9. Ghosts of Zoe #2
The air left Luca. I heard it. A quiet, broken exhale that he caught too late.
Ava looked up immediately. "Did I do it wrong?"
"No." Luca's voice came out rough enough that he had to clear it. "No, baby. You did it right."
"Then what comes next?"
He stared at her. I saw him try. I saw the fight move through him, brutal and silent. His shoulders squared. His hands curled against the blanket. This man who could face men swinging fists at his head could not find one lullaby line without looking like it might finish him.
"I don't remember," he said.
It was a lie. Ava knew it too. Her eyes flicked to mine, uncertain now.
I stepped into the room before I overthought it. "Maybe we can remember together another night," I said softly. "Sometimes songs hide when we want them too much."
Ava studied me with solemn suspicion. "That happens?"
"All the time."
Luca stood too fast. "I'll be right back."
He bent, kissed Ava's forehead, and walked out before she could ask another question. Ava watched the empty doorway.
"Daddy's sad," she whispered.
I sat beside her and smoothed one curl back from her cheek. "Yeah, sweetheart. He is."
"Because of Mommy?"
I swallowed. "Because he loved her very much."
Ava leaned into her pillow, still rubbing that satin tag. "I loved her too."
My chest ached. "I know you did."
She closed her eyes after that, but she didn't sleep right away. I stayed until her breathing evened out, until her fingers went still on the turtle, until the blue night-light turned the room into a small underwater world. Then I went looking for Luca.
I found him in the kitchen with the lights off.
Only the glow from the pool slipped through the glass doors. Luca stood at the sink, both hands braced on the counter, head bowed like he was trying to breathe through something with teeth.
I stopped near the island. "She's asleep."
He nodded once.
Water ticked softly from the faucet. Outside, palm fronds scraped against each other in the night breeze.
"I know the next line," he said.
My chest tightened. "I figured."
His shoulders rose with a breath he didn't finish. "'Close your eyes, little tide, morning brings you back to my side.'"
The words were simple. Sweet. Devastating in the dark.
"She made it up. Ava cried every night between two and four in the morning like she had a standing meeting with misery. Zoe walked circles around the nursery singing nonsense because she said real lullabies were emotionally manipulative."
A laugh slipped from me. "That sounds like her."
His head turned slightly. "You don't know her."
"No," I said. "But I believe she'd have opinions about manipulative lullabies."
The faintest movement touched his mouth. A memory brushing past. Then it vanished.
"I couldn't say it to Ava," he said. "My own kid asked me for one line of a song, and I froze."
"She asked you for a piece of her mother." I moved closer. "That's not small."
"It should be. It's a song."
"It's not just a song to you."
His scarred fingers tightened on the counter. "I hate that she has to build Zoe out of scraps. Stories. Pictures. Half a song."
"She's also building her out of you."
His jaw flexed.
"And maybe she needs more than the pretty parts," I said. "Maybe you both do."
He turned then, and the look he gave me would have made a smarter woman retreat.
I stayed.
"I don't talk about her badly."
"I'm not asking you to." I stepped close enough to see the pulse at his throat. "I'm saying you're allowed to talk about her honestly."
His eyes held mine.
"She burned pancakes. She threw remotes at walls. She hated pictures before coffee." My voice softened. "She made up songs when she was exhausted and probably scared and maybe a little angry that motherhood wasn't perfect."
Luca's breath hitched.
"That doesn't make what you had smaller," I whispered. "It makes her real."
The silence that followed felt fragile enough to bruise.
"I don't know how to do that," he said.
"Remember her?"
"Without losing her again."
I placed my hand over his where it gripped the counter. His skin was warm. Tense. He didn't move away.
"You won't," I said. "Ava won't either."
His fingers shifted under mine, not quite holding on, not quite letting go.
For a moment, we stood there with Zoe between us—not as a ghost or a warning, but as a woman who had lived loudly enough to leave laughter inside the grief.
Then Luca looked at me.
Not at the album. Not toward the stairs where Ava slept. At me.
The air changed.
His gaze dropped to our joined hands as though he'd only just realized mine was there. Slowly, he turned his palm beneath mine.
His fingers closed around my hand, rough and warm. The whole night narrowed to that contact—the counter against my back, pool light wavering across the ceiling, his thumb dragging once over my knuckles.
"Riley," he said.
It sounded like warning and want.
The movement was so small I barely breathed through it.
His fingers closed around mine, rough and warm, and for one suspended second, the whole night narrowed to that contact.
Sink at my back. Pool light wavering across the ceiling.
His thumb dragging once over my knuckles like he was testing whether I was real.
I should have stepped back. I knew that. I knew the shape of all the reasons. Ava asleep upstairs. Luca grieving in front of me. Me with my heart too open, my body too quick to remember the weight of him from one reckless night I had never managed to file away as a mistake.
Instead, I whispered, "I'm here."
Something broke in his face.
He moved so fast I gasped. One second his hand was around mine, the next he had me pinned against the counter, his body hard against mine, one hand braced beside my hip and the other sliding into my hair as his mouth came down on mine.
There was nothing careful in the kiss. It was hunger, grief, relief, all tangled together so fiercely I couldn't separate one from another.
His mouth took mine like he had been starving and hating himself for starving.
I clutched his shirt, pulled him closer, and the sound he made against my lips went straight through me.
"Luca," I breathed.
His hand left my hair and skimmed down my side, over my waist, my hip, then back up beneath the loose edge of my shirt, palm hot against bare skin. My knees weakened. The counter caught me. He caught me harder.
He kissed my jaw, the corner of my mouth, then returned to my lips with a roughness that made me forget the dark kitchen, the grief, every rule I had tried to hold between us.
I wanted him. Not the stranger from the club. Not the fantasy I had tried to bury under professionalism and folded laundry and bedtime routines.
Him.
The man who carried too much. The father who knew night-light colors and blueberry bowls. The widower who had finally let me see the wound and then kissed me like he could crawl out of it through my mouth.
His hand slid higher under my shirt. Then he froze. Completely.
His forehead dropped to mine. His breath came hard, uneven, almost angry.
"No." The word scraped out of him.
I blinked, dizzy. "Luca?"
He stepped back so abruptly the loss of him felt like cold water.
"I can't." He stared at me, chest rising and falling. "Christ, Riley. I want to. But I can't. Not right now."
My lips still burned. My skin still held the shape of his hand. He looked at me like he wanted to come back and like wanting it terrified him more than leaving.
And then he was gone—already moving, already choosing—leaving me alone in the kitchen with the echo of his touch and the hollow ache it left behind.