Chapter 30 #2
I turned to find Donna DeLuca standing a few feet away in a dark wool coat, sunglasses pushed into her hair despite the weak sunlight. She gazed at Mila, her smile warm enough to start a fire all on its own. “Hey, beautiful.”
The change in Mila's face happened so quickly it caught me off guard. Surprise flashed across her features, then dissolved into a happiness so obvious there was no hiding it.
Everyone else saw it too.
“Oh my God,” Noah whispered behind me. “There are multiple secret relationships happening?”
“Shut up,” Keisha muttered, clearly delighted.
Mila appeared completely blindsided. “Why didn’t you tell me you’d be here?”
Donna shrugged as she approached us. “I wanted to surprise you.” She beamed. “Surprise. Although I should clarify that whatever weird matchmaking operation Ethan’s running had nothing to do with me.”
“I prefer the term visionary,” Ethan replied.
She glanced in his direction, then bit her lip. “I haven’t told a soul about you, for obvious reasons. But honey….” Her eyes sparkled. “I’m sure happy to see you.”
Mila looked wrecked in the best way humanly possible.
Ethan leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Wanna know something? Mila looks at Donna the same way Luka looks at you, when he’s forgotten to hide it.”
I couldn’t say a word.
Donna took Mila’s hand without hesitation, a totally natural gesture.
What brought a lump to my throat?
Mila looked down at their joined hands as though she’d forgotten people could do that in daylight.
The silence around our little group lasted roughly two seconds before Ethan clapped his hands. “Excellent. The gays continue multiplying. Next stop—taking over the world.”
Keisha nearly choked laughing.
Even Luka smiled at that.
Standing beside him in the middle of Milan with sunlight catching against the cathedral and Olympic crowds surging around us, I realized something.
He looked like someone who had stopped searching for the exit.
Luka
By early afternoon, Milan no longer resembled a city hosting the Olympics so much as a temporary world assembled beyond the reach of ordinary rules, where athletes wandered crowded streets without accreditation checks every twenty feet and nobody seemed particularly interested in policing joy.
I had not realized until today how exhausting constant vigilance had become.
I was walking through streets full of noise and sunlight and people living ordinary lives.
This could become addictive.
The Americans moved through the city as though belonging everywhere came naturally to them.
Nathan and Brooke argued passionately about whether Italian gelato deserved its reputation while Noah inserted himself into the debate despite contributing nothing except volume.
Ethan, meanwhile, managed to flirt with both a violinist outside Castello Sforzesco and the woman selling postcards nearby within the span of five minutes.
“You’re incorrigible,” Keisha informed him.
“And yet you love me. Everyone loves me.” Ethan threw his arms wide to encompass the street around him.
“That’s debatable, and you’re delusional,” she snapped back.
He pressed a hand dramatically to his chest. “That hurts.”
“No,” Nathan said. “What hurts is hearing you attempt charm in multiple languages.”
Their laughter folded into the surrounding noise of Milan, into the traffic and music and conversations spilling from cafés. I found myself laughing too, not out of politeness or obligation, but because being around them felt alarmingly easy.
Dean stayed beside me as we walked, near enough that our shoulders brushed now and then whenever the streets grew crowded.
Neither of us acknowledged it, and that silence carried its own tension.
Every brief contact registered instantly: the heat of him through layers of winter clothing, the unconscious way he adjusted his pace to mine, the fact that he never once crowded me after everything that had happened between us.
That restraint affected me more than pursuit would have.
I expected anger, persuasion, perhaps even distance. Instead Dean remained exactly what he had been from the beginning: patient, steady, impossible to brace against because he never demanded anything from me except honesty.
Which made disappointing him feel unbearable.
We stopped eventually near Parco Sempione, the winter-bare trees casting long shadows across the pathways while Olympic visitors drifted between food stalls and temporary exhibits.
Donna and Mila lagged several steps behind the rest of us, entirely absorbed in each other.
Watching Mila with Donna unsettled me in ways I had not anticipated.
Donna touched her constantly in casual, unconscious ways that would have meant nothing to anybody else passing by: fingers grazing Mila’s wrist during conversation, a hand settling briefly against her back crossing the street, shoulders bumping together whenever Mila muttered sarcasm under her breath.
Mila, who usually carried herself with the sharp discipline of somebody expecting judgment from every direction, looked softer around her. Younger, almost.
At one point Donna laughed at a comment I missed, and Mila smiled before she could suppress it, open affection flashing across her face so naturally that my chest tightened unexpectedly at the sight.
Bo?e.
I had known Mila for years. We’d shared victories, failures, injuries, exhaustion, silence. Yet standing in Milan watching her hold another woman’s hand in broad daylight made me realize how little of herself she had ever been permitted to show openly.
“Hey, Dean,” Ethan called ahead of us, “your mom officially rejected our invitation, by the way.”
Dean laughed. “Yeah, she told me.”
Ethan’s eyes gleamed. “Oh, I get it. She’s abandoned us to go off in pursuit of Olympic-level retail therapy.”
He snorted. “She said she wanted one afternoon where nobody discussed protein intake.”
Nathan grinned. “Wow. It’s like she knows us.”
“She should do by now, she spends enough vacation time around you guys.”
Noah pointed at him, grinning. “Your mother likes me best though.”
Dean laughed. “Absolutely not.”
“She called me charming.”
“She called you loud.”
He pouted. “Duh. Same thing.”
The group dissolved into laughter again.
I walked in the middle of all of it feeling increasingly detached from the version of life I had accepted as inevitable.
None of this should have felt extraordinary: friends wandering through a city together; athletes arguing over food; couples touching casually in public without scanning crowds beforehand; Dean handing me half of a pastry Ethan forced on him earlier because he noticed I had stopped paying attention to my own hunger.
Normal. This feels normal.
I found myself trying to imagine it continuing. Tomorrow. Next month. Next year.
That should have frightened me more than it did.
The realization slowed my steps before I consciously registered why.
Dean noticed immediately. “Are you all right?” I didn’t miss the quiet note of concern in his voice.
I took a moment to study him, noting the openness in his expression, his patience… the complete absence of fear whenever he stood beside me.
And then I couldn’t unsee it.
This was why walking away from him had already started destroying me. I spent weeks fearing that wanting him would feel catastrophic. Instead I found myself beside a man who made the world feel larger, brighter, frighteningly possible.