Chapter 25
Tilly
I’m still in his arms when I realize I’m crying again.
I pull back a little, enough to see his face. His eyes are red too, like he’s been fighting the same war inside.
He picks me up and walks us inside the room. He puts me on the bed and sits across from me on my desk chair.
This setup reminds me of when I went to him after the text message.
God, that feels ages ago.
“Tilly, I need you to tell me something honestly.” he looks at me, and I shiver.
“Ok.” I nod, but not exactly sure why.
“You hate crying. I know that, so don’t try to deny it. But… why?”
Shoot, shoot, shoot.
“I don’t know Luca.” I look away.
I feel his fingers on my chin as he gently tilts it to force me to look at him.
One singular tear slips down, and he swipes it away with his thumb.
“Please.” He looks at me earnestly, and I breathe in.
“Because it makes me feel icky. Every tear that falls burns me, and I feel like it slowly digs a line down my face, scarring me.”
He clenches his eyes shut like I’m hurting him.
“I feel weak, and helpless, and broken. Like every tear drags a part of me down until I can’t get up.”
“Oh, Tilly,” he guts up and sits next to me, pulling me into a hug.
He holds my head to his chest, and I let his heartbeat calm me down.
“You have no idea how badly it hurts when you talk about yourself like that,” he whispers against my hair.
“I don’t have to tell you–” I start, but he cuts me off.
“Yes, you do. Because it hurts more when I see you hurting yourself, and I don’t know why.”
He takes my hand, and I realize I was digging my nail in again.
He looks at it and then at me. “Did you ever notice this?” He shows me my hand.
I look at it and don’t see anything weird. “What?”
“Tilly, you are actively hurting yourself day after day! Remember when you told me you abuse yourself, nothing on the outside, only on the inside?”
He repeats the words I told him when I admitted my nights. “Yeah.”
“Well, it’s a lie, because this cut never disappears,” he points to the cut, and I realize he’s right.
I used to notice more, but it sort of blurred into my being.
You don’t notice your nose, because it’s always there.
“Every day, you dig into it more and more, and that hurts me, Tilly.”
He looks at me desperately, and I hate myself a little more. “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head, “No, Tilly. Don’t apologize for yourself.” Then he pauses before looking at me with a million different forms of hurt on his face. “Tilly. Do you still get the bad nights?”
I sharply intake a breath.
One part of me is screaming to tell the truth.
The other one is telling me to lie.
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“No.” he leans his head on my shoulder, and I thread my fingers through his hair. “How much?”
“Every night.” My brain apparently just decided to go all out.
He looks at me, and I realize his eyes are glassy. “Tilly–” his voice cracks.
“Don’t look at me like that, Luca,” I warn when my tears threaten to spill again. “Like I’m a disappointment."
“Tilly! Stop calling yourself everything you aren’t! You’re not a disappointment. You’re not a mistake. You’re not broken. You’re not stupid. And you. Don’t. Need. Fixing.”
He looks at me, punctuating each word makng sure it hits the target.
And every time, it hits exactly where he is shooting the words.
It feels like he’s poking bruises.
But it also feels like he’s slowly putting all the pieces of my heart that shattered in his room back together.
We sit there for what feels like forever, him resting on my wall, me resting on his chest, and time seems to slow down.
“The nights were peaceful when I admitted it to you. It came back when you went to Italy, and never went away.” I admit.
He just sighs, and I feel his breath on my head as me rests his head on mine.
“So…” I whisper, because silence suddenly feels too loud. “What now?”
He lets out a small laugh. “Honest?”
“Yeah.”
“I want us to be a thing, Tilly.”
I look up at him, and he smiles.
“This?” I echoed.
“I know you hate pressure, T. I know you hate labels and expectations and all that.. But I love you.”
He looks at me like I’m the last thing holding him to earth.
Like I’m the only gravity left.
My chest hurts.
“What about America?”
He exhales through his nose, shaking his head. “I don’t care about America, Tilly. I can chase my dream here. With you.”
My heart twists. “But… that’s your dream team. L.A. You’ve wanted that since you were twelve.”
He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Can I tell you a secret?”
I nod.
“I started playing for my grandfather,” he says quietly. “You know that part.”
I do.
He told me back at camp, when we were fourteen, how his grandfather used to take him to the court after school, how the smell of sunblock and sand meant home.
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Well,” he goes on, voice lower now, as each word hurts, “somewhere along the line, it stopped being about him. My grandma started watching my games, and she smiled for the first time in years. My parents stopped complaining about the costs. Everyone suddenly noticed me.”
He gives a shaky laugh, one with no joy in it. “I realized I wasn’t playing for me anymore. I was performing. For them. For anyone who’d clap when I won. For my grandma’s smile. For my parents, rare ‘we’re proud of you.’ moment.”
He runs his hands through his hair. “I love the game, Tilly. I really do. But loving something isn’t enough when you’re doing it to feel seen.”
I wrap my arms around him. His breath hitches against my shoulder.
“You’re not some trophy, Luca,” I whisper.
He pulls back, eyes glassy. “My grandma always loved my sister more. My parents never said I love you. Not once. But the minute I started winning, they suddenly cared. They said they loved my talent. That they were proud of my game. And I got addicted to it. I needed to keep earning love I should’ve already had. ”
My chest aches for him.
All I want to do is fix it.
Stitch him back together with the right words.
But instead, I hold his hand, tracing my thumb across his skin until I find the courage to speak.
“None of that is true here, not with us. Not with me. I love you for you. Even if you never played another game again. Even if you lost every match for the rest of your life. You’d still be you. And that’s the only part I care about.”
He blinks, like he can’t process that anyone could ever mean it.
“Yeah, but we met through volleyball. Everything I have is because of it.”
“Maybe,” I say softly, “but volleyball didn’t make us friends. You did. Volleyball didn’t make me care about you. You did. The game just gave me a reason to notice.”
He stares at me for a long time—eyes searching mine like he’s trying to find the lie.
He won’t find it.
Then he smiles.
“God, Tilly, how can you just convince me like that?”
I shrug, but smile back at him.
We sit there for a second.
I’m resting my head on his chest while he draws patterns on my arm.
“I’m down.”
He blinks. “Down?”
I nod, smiling a little. “To try. I want to be with you, Luca Rossi.”
“Yeah?” he breathes.
“Yes, Luca.”
He grins. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to hear you say that, Tilly Harper.”
I laugh against his chest, the sound muffled by his shirt. “You’re such a loser.”
“But you love it,” he murmurs, kissing the top of my head.
I press a little closer, smiling. “But, on one condition.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“I get to steal your hoodies whenever I want,” I say, looking up at him with a teasing grin. “They make men’s hoodies so much better, and I just feel happier when I smell you in them.”
He laughs, a warm, breathless sound, and rests his head on mine. “Deal, anything for you.”
We stay like that for a while, and for once, my mind is not having a war between two sides.
Then he says, “Okay, serious question. How are we telling everyone?”
I look up at him, grinning. “Uh, definitely not in front of the team. Do you want to get killed by a coach?”
He laughs. “Matt will lose his mind.”
“Oh, absolutely,” I say. “And don’t even get me started on Yana. She’ll start planning our wedding.”
He groans, and I roll my eyes. “Don’t pretend you hate that .”
He snorts. “You’re impossible.”
“And you’re stuck with me now.”
He smiles, brushing his thumb along my cheek like he can’t quite believe I’m real.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “And I’m exactly where I want to be.”