know what this is,” I say honestly. “Last night was-”
“Amazing.”
“Yes. But amazing doesn’t mean fixed.” I sit up, pulling the sheet with me. “We still have so many things we haven’t dealt with. The song that Fiorella stole. The divorce. The years of you not seeing me.”
“I know.”
“One night doesn’t erase that.”
“I know that too.” He props himself up on one elbow, and his expression is serious now, the sleepiness fading. “I’m not expecting you to forgive me because we had sex, Senna. That’s not how this works.”
“Then how does it work?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never done this before - tried to earn back someone I already had. I don’t have a map.”
“That makes two of us.” I pull my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. “I keep waiting to feel like I made a mistake. Coming here with you, letting last night happen. But I don’t feel that. I feel-”
“What?”
“Confused. Because I want you. I wanted you last night and I want you now and that hasn’t changed. But wanting someone and trusting them are different things.”
“I know they are.”
“Do you? Because for seven years, you acted like wanting me was enough. Like the fact that you loved me meant I should be satisfied, even when you never actually showed up for me.”
He’s quiet for a moment, and I can see him resisting the urge to defend himself. Good. He’s learning.
“You’re right,” he says finally. “I thought love was a feeling. Something I had, not something I did. And that was - that was lazy. That was wrong.”
“It was.”
“So what would it look like? Love as action. What do you need from me?”
“I need you to keep seeing me. Not just when it’s convenient, not just when we’re in bed together. Every day. In the small moments. In the boring ones.”
“I can do that.”
“And I need you to support my work. Not as a favor to me, not as some kind of penance. Because you actually believe in what I’m doing.”
“I do believe in it. What you’re building with Matteo-”
“What I’m building is mine.” The words come out sharper than I intended, but I don’t take them back.
“That song we made last night in the booth - the one with your voice and my arrangement - that’s something we made together.
But my work with Matteo, my production career, that’s not ours.
That’s mine. Do you understand the difference? ”
“Yes.” He reaches out and takes my hand, and I let him because I’m too tired to fight it. “Yes, I understand. Your work is yours. I’m not trying to take it or share credit for it. I just want to watch you succeed.”
“Even if it means I’m not always available to support your career?”
“Especially then. You spent seven years making yourself smaller so I could take up more space. I don’t want that anymore. I want you to take up all the space you need, and I’ll figure out how to work around it.”
I study his face, looking for the catch, the caveat, the thing he’s not saying. But all I see is earnestness and exhaustion and something that might be hope.
“The song from last night,” I say slowly. “The one we made in the booth. What happens to it?”
“What do you want to happen to it?”
“I don’t know. It’s good. It’s really good. But it’s also - complicated. If we release it, people will want to know the story. How we made it, why we made it, what it means.”
“We don’t have to release it at all. It can just be ours. Something we made together that no one else ever hears.”
“Would you be okay with that? Sitting on something that good?”
“I’d be okay with whatever you decide.” He squeezes my hand. “It’s your call, Senna. Your voice is on it, your arrangement made it what it is. I just provided the raw material.”
“That’s not nothing.”
“It’s not everything either.” He shifts closer, and I let him.
“But I know I want to try. I know that last night felt like something real, something we built together instead of something one of us did to the other. And I know that I’ve never stopped loving you, even when I was too broken to show it. ”
I look at our hands, intertwined on the white sheets, and I think about all the mornings I woke up to cold sheets and empty space. All the nights I went to sleep waiting for him to come home. All the years I spent shrinking so he could expand.
“I need time,” I say finally. “To figure out what I want. To see if you can really be different, or if last night was just - a moment. An exception.”
“I understand.”
“I’m not withdrawing the divorce filing. Not yet.”
“Okay.”
“And I’m not moving back into the house. I need my own space. I need to keep building the life I’m building, even if it eventually includes you again.”
“That’s fair.”
“Is it enough?” I look at him, really look. “Can you handle that? The uncertainty? The waiting?”
“I’ll handle whatever you need me to handle.” He squeezes my hand. “I’m not going anywhere, Senna. You can push me away and I’ll step back. You can pull me close and I’ll hold on. But I’m not leaving. Not again.”
Something in my chest loosens, just slightly.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay.”
***
He leaves around noon, after we’ve had coffee and talked about nothing important and carefully avoided discussing what happens next.
I kiss him goodbye at the door, a soft kiss that promises nothing and everything, and then I close the door and lean against it and try to figure out what the hell I’m doing.
The sex was a mistake. Probably. Or maybe it was exactly what I needed - a reminder that Rocco and I still have something worth saving, something that exists outside of all the hurt and all the mistakes.
I don’t know.
My phone buzzes on the kitchen counter. I grab it, expecting Rocco, expecting more sweet messages about how much last night meant to him.
Instead, I see a text from Elena.
Elena: Have you been online today?
Senna: No. Why?
Elena: Call me.
My stomach drops.
I call her.
“What’s wrong?”
“Senna, I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’m just going to say it.” Elena’s voice is strained, the way it gets when she’s trying to be calm and failing. “Someone leaked your divorce filing to the press. It’s all over the industry blogs.”
“What?”
“It gets worse. The leak came with a story. A narrative. About why you’re really leaving Rocco.”
“What narrative?”
“They’re saying you’ve been having an affair. With Matteo.”
The world goes very quiet.
“That’s insane. Matteo is twenty-four. He’s - we’re working together. That’s all.”
“I know that. You know that. But there are photos - someone took pictures of you two outside the studio, talking, laughing. And there’s a document.”
“What document?”
“Part of your divorce filing. A photo of it. The pages are folded weird - like someone took a picture of them in a hurry.” Elena pauses. “Senna, the photo shows the filing date. And the story says you filed because you were already involved with someone else. That Rocco is the victim here.”
I think about Fiorella in the studio. Fiorella looking at my bag, at my papers. Fiorella leaving with that smile that made my skin crawl.
“I know who did this,” I say quietly.
“Who?”
“My sister.”
Elena is quiet for a long moment. Then: “What do you want to do?”
I look around my small apartment - at the rumpled sheets still warm from Rocco’s body, at the coffee cups we left on the counter, at the life I’ve been building piece by piece only to have it torn apart by someone who can’t stand to see me succeed.
“I don’t know yet,” I say. “But I’m done hiding.”