6. Paolo
SIX
Paolo
"You left this in my car," I said, setting the small terracotta pot on her counter before she'd finished saying hello.
Rosa blinked, then laughed—a bright, surprised sound that always did something to my chest. "You remembered the name?" She cupped the little bud as if it might fly away.
"Piccola," I said. "Small one." My hands brushed hers. The heat of her palms, the faint citrus-soil scent at the base of her throat, made the word easier and harder at once.
She tucked a stray hair behind her ear, and I watched the hollow at her throat deepen. I should have been counting numbers, balancing ledgers, but instead I was memorizing the tilt of her chin. "It's perfect," she said. Her fingers lingered on the pot. "You didn't have to?—"
"I want to," I answered. My voice stayed low because the shop was full of neighbors and Lucia minded the gossip like she tended the vases. "You killed a rose last month. I thought this might apologize."
She huffed a little, mock-offended. "Killed? It was an accident."
"It seemed deliberate," I said, meaning it as flirt. She rolled her eyes and said, "You are impossible," then bent to place Piccola on a sunlit shelf where dust and light made a little altar.
We moved in a rhythm that had become domestic fast: I carried closed boxes to the back, she labeled, we argued about the right depth for soil.
I loved how she braced on one hip, how her sweater hugged the line of her shoulder.
When we reached for the same packet of seeds our fingers brushed and didn't let go.
"You stare," she accused, when I let my hand stay on hers longer than necessary.
"Can't help it," I said. "You look good in dirt."
She laughed and shoved me. "Smooth," she said. "You give better advice in the mornings."
"Only because I sleep poorly," I lied, but the truth felt safer: I stayed awake because I wanted to watch her.
Later, closing time. The light thinned to gold through the shopfront. A late delivery thudded against the door; Lucia hustled it in and waved us both away with a conspiratorial grin. "Take ten—talk," she said, disappearing toward the espresso machine.
Rosa rubbed her arms. "I forgot to close the windows. It's colder than I thought."
I should have left. I shouldn't be here every evening; I had ledgers to check, calls to ignore. But I hadn't left. I took my coat off—heavy, wool, my grandmother's moth-silver scarf folded inside—and stepped close. The scent of my cologne vanished under rosemary and damp earth. She shivered.
"Here," I said, the word simple and certain. I placed my coat on her shoulders. The fabric pooled around her small frame, and she gave a noise I wanted to bottle. Up close, the curve of her collarbone caught a stray sunbeam. My hand stayed at the nape of her neck, palm warm against her skin.
"You're ridiculous," she murmured, but she didn't reach for the coat. Her fingers threaded through the wool at my chest, and I felt something loosen inside me.
"Keep it," I said before I could measure the propriety of it. "Until the morning."
She blinked. "You can't just hand out coats like that."
"Watch me." My thumb brushed the tender spot beneath her ear. The contact was accidental and not. I tasted salt at the corner of her mouth. "It looks good on you."
She laughed, a softer sound now. "You don't have to be dangerous to be romantic," she said.
"Romance is a ledger of small debts," I told her. She smiled in that way that made me want to read every line. "Consider this an early balance."
She left the coat the next morning, shrugged into it as she watered seedlings.
The wool pooled at her elbows; Piccola sat on the counter like a tiny, defiant thing.
When she bent to examine a bloom, the coat slipped, revealing the slope of her neck again.
I wanted to map every inch with my fingertips.
"Coffee?" she offered. "I made too much."
"Antonio says caffeine fuels bad math," I said, accepting a cup and the excuse to stand behind her. My hand found the small of her back as she reached for a pair of pruning shears. The contact was light, a steadying thing. Heat pooled behind my ribs. "Careful with those."
Her laugh was a bell. "Tell me something useful, then. How's the moretti ledger looking?"
"Same as me—overcompensating for sins I can't remember," I said, and the joke tasted like ash. She glanced back, eyes steady, and for a second the shop felt like a room of our own.
"Would you like to earn some kindness credits?" she asked.
"Always," I said.
That afternoon Matteo turned up. He hadn't been expected; his posture filled the doorway with a family gravity that raised the shop's temperature. He smiled at me polite and cold.
"Paolo," he said. "I have a list for you at the palazzo. Matteo's voice was efficient; he tossed a paper packet toward me like a business card. "Family needs you present."
Rosa's hands stilled on a wreath. "Family," she said, in the small, curious voice she used when she tried on words that didn't belong to her.
"I'm here," I said quickly. "I can take care of it tonight."
Matteo's eyes slid to her, then sharpened. "This is not a place for delicate things."
Protective snapped through me before I chose reason. "She's not a delicate thing," I said. My tone was flat; I didn't need to enlist the family in these gentler matters. Matteo's lip twitched.
"A man should be careful about what he invites into his life," he said, and it sounded like a warning and a ledger entry. "We do not need complications."
Rosa met his gaze and didn't flinch. "I run a shop," she said. "I don't complicate things. I make them better."
There was something about the way she said it that shut Matteo down, so he left with a curt nod and a watchful look in my direction as if he measured my will against a scale.
After the door closed, Luca—no, Lucia, not Luca—patted my arm conspiratorially and vanished.
Rosa exhaled as if she'd been holding the air in.
"You always do that," she said. "Defend."
"I don't like being judged," I said. "Not when the things I've done are already heavy in my head."
She touched my cheek, surprising me with the intimacy of it. "Then don't let the past make decisions for you now," she said, quiet. "Be present, Paolo."
I wanted to tell her every flash that clawed at me at night: roses and soil, a laugh I couldn't place, a name that came in fragments. I wanted to tell her that sometimes I woke with dirt under my nails and didn't know if it belonged to me or to a nightmare.
Instead, I left with a promise—I would be present. I would show up. I would shrug off Matteo's weight and, when possible, deliver roses.
We cooked together that night in my apartment because Rosa said she wanted to see if I could actually boil pasta without consulting a ledger.
She stood on a stool by my counter to reach a jar of basil.
Her hair had come down in a tumble, and sunlight through the window caught the copper in it.
She moved with a familiarity that made my lungs too small.
"We're out of oregano," she said, and her mouth made a small, frustrated line. I reached for the jar.
Our hands collided over the same tin, and she laughed, breath warm against my knuckles. I stepped closer so there was no distance left between us. The basil smelled like summer. My fingers brushed her wrist, and electricity ran a simple path to the base of my skull.
"Stop watching me," she said.
"I'm not watching," I lied, and kissed the inside of her wrist like it was a secret I was allowed to know. Her laugh turned into a gasp.
Flour exploded from a tipped packet. We both grabbed for it, and my hands ended in her hips, steadying her. Flour dusted our shirts and stuck to the corners of her mouth. She tipped forward and I closed the small gap.
The first kiss started slow—searching, hands mapping shoulders and the small hollow behind her ear.
Her mouth was sweet with basil and salt.
Then it deepened with a greedy, clumsy hunger.
I pressed my palms into the small of her back and felt the press of cotton and muscle.
She tasted of rosemary and the faint tang of wine.
She broke away, eyes dark and laughing. "You have flour on your nose," she said, and before I could protest she leaned in and wiped it away with her thumb. The touch set more than taste ablaze. "You are impossible," she accused again, softer.
"Only for you," I said, and meant it.
We cooked badly and perfectly. We sampled sauce together and fed each other pieces of charred bread. When the night fell, the apartment shrank to the size of our breathing.
At some point the laughter thinned. I felt the old, slippery guilt come up like bile.
The flashes had been quieter lately but they were still there—images that slid under my skin: a laugh I couldn't place, hands in soil, the name of a woman that clung to the edges of my memory like a moth to a lamp.
"I need to tell you something," I said, the sentence brittle. Her hand stilled on the rim of the pan. "I promised I would try to be honest."
She turned toward me, eyes steady. "Do it," she said.
I held her gaze and decided to let the ledger open. "Sometimes I have flashes," I said. "They come like broken film—roses, wet soil, a woman laughing, dirt under my nails. I don't know what I did. I don't know who I hurt."
Her thumb pressed into my wrist. "You're telling me because?"
"Because I don't want secrets that could make you unsafe," I said. "Because if I hurt someone?—"
"Paolo." Her voice stopped me. "If you hurt someone years ago, that's not the man standing here now."
"Maybe," I admitted. "Maybe it's the same man with holes in him.
There is one fragment that repeats—there's a name, and a place.
The name is Isabella and the place is the old chapel by Porto Vecchio.
I don't know if it was tender or terrible.
I don't know the sentence that followed. But I've been holding it."