Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
DARIO
She’s wearing the apron.
That’s the first thing I notice when I walk through the blue door.
Not the flowers on the counter or the candle flickering by the window or the way the bakery smells like almonds and sugar.
The apron. Teal with copper buttons. The one I spent two hours choosing because it had to be perfect, had to be the exact opposite of everything beige and faded about her old life.
It looks better on her than I imagined.
Most things do.
Twelve years in the family. Exposed to violence and manipulation and conversations that could end in blood. And right now, standing in a bakery in Colorado looking at a woman in a teal apron, I can’t find a single useful word.
She breaks first. Laughs. That real laugh. The one I heard in my kitchen when she was wearing my shirt and eating my affogato before we took each other apart in the foyer.
“You’re early,” she says.
“Two minutes.”
She arches an eyebrow. “For you, that’s basically running behind. Should I check your pulse?”
“I couldn’t wait.”
The words come out honest. The kind of admission I never make because admissions are weaknesses and weaknesses get exploited.
“Relatable.” She gestures to the plate on the counter. “I made you something.”
Amaretti. Golden and cracked and dusted with powdered sugar. Italian. Traditional. The kind of cookie my grandmother used to make before she died.
I pick one up. Take a bite.
“They’re perfect,” I tell her. “Better than perfect.”
“Well.” She ducks her head, but I can see the flush on her cheeks. “I had some motivation.”
I set down the amaretti. Look at her properly for the first time since I walked in.
She’s different here. More herself. The woman I met at the trial was vibrating with anxiety. The woman who broke into my house was desperate, grasping for something solid. But this woman, standing in her bakery, surrounded by evidence of a life she’s building, she’s neither of those things.
She’s relaxed in her skin.
“Wine?” she asks.
“Please.”
She pours. We sit at the small table by the window. The candle flickers between us.
“Thank you,” she says, and her voice wobbles a little. “For the gifts. Especially the mixer. You didn’t have to. You know that thing has more horsepower than my first car?”
“I wanted to.”
“It’s insane. Like, should I get a helmet? Or just hand over my social security number now?”
“It’s not enough.” I hold her gaze. “Nothing would be enough. Not for what I should have said months ago.”
“Which is?”
I’ve rehearsed this. The whole drive here, I practiced what I would say, how I would explain. But now that I’m sitting across from her, all my careful words feel inadequate.
“I left my door unlocked.” I try to keep my words measured, but her eyes make it hard. “Because I couldn’t bring myself to ask you to stay. I set schedules instead of having conversations. I let you come to me instead of going to you.”
She snorts, gentle and biting. “Yeah, your scheduling kink almost gave me an ulcer or a baby. Unclear which was happening. We should unpack that.”
I turn the wine glass in my hands. “I was afraid. Of wanting too much. Of losing you.”
She lifts her glass. “You could’ve just said you liked me, you know. I might’ve baked you a cake. Or kidnapped you.”
“Saul came to see me,” I continue. “Told me you were struggling. That you missed.” I stop. “That you weren’t whole.”
She waits.
“He loves you. He wanted you to have what you needed, even if that meant sharing you with men he has every reason to hate.” I meet her eyes.
“That’s what love looks like, Stevie. Not unlocked doors and careful schedules.
Action. Risk. Being willing to lose everything for the chance that she might be happy. ”
Her eyes are wet. I file it away. Keep going.
“I’m here because I should have been here months ago.
Because leaving notes was cowardice and I’m done being a coward.
Because I want.” My voice catches. I let it.
“I want to know who you are now. Not who you were when you testified. Not who you were when you broke into my house. Who you are here, in this life, with this bakery and this name and this future you’re building. ”
“Dario.”
“I’m not asking for anything. Not tonight. I just needed you to know.” I set down my glass. “I’m done hiding behind doors. I’m here. And I’d like to stay, if you’ll let me.”
She stands up.
For a moment I think I’ve said too much, pushed too far. Months of careful control and I’ve ruined it in one speech.
Then she’s in front of me. Reaching out. Taking my hand.
“Upstairs, Marchetti. Before I start writing sonnets about your tragic, brooding ass and scare off all my customers.”
I follow her upstairs.
Her apartment’s small.
I knew it would be. Saul described it during our conversation, one bedroom, a modest kitchen, a living room that doubles as everything else.
But knowing and seeing are different things.
She leads me inside. Watches my face as I take it in.
Cozy. Warm. Full of color in a way I didn’t expect. Teal pillows on the couch, bright curtains, a yellow throw blanket draped over an armchair. Evidence of someone fighting against the beige she mentioned hating.
“I know it’s not what you’re used to,” she says, and I realize I’ve been silent too long. “It’s small and the water pressure is terrible but it’s…”
“It’s you.”
She stops.
“It’s you,” I repeat. “That’s all that matters.”
She turns away, moves toward the kitchen, starts fussing with glasses that don’t need fussing.
I let her.
I look around. Catalog the details the way I’ve been trained to catalog everything.
Her bedroom door’s open just slightly. Through the gap I can see a flash of grey fabric on the bed. A shirt.
I look closer. My shirt.
The one I told her she could keep.
She wears it. Still.
“Do you want something to drink?” she asks from the kitchen, voice pitching up like a flight attendant during turbulence. “Wine? Tea? Aphrodisiac in a mug?”
I cross the room. She turns at the sound of my footsteps. Her back’s against the counter and I’m in front of her, close enough to touch, not touching yet.
“Dario?”
“You kept my shirt.”
She blinks. “What?”
I nod toward the bedroom. “My shirt.”
She bites her lip, unrepentant. “You didn’t expect me not to become emotionally attached to it, did you? It smells like mobster and wall sex.”
God, she’s adorable when she deflects.
“I’m a sentimental hoarder. I’m in therapy. Was in therapy.”
“Stevie.” Her name comes out rough.
“Yes?”
“I’m going to kiss you now.”
She doesn’t answer. Just reaches up, fists her hand in my shirt, and pulls me down to her.
Her mouth is soft. She tastes like wine and almonds. My hands find her waist, her back, the curve of her hip. She makes a sound against my lips, and I feel it everywhere.
More. I want more.
I press her back against the counter. She goes willingly, arms wrapping around my neck, pulling me closer.
The kiss deepens. Her teeth catch my bottom lip and I growl, a sound I’ve never made in my life, and suddenly my hands are in her hair and her leg is wrapping around mine and we’re not kissing anymore, we’re consuming each other.
“Dario.”
My mouth finds her neck. Her collarbone. A spot just below her ear that makes her gasp.
“Stevie, wait.” I stop. Pull back far enough to see her face.
She’s flushed. Breathing hard. Her lips are swollen and her eyes are dark and she’s looking at me like she wants to devour me whole.
I’m doing it again. Like at my house. Rushing. Taking. This isn’t me. She’s addictive.
“Did I break you? Should I reboot the mobster?” she asks.
“No. God, no.” I laugh, breathless. “I just. I need a second. My brain is doing something very inconvenient right now.”
“Inconvenient?”
“I want to do this right. We haven’t exactly had a normal trajectory.”
She grins and nips my jaw. “Breaking into your house. Leaving cookies. Sex in your foyer. Being relocated to another state. You know. The usual courtship.”
I laugh. The sound surprises me. I don’t laugh often. But she’s looking at me with that expression, the one that sees through every defense I’ve built, and I can’t help it.
“So if we’re not having sex in my, foyer slash living room, which is tragic, what would you like to do?” she asks.
“Talk. Without notes or unlocked doors or months between conversations.” I tug her toward the couch. “And then maybe kiss some more. Pull you into my lap. If you’re amenable.”
“I’m amenable.”
“Good.”
We sit. She curls into my side like she’s been waiting to fit herself against me and is only now getting the chance.
We talk for hours.
She tells me about the bakery. The regulars. Martha who ignores opening hours and Tom with his powdered sugar mustache. She tells me about learning to be Zoey, about the days she couldn’t get out of bed and the days she baked until her arms ached because it was the only thing that made sense.
She tells me about Saul. How he stayed that first week. How he calls every day. How he’s fighting to visit more, bending rules that shouldn’t bend.
She tells me about missing Enzo. The burned eggs. The terrible movies. The way he looked at her like she was worth protecting.
I listen. File it away. But differently this time. Not as data to be used, but as pieces of her. The parts I missed while I was hiding behind doors.
And I tell her things too.
About my grandmother’s amaretti. About the family I was born into and the one I chose. About the years I spent building walls so high I forgot what they were protecting. About seeing her at the trial. The way she saw me and what that meant.
“I filed you away,” I admit. “The woman with the panic attack and the honest eyes. The one who wasn’t afraid to chase what she wanted. I told myself you were a complication. A risk. Something to be managed from a distance.”
“And now?”
“Now you’re not a file.” I brush a strand of hair from her face. “You’re the whole archive. Every thought I have leads back to you.”
She kisses me again.
This one is softer. The kind of kiss that isn’t trying to go anywhere, just exists for its own sake.
When she pulls back, her eyes are bright. “Stay tonight.”
“Stevie.”
“Not like wall sex round two. I mean stay. Like, actually sleep here. I have a couch. It’s sentient and possibly evil, but it exists.”
“Yes.”
She blinks. “Yes?”
“I’ll stay.”
I do.
The couch is a disaster.
It’s too short for my frame. The cushions are lumpy in all the wrong places. My feet hang off the end and every time I shift, something springs into my spine at an unfortunate angle.
I’ve slept in penthouses. Five-star hotels. Sheets with thread counts higher than most people’s salaries.
I’ve never slept on a couch. I’ve never wanted to.
But Stevie’s in the next room, wearing my shirt, I saw her pull it on as she said goodnight, deliberately, watching my face, and I’m not leaving. Not for any mattress. Not for any luxury in the world.
She appears in the doorway around midnight. “Can’t sleep?”
“The couch hates me.”
She laughs softly. Pads over. Sits on the edge, which puts her hip against my side and makes everything both better and worse.
“I can get you a pillow. Like, six pillows. Build you a whole structural support system out of decorative throws.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re six feet of man on a five-foot couch.”
“Five eleven. And I’ve survived worse.”
“Have you though?” She raises an eyebrow.
She’s right.
“It’s fine.”
“Yeah, sure. If by ‘fine’ you mean you’ll need a chiropractor and an exorcism by morning.”
I roll my eyes. “I’ll survive.”
She pokes my leg with her foot. “You ever actually slept on a couch before? Or is this your first peasant experience?”
“I’ve done harder things.”
She snorts. “Bet you have, pretty boy.”
“Come here,” I say.
She hesitates. Just for a moment. Then she’s lying down next to me, pressed against my chest on this terrible couch that suddenly isn’t terrible at all.
“This is… illegal levels of cozy,” she says.
“I’m reporting you to the authorities.”
She yawns. “Good luck. I bribed them with cookies. Works on badges and bad boys.”
I wrap my arm around her. She fits against me perfectly. Her head on my chest, her hand over my heart, her breathing slowing as the minutes pass.
“Dario?”
“Mm?”
“I’m really glad you came. Like, embarrassingly glad. Gold-star-sticker-on-my-emotional-calendar glad.”
“I’m glad you let me in.”
She tilts her head up. Kisses my jaw. Settles back down. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, Stevie.”
I don’t sleep for a long time. Not because the couch is uncomfortable, though it is. Not because my mind is racing, though it is. Because I want to remember this.
Her weight against me. Her breath on my chest. The smell of her shampoo and the small sounds she makes when she’s dreaming.
I’ve built an empire on control. On planning. On knowing what comes next.
I didn’t plan this.
And somehow, that makes it better.