Chapter 32
chapter
thirty-two
We were halfway around the pond at the center of my favorite park when Luka stopped and squinted at a sun-faded warning sign.
DO NOT FEED THE ALLIGATORS
“Are there really alligators in there?” He pointed at the muddy water.
“It’s the south,” I said. “If it’s bigger than a puddle, assume there’s a gator in it.”
He took that in, then gave the water another skeptical glare before we resumed walking. He shifted so that he was between me and the pond. Dead leaves and gravel crunched underfoot.
A week had passed since Richard’s face wallpapered the international business pages. If you looked now, you’d barely know he’d existed. The world had moved on to the next viral story. And the next.
I’m sure I should have felt a thousand different things. But truthfully, I didn’t. And I was okay with that.
I pulled the navy blue puffer jacket—the one Luka had bought me in London—tighter around me. The gray scarf he’d given me the first night we met was soft, knotted loosely around my neck. The morning wind was brisk, but something about being outside grounded me.
My phone buzzed in my back pocket. Another text from Mom.
Checking on you, sweetie. Are you coming for dinner on Sunday?
I chuckled. “I guess this is as good a time as any.”
“For what?” Luka asked.
“To take you home for Sunday dinner.” I held up my phone. “My mom cooks way better than I do.”
“That’s not exactly a high bar.”
“True. But it’s the best home-cooked meal I can offer you.”
He arched a brow. “Does your family know about us?”
“They know you exist. And that you’re not from here. Mom thinks you’re exotic. Her word, not mine.”
I quickly texted her back a tentative yes. It was easier to confirm and back out later. Luka didn’t say anything—just kept his eyes fixed ahead as we walked.
My eyes snagged on a three-day-old text message from Denise, the HR rep who had unceremoniously ushered me out the company door.
Call James at Burrows and Sampson. He can help. But you didn’t hear anything from me.
Linked was an attorney’s office specializing in wrongful termination lawsuits.
Luka glanced over my shoulder at the screen. “Are you going to call the lawyer? Sue for your job back?”
I pocketed my phone. “No.” The answer came before my brain caught up. I stopped walking and looked up. The crystalline blue sky wrapped around us like a giant marble. “Wow, I hadn’t actually made the final decision yet—consciously anyway. But there it is.”
He stopped next to me, squinting against the sun. “Why not?”
I shrugged. “Because I’m done with it all. I don’t want to hash everything over and over again for what—a payout that may never come?”
“Then what do you want?”
“If it doesn’t sound too cliché…” I tucked my hands into my pockets to keep them from betraying me. “You.”
He stepped closer, his hand landing on the back of my neck, thumb pressed into my hairline. “You already have me.”
He let the words hang, waiting for the catch, the fine print, the next condition I might name. But I didn’t hedge or negotiate. I just held his gaze and let myself want exactly what I wanted, without apology.
Luka’s eyes flicked over my face, reading the micro-expressions like barcodes. “What else do you want?” he pressed.
“I want to do something that isn’t bullshit,” I said. “I want to build something that matters, even if it’s small and stupid. I want to get up in the morning and not have my first thought be about who’s out to knife me before lunch.”
He let go and stepped back. “What does that look like?”
“I don’t know.” I said it too quickly. “Okay, that’s a lie.
I do know. I think I’ve always known.” The words tumbled out, faster as I went.
“I want to start something on my own. Not a marketing agency in the traditional sense, but something more nimble. Something that helps the people who actually need help. The indie stores, the mom-and-pops, the weirdos who actually care about what they’re making. ”
I could feel Luka’s gaze on me, as if he could see all the way through to the blueprint of my new ambition. “What’s stopping you?”
The answer should have been long and complicated, but the truth buzzed at the front of my brain, simple and shaming. “Nothing. I guess.” My voice cracked on the last word.
“Then do it.”
He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, as if inertia were a switch you could flick off, as if all it took was permission. The thought made me want to laugh and scream at the same time. “Where would I even start?”
“With the first step, mila.” The endearment landed like a balm. “Or with a beer, if the first step is too much for you right now.”
I smiled despite myself and kept walking, my brain rearranging the loose pieces of my life into something that almost made a picture. “I don’t even know where I’d set up shop. Atlanta? London?” I hesitated, then shot him a look. “What about you?”
“What about me?” He matched his steps to mine, both hands in his jacket pockets.
“You live in London. I don’t think I can just…go work in London. I mean, isn’t there, like, a visa thing?”
“For regular employment, yes.” He scuffed his boot along the gravel path. “But you can stay six months. Just like I can stay here for three.”
“And after that?”
He shrugged, the gesture loose and full of hidden energy. “Strictly speaking, I can work from anywhere. So can you, if you start your own company. Most of what you do is marketing and digital, yes? No one cares if you’re in Atlanta or Zagreb or…Tbilisi.”
I laughed, the sound sharp and surprised. “First of all, I don’t even know where that is. And you make it sound so easy. I thought only influencers could pull off the digital nomad thing.”
He grinned, and for the first time in a long time, the smile reached all the way to his eyes.
We rounded the end of the pond, skirting a cluster of ducks shoving each other for scraps of discarded bread.
“You’d really leave London for me? Isn’t it kind of…home?”
He stopped and sat on a park bench, dropping his elbows to his knees while his eyes filed through thoughts.
“London is where I landed after I left Croatia,” he said finally.
“And it’s been a great place to live and work.
I’ve never had any reason to leave. But…
it’s not home.” He looked up at me, blue eyes piercing through any shred of armor I had. “You are.”
For a second, all the oxygen left my brain. I stared at him, not blinking, not moving, just trying to process the sentence he’d detonated into the morning. I sat down, hard, on the bench next to him. The chill from the worn slats shot straight through my jeans.
“Do you mean that?” The words were raw, like I’d ripped them from somewhere tender.
He angled his body toward me, face uncluttered, nothing but truth in it. “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”
I could have laughed, but all that came out was a thin thread of air. “I’m going to butcher this, but…” I rolled my shoulders, rifling for the phrase, dusting off the foreign syllables, tongue clumsy with nerves. “Voh-leem-tay. Did I get it right?”
His head snapped toward me. In one motion, he reached across the bench, hooked his arm around my ribs, and hauled me onto his lap.
“Close enough.”
Then he kissed me.
My mouth was full of him, of the cold, the sun, the faint metallic taste of panic and relief.
He crowded out every thought, every contingency plan, every last remnant of fear and logic.
I clung to his jacket, the muscle of his thigh tensed under me, his arms a vise around my back.
I kissed him so hard my teeth knocked on his, and he laughed into my mouth.
We sat there, fused together, until the wind picked up and cut through the seams of my jacket. I pulled back, air rasping out of my lungs, and looked at his face—open, unflinching, and for the first time since I’d met him, completely at rest.
Luka leaned in, breath soft as a promise, and pressed his forehead to mine. “Volim te, Alex,” he said, and the sound of it—the language, the exhale, the unblinking directness—hit me as hard as anything ever had. “I love you.”
I shut my eyes, let the words sink in.
And for once, I didn’t try to fill the silence.