18. Enzo
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Enzo
I wake up before she does.
This is becoming a pattern. Her, sleeping. Me, watching. Trying to memorize something I’m terrified of losing.
We’re in my bed, tangled in sheets that smell like her now. Like us. She’s on her side, facing away from me, one hand tucked under the pillow. Her breathing is slow and even. Peaceful.
She almost left me yesterday.
The thought won’t stop circling. I keep replaying it, her face when she realized what I’d done. The way she said control like it was a dirty word. The way she walked out.
She was right. That’s the part I can’t escape. She was absolutely right.
I told myself I was protecting her. Told myself Rafael needed to be put in his place, that freezing him out of every room that mattered was justice, was consequences. But that’s not why I did it. Not really.
I did it because I was scared. Because watching him circle her, watching him show up drunk and pathetic and begging, it made me feel helpless. And I don’t do helpless. I fix things. I take action. I make sure the outcome is the one I want.
Except she’s not an outcome. She’s a person. And she’s been treated like a chess piece her whole life by people who thought they knew better.
Now I’m one of them.
The morning light is starting to creep through the curtains. Gray and soft. The city’s waking up outside, but in here everything is still.
I should get up. Make coffee. Start the day. But I don’t move. I just lie here, watching the rise and fall of her shoulders, thinking about all the ways I’ve already fucked this up.
She said there’s more I’m not telling her.
There is. So much more.
Last night, after everything, after the fight, after the makeup, after she fell asleep in my arms, I lay awake for hours. Thinking about what I should have said. What I wanted to say.
I didn’t say any of it.
Because once I do, everything changes. Once she knows how long I’ve wanted her, how deep this goes, she’ll look at me differently. She’ll wonder if any of this was ever real, or if I’ve been playing some long game since before she even knew my name.
And maybe she’d be right to wonder. Maybe I don’t deserve her trust. Maybe I’m exactly the man she should run from.
But I’m too selfish to let her go.
She stirs. Makes a small sound. Rolls over to face me, eyes still closed.
“Stop thinking so loud,” she mumbles. “I can hear you from here.”
“Sorry.”
“What time is it?”
“Early. A little after seven.”
She groans and burrows deeper into the pillow. “Why are you awake?”
“Couldn’t sleep.”
One eye opens. Studies me. “You’re brooding.”
“I don’t brood.”
“You have a whole face for it. This one. Right here.” She reaches out, pokes my forehead.
I catch her hand. Press a kiss to her fingers.
“I’m thinking,” I say. “There’s a difference.”
“About?”
“Yesterday.”
The sleepy softness fades from her expression. She’s awake now, fully present.
“We talked about yesterday,” she says carefully. “We’re okay.”
“I know. I just…” I stop. Try to find the words. “I keep going over it. What I did. Why I did it. And I don’t like what I see.”
“Enzo…”
“You were right. About all of it. I told myself I was different from my father, but the patterns are still there. The need to manage. To control. To make sure everything goes the way I want.” I shake my head. “I hate that about myself.”
She’s quiet for a moment. Then she shifts closer, tucks herself against my chest.
“You’re not your father,” she says.
“You don’t know my father.”
“I know you. And I know the difference between someone who controls because they think they own you, and someone who controls because they don’t know any other way to show they care.” She tilts her head up to look at me. “The second one can learn. Can change. The first one never will.”
“How do you know I can change?”
“Because you’re lying here beating yourself up about it instead of making excuses.
Because you came to Amelia’s door to apologize instead of waiting for me to come back.
Because when I told you what you did was wrong, you listened.
” She touches my face. “That’s not nothing, Enzo. That’s everything.”
I don’t deserve her. I know that with absolute certainty. But I’m going to spend however long she gives me trying to be worth it.
“Thank you,” I say.
“For what?”
“For not giving up on me.”
“I’m not that easy to get rid of.” She kisses my jaw. “Now stop staring at the ceiling like it wronged you and make me coffee. I need caffeine before any more emotional conversations.”
“Yes ma’am.”
I make coffee. She showers. We move around each other in the easy rhythm we’ve developed over the past few weeks, a rhythm I didn’t realize I’d miss until I thought I’d lost it.
She emerges from the bathroom in one of my t-shirts, hair damp, face scrubbed clean. Beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with makeup or careful presentation. Just her. Real.
“Better?” I ask, handing her a cup.
“Getting there.” She takes a sip, sighs. “God, that’s good. Your coffee is the one thing I’d actually miss if I left.”
“Just the coffee?”
“Well. Maybe one or two other things.” She grins at me over the rim. “But mostly the coffee.”
“Noted.”
She settles onto the couch, legs tucked under her. I sit across from her, watching the steam rise from my own cup.
The apartment is quiet. Peaceful. But there’s something nagging at me. Something from yesterday that I haven’t been able to shake.
“Hey,” I say. “At the café. When Rafael was there.”
Her expression tightens slightly. “What about it?”
“You told him to be a good dad. And he had no idea what you were talking about.”
“Because Viviana didn’t tell him about the pregnancy. That’s her problem.”
“But why wouldn’t she tell him? If the baby’s his…”
“Because she’s Viviana. Because she’s manipulative and dramatic and probably wanted to reveal it at some perfect moment for maximum impact.” Ana shrugs. “I don’t know. I stopped trying to understand my sister a long time ago.”
“And then when we were leaving, he said something. About Viviana lying.”
“He was drunk.”
“Drunks say true things. Sometimes the truest things.”
She sets down her coffee cup. Looks at me with an expression I can’t quite read.
“What are you getting at?”
“I don’t know. Something just feels off. The timing of everything. Viviana disappearing before the wedding, coming back months later, immediately being pregnant…”
“She and Rafael were sleeping together. That’s how pregnancy usually works.”
“Right. But…” I trail off. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say. It’s just a feeling. An itch at the back of my mind. “Never mind. You’re probably right. I’m overthinking it.”
“You’re definitely overthinking it.” She picks up her coffee again. “Viviana’s a mess. Rafael’s a mess. They’re going to be messy together and it’s not our problem. We agreed on that.”
“We did.”
“So let’s focus on our own stuff. I’ve got class in the morning. The divorce papers are still sitting unsigned on Rafael’s desk. Those are the things that matter.” She pauses. “Unless you’re looking for reasons to stay involved in their drama.”
“I’m not.”
“Then let it go.”
She’s right. I know she’s right. Whatever’s going on with Viviana and Rafael, the pregnancy, the lies, whatever Rafael thinks she’s hiding, none of it has anything to do with us.
But I can’t shake the feeling that it’s going to matter. That it isn’t done with us.
“Okay,” I say. “I’m letting it go.”
“Good.” She stretches, sets her empty cup on the coffee table. “Now. What’s the plan for today?”
“I have some work calls this afternoon. Nothing urgent. You?”
“I’ve got my lit class this morning, then I thought I’d stay and study at that library coffee shop for a while.” She hesitates. “Unless you want me to stay.”
“I want you to do whatever you want to do. That’s the whole point.”
She smiles. It’s a real smile, warm and open.
“Look at you,” she says. “Learning already.”
“I’m a quick study.”
“Debatable.” She stands, crosses to where I’m sitting, bends down to kiss me. “I’ll be back this afternoon. Try not to destroy anyone’s social standing while I’m gone.”
“No promises.”
“Enzo.”
“I’m kidding. Mostly.”
She laughs and heads for the bedroom to change. I watch her go, feeling something settle in my chest. Something that might be hope.
We’re okay. We’re really okay.
But the nagging feeling doesn’t go away. Rafael’s face at the café. The confusion when Ana mentioned being a dad. Viviana’s lying about something.
What is she lying about?
I push the thought down. Focus on my coffee. On the sounds of Ana moving around in the other room. On the life we’re building, piece by piece.
Whatever Viviana’s hiding, it’ll come out eventually. These things always do.
And when it does, we’ll deal with it. Together.
For now, I have enough to worry about. Like the confession I still haven’t made. The words I can’t quite bring myself to say.
***
She leaves around noon, dressed in jeans and a sweater, looking like any other college student heading to campus. It’s strange, seeing her like this. The woman I watched across ballrooms for years, always in silk and jewels, always playing a part. Now she’s just Ana. Real. Free.
I like this version better.
After she’s gone, I try to work. Answer emails. Review contracts. The usual machinery of keeping an empire running. But my mind keeps drifting.
To yesterday. To the fight. To the way she looked at me when she said I was trying to control her.
To the thing I still haven’t told her.
My phone buzzes. A text from someone I don’t care about, asking about some event next week. I ignore it.
Another buzz. Work stuff. I deal with it.
Then silence. The apartment feels too quiet without her in it.
I find myself at the window, looking out at the city. Thinking about timelines. About Viviana disappearing before the wedding and coming back pregnant. About Rafael’s drunken insistence that something’s off.
Ana told me to let it go. And I should. It’s not our problem.
But it sits there anyway, the shape of it wrong. Viviana runs. Viviana comes back. Viviana is pregnant. Viviana won’t tell Rafael, the one person who’d have a right to hear it first.
If it was all as simple as she’s selling it, why the secrecy? Why ambush Ana to throw it in her face instead of telling Rafael? Why avoid him now, when telling him would lock her right back into the life she’s chasing?
I turn it over and over and I can’t make the pieces sit flat. There’s a gap in the middle of it I can feel but can’t name, like a missing step on a staircase in the dark. Every time I get close, my mind slides off it.
I’m good at this. Reading a situation, finding the angle, seeing the thing other people miss. It’s half of what built everything I have. And here I am, certain something about this is wrong and completely unable to work out what.
Maybe Ana’s right. Maybe there’s nothing to solve and I’m just a man who can’t leave a loose thread alone.
Or maybe the thread leads somewhere none of us are going to like.
Either way, it isn’t mine to pull. I make myself turn from the window and sit back down with the work I’m not really doing.
***
Ana comes back around four, flushed from the cold, carrying the energy she always has on class days now. She drops her backpack by the door and starts talking before she’s even got her coat off.
I listen to every word. The lecture that ran long because the professor got going on something he loved.
Lucia, who saved her the usual seat and then made her stay an extra hour at the library coffee shop arguing about a book.
The way the place has stopped feeling like somewhere she’s visiting and started feeling like somewhere she belongs, where nobody knows her last name and nobody wants anything from her, where she’s just a girl with a backpack and a reading list like everyone else.
I ask questions. I want all of it. The professor, Lucia, the book, the bad coffee she keeps buying anyway.
Because this is her, building something out of nothing with her own two hands, settling into a life she chose instead of one chosen for her.
I don’t think she’s ever once been allowed to do that.
This is what matters. Her. This. The future she’s making, the one that has nothing to do with ballrooms or families or whatever mess Viviana’s dragging behind her.
“Hey,” she says, catching my expression. “Where’d you go?”
“Nowhere. I’m right here.”
“You had that look again.”
“What look?”
“The one where you’re thinking about something you don’t want to tell me.”
And there it is. She reads me better than anyone ever has, which is most of what scares me.
Because she’s not wrong. There is a thing I’m not telling her.
Not the Viviana thing, the gap in that I’ve already given up trying to close tonight.
The other thing. The older one. How long I’ve wanted her, and what I felt the day I watched her walk down an aisle toward my brother.
I could tell her now. The apartment is warm. She’s looking at me, soft and open, and it would be so easy to just say it.
I don’t.
“I’m thinking I’m starving,” I say instead, “and that you talk faster when you’re happy.”
She narrows her eyes like she knows it’s a dodge. But she lets it go, the way she said she would, the way I keep not deserving.
“Feed me, then,” she says. “You can brood after dinner.”
“I don’t brood.”
“Kitchen. Now.”
I let her pull me toward the kitchen, let the warmth of her push back everything else. The questions I can’t answer about her sister. The answer I’m too much of a coward to give about myself.
Soon, I tell myself. I’ll tell her soon.
The lie is getting harder to believe.