9. Noemi
NINE
Noemi
"You're actually going?" Luca's grin was all teeth and mischief across the lab table.
I rolled my coffee between my palms. "Going where?"
"To him. To tell him he can't make decisions about your life without you." He tapped the screen where my unread messages blinked. "Or are you going to let him keep hiding behind silence?"
I should have told him no. I should have stayed safe in neat routines and evidence and distance. Instead I stood, shoved my badge into my pocket, and left Luca staring after me like I'd just cut the electricity on his favorite show.
Outside, air tasted like rain. My pulse was an animal under my ribs. I told myself this wasn't about needing protection. It was about needing honesty. About not letting someone else decide the terms.
Angelo was waiting by his car, hands folded, coat unbuttoned despite the chill.
He looked smaller without his suit jacket cinched, somehow more present.
I felt ridiculous noticing his exposed collarbone, the faint pale scar at his temple.
His jaw was set. He watched me come up the steps with the same patient attention that had started this whole dangerous thing.
"Noemi." He didn't smile. His voice settled my chest even as it frayed my temper.
"You texted me and then—" I stopped. The message sat between us like a charged thing. He had said, If I can't keep you safe, I won't keep you at all. Three words that sounded like an ultimatum and a promise.
"I sent a coward's message," he said bluntly. "And then I let my family speak for me." His fingers flexed on the steering wheel. "I'm sorry."
"You vanished," I said. "You let them brand me a liability at your table. You—" My mouth went dry. "You made choices without me."
He stepped closer. Close enough that I could see the tiny muscles in his neck. Close enough that I could smell the dark soap he used, the faint burn of cigarette smoke under it. My pulse thudded against ribs that suddenly felt too small.
"I know." He didn't argue. He opened the passenger door and took something from the seat. He held out a notebook, its edges soft with handling. "I kept this."
My fingers closed on it before I realized. The cover was worn, his handwriting on the inside page the same small, neat script he'd used in the folder he'd given me once. I flipped to a random page.
He had written about mornings. About the way I said a word wrong and then corrected myself with a little flick of my lip. About the crescent birthmark near my clavicle, noted without anyone's permission. A list of things that were not evidence—just observations, tiny and intimate.
I swallowed. "You stole my notebook."
"I borrowed it." His mouth quirked—half-defensive, half-pleading. "I thought if I catalogued you, I could keep you safe. I didn't know how to do anything else."
There it was, the clean confession. I thought of all the nights I told myself watching was safer than saying. Of how empty safety felt when it meant I had no say.
"You watched me," I said. "And you didn't tell me."
His hand hovered over mine. The space between them hummed. "I watched because I chose to," he said. "Because I wanted to know you. Because I couldn't stand the idea of something happening and not?—"
"Not what?" I cut in. My voice was thin. "Not being able to stop it? Not being the one who failed?"
He closed his mouth. For a second his expression was everything he'd kept locked away: guilt, anger at himself, a raw need to fix what he'd damaged.
"Not losing you," he said finally. "Not losing you because of something I started."
Anger flared, short and bright. "You don't get to decide that for me, Angelo. Don't ever make a choice about my life without me."
He nodded, slow and honest. "You will always decide. I will ask first. I will tell you when I'm watching. I'll defend you in front of everyone, even when it's my family. I'll—" He stopped, searching my face. "Say the line I should have sent first: I want you. I will choose you."
The city hummed around us. People walked past in pairs, oblivious. He reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. His thumb brushed the soft curve of my neck. The touch was small and ordinary and it dropped something heavy inside me.
"You can't promise me you won't ever fear," I said. "You can't promise your family won't pull you. But promise me this: no secrets. No vanishing. If you're scared, tell me instead of walking away."
He closed his eyes briefly. "No secrets."
"Say it like you mean it," I challenged.
"No secrets," he repeated, and the certitude in his voice steadied me. "I'll tell you every time I'm worried. I'll ask before I watch. And if they tell me to run, I won't disappear. I'll bring you with me or refuse. I will not choose family over you without your voice."
Luca's words at the lab replayed—claim him. It felt ridiculous to let someone else's insistence be the push, but I needed it. Needed someone to note that what I wanted mattered.
"And you'll stop hiding behind protection as ownership?" I asked.
"I'll stop protecting by taking," he said. "I'll protect by asking."
He stepped forward and his hand found my waist, settling there like a promise. The contact was grounding. Heat rolled through me so fast my breath staggered.
"How do I believe you?" I asked.
He leaned in. Close enough that his breath feathered my lips. "You don't have to believe me right now." His lips brushed mine—intentional, slow. "You can test me."
The kiss wasn't tentative. It was searching and immediate, all the stored-up need we'd both pretended not to have. My mouth opened. His tongue slid in with careful claim and a fervent gentleness that made every quiet part of me ache.
I pushed up against him. The car's leather pressed into my spine.
His hands were big at my hips, then up my back, and then under my shirt, warm and skilled.
I remembered the way his shirt once stretched across broad shoulders and how I could trace the line of his collarbone with a look.
Now my hands learned his skin. He smelled like him—sandalwood and something darker—and I wanted to keep that scent on my fingers.
"Are you sure?" he murmured against my mouth when his lips trailed down my jaw.
"Yes," I said, though inside yes carried all kinds of caveats. I slid my hands under his tee and felt the hard planes of his chest, the steady cadence of his heart. I thought of the notebook in my hand and the promise of no secrets and let the wanting take precedence for the moment.
He guided me into the townhouse with the kind of ease that came from walking the same routes alone. The door closed behind us, muffling the city. He kissed me again, urgent now, and his hands found my back and my hair with an intimacy that made my knees weak.
We moved to the sofa; the throw slid off.
There was no fumbling, only competent, reverent ease.
He undid the buttons of my shirt with fingers that had catalogued me and now worshipped me.
I unhooked him as if I'd done this before, though we'd only stolen fragments until now.
Clothes pooled. The air filled with the sound of our breaths and the quiet city beyond the windows.
Every touch spoke. When his palm cupped the hollow of my throat I felt owned for a second and immediately freed—because his eyes asked permission with each movement. "Tell me," he said between kisses. "If I go too far."
"You won't," I answered, voice rough, because trust isn't given all at once. It's taxed and earned.
He kissed me like a vow. His hands memorized the soft swell of my waist, the small dimple at my hip. I traced the scar along his collarbone with a fingertip and he flinched, then relaxed under the question.
"Pains you?" I asked.
"It reminds me I'm alive," he said, fierce and tender. "And that I can hurt. Which is why I'm trying not to run."
That confession slid under my armor. I kissed him again, long and hard, tasting him, needing him. We fit together with a closeness that was physical and something else—an answering to wounds.
When it was more than lips, when skin pressed to skin and moans threaded the room, consent stayed in words and small checks. "Is this okay?" he asked, throat thick.
"Yes," I breathed. "Please."
His hands were everywhere—hold, not bind.
He guided me, matched me. Fingers, mouth, the press of his body.
The pleasure was a language we constructed on demand: sharp, immediate, and soft with aftercare.
He checked in with whispers. I met him with the same: small sounds, a clearer "harder" or "slower" when needed.
After, we lay half tangled on the sofa, breath cooling. His arm draped over my waist. He smelled like me now, and I like him, and it was a dangerous, exhilarating overlap.
He reached for the notebook and set it on my thigh. "I kept you because I admired you," he said quietly. "Not because I wanted to own you. Everything I did wrong was fear. I know that won't erase it, but?—"
"But you can try," I supplied. "You can try to be better."
"I will," he promised. "Starting now."
I laughed, soft and incredulous. "Starting now? You send me that text and then expect to start now."
He winced. "I sent a cruel thing. I will do the work. Ask before watching. Tell you when I'm worried. Defend you. Keep you safe without deciding for you."
"Defend me in front of your family," I said.
He swallowed. "Especially in front of my family."
We sat like that a long time, the city breathing under us.
I read pages of the notebook, and with each small observation of mine he had catalogued—my laugh, the knot in my thumb when I was nervous—I felt seen.
Not watched as evidence, but noticed as someone worthy of the sort of attention that made you want to keep a list.
It was a sweet, dangerous thing to have a man like him admire the ridiculous architecture of my quirks. It made my throat catch.
"Say it," I said suddenly. "Say it in front of me. Say you want me. Say you choose me."
He rose, took off his shirt like he was stripping away an armor. His torso was familiar now—broad and scarred and dangerous. The sight of him, vulnerable and honest, made a heat bloom low in me that was different from want. It was hunger for partnership.
He kneeled in front of me then, unguarded in a way I'd never seen. His hands were empty. His eyes were all focus, no calculation.
"Stay with me—no shadows, only us?" he asked. His voice was small, the plea folded into it.
I looked at his hands, at the bare curve of his throat, at the man who had defended me and terrified me and loved me enough to admit he was wrong. The notebook rested on my knees like proof that his watching had roots other than control.
I hadn't made a decision about his family yet. I hadn't decided to leap into a dangerous life tied to a name that carried weight and enemies. But I knew what hollow safety felt like. I knew how lonely it left me.
My mouth opened to answer, the city holding its breath with me.