12. Chapter 12
Lucy
By the time Nonna finishes with us, I feel like I have survived a family dinner, a therapy session, a business acquisition, and possibly a baptism.
No water was involved, unless I count the ocean currently carrying this yacht farther away from the life I understood when I woke up this morning.
Still, something happened in that room. Something I can’t quite put back where it belongs.
Luca called me precious.
The word is still sitting somewhere beneath my ribs, glowing like a tiny dangerous thing I should probably not touch.
I keep telling myself he said it because his grandmother cornered him.
Because his family was watching. Because the evening has become so strange that normal language no longer applies.
But I heard his voice. I saw his face. Luca Moretti is many things, but careless with words does not seem to be one of them.
Which is unfortunate, because I am very careless with reactions.
I can feel mine all over me as we leave the salon.
My cheeks are warm. My hand is still tucked in his.
My pulse keeps making poor choices, and the emerald dress Bianca forced upon me is doing nothing to help.
It moves against my legs as we walk, soft and smooth and entirely too confident for a garment I met less than an hour ago.
Behind us, the family conversation starts back up, but it feels different now. Softer around the edges. Like everyone has quietly decided something and is waiting for me to catch up.
That may be the most terrifying part of all.
Bianca falls into step on my other side almost immediately, because apparently the Moretti family has no respect for emotional processing time.
“So,” she says brightly, “now we need to discuss sleeping arrangements.”
My feet forget how to work.
Luca does not stop, which means his hand in mine gives a gentle tug and my body resumes motion before my brain approves the paperwork.
“Sleeping arrangements,” I repeat.
“Yes.”
Isabella appears from nowhere behind us. I’m starting to suspect she travels through vents. “I vote chaos.”
Adriana’s voice follows from farther back. “You always vote chaos.”
“And I am often rewarded.”
Bianca ignores them both. “You can stay with me if you want. I have room.”
Relief moves through me, sudden and practical. “Oh. That’s very kind. Thank you.”
“No,” Luca says.
One word. He says it calmly, but immediately.
The hallway goes very quiet.
I turn my head slowly toward him. “No?”
His gaze meets mine. “You’ll stay with me.”
My mouth opens. Nothing comes out. Which is new for me and, frankly, alarming.
Bianca’s lips part in a delighted smile. Isabella makes a small sound that is either a gasp or the beginning of a song. Adriana stops walking behind us. Somewhere in the salon, I’m almost certain Nonna senses blood in the water and smiles without knowing why.
I finally locate my voice. “That sounded less like a suggestion and more like a weather event.”
Luca’s thumb moves once over my knuckles. “It was a statement.”
“Those are also dangerous.”
“Only if misunderstood.”
“I understood it perfectly. That is the problem.”
Bianca leans toward Isabella. “I told you.”
“You told me many things,” Isabella whispers back. “Most of them legally unusable.”
I look at Luca, expecting amusement. Maybe arrogance. Maybe one of those almost-smiles that make me want to shake him and kiss him again, possibly in that order.
Instead, his expression is serious.
“You don’t have to,” he says quietly, for me alone despite the audience pretending not to breathe around us. “If you want Bianca’s cabin, it’s yours. If you want your own room, I’ll arrange it. If you want to go back, we turn around.”
The tight thing in my chest loosens and tightens all at once. He keeps doing that. Giving me exits. Opening doors I don’t seem to want to walk through.
I should choose the sensible one. Bianca’s cabin. A locked door. A pillow I can scream into while reviewing the entire evening like evidence in court. That is what a rational woman would do.
Unfortunately, rational women do not climb into strangers’ laps at weddings.
Rational women do not board yachts because a man with dangerous eyes offered his hand.
Rational women probably have their purses, passports, and emotional boundaries in better order.
I look at Bianca. She is still smiling, but there’s something softer behind it now. Isabella, for once, says nothing. Adriana watches with quiet interest, not judgment. And Luca waits. That may be what undoes me.
“I’ll stay with Luca,” I say.
Bianca clasps both hands to her chest. “Fashion saves another romance.”
“This is not a romance,” I say automatically.
Luca looks down at me. “No?”
The question is soft enough to be unfair.
I swallow. “It’s… under review.”
Isabella presses a hand over her mouth. Adriana turns away, but I see her smile.
From the salon doorway, Nonna’s voice carries with perfect timing. “Do not review too long, Lucia. Good things expire when ignored.”
I close my eyes. “She heard that?”
Luca’s mouth curves. “She hears everything.”
“I’m beginning to think the yacht is wired directly to her earrings.”
“It would explain several things,” Adriana says.
Bianca steps forward and kisses my cheek like we have known each other for years instead of hours. “Goodnight, Lucia.”
“Am I ever getting Lucy back?”
She considers. “Maybe for taxes.”
“Comforting.”
Isabella squeezes my arm. “If he becomes broody and silent, poke him. It resets the system.”
“I heard that,” Luca says.
“You were meant to,” Isabella sings.
Then, somehow, they let us go.
The hallway feels longer with just the two of us.
Quieter. The sounds of the family fade behind us.
I am suddenly aware of everything. Luca’s hand around mine.
The brush of my dress against my thighs.
The warm air slipping through the corridor vents.
The fact that I have just agreed to sleep in his cabin after knowing him for one impossible evening.
When he stops outside a dark wood door near the end of the corridor, my heart climbs directly into my throat and sets up camp.
“This is me,” he says.
“Your cabin?”
“Yes.”
“Right. Of course. I knew that. Because of the door.”
His gaze flicks to my mouth. “The door gave it away?”
“It was either that or a very exclusive broom closet.”
He opens it, and I step inside before I can talk myself out of it.
The room is not what I expect. I don’t know what I expected, exactly.
Gold walls. A ceiling mirror. A faint soundtrack of morally questionable jazz.
Something absurd and billionaire-adjacent.
Instead, Luca’s cabin is elegant and restrained, all warm wood, cream bedding, low light, and wide windows with dark water beyond them.
A jacket hangs neatly over the back of a chair.
A watch rests on the small table beside the bed.
A few papers are stacked with precise edges near a leather notebook.
It looks expensive, yes. But more than that, it looks private and controlled. Very him.
“This is…” I pause, searching for a word that will not reveal how nervous I am.
“Disappointing?”
“No. Very you.”
He closes the door softly behind us. “Is that good?”
“It looks like a luxury hotel suite got emotionally unavailable and went to therapy.”
For half a second, silence. Then Luca laughs. Not a low almost-laugh. Not a polite exhale. A real laugh, surprised out of him, and the sound does something reckless to my heart.
“Oh,” I say softly before I can stop myself.
His smile fades slowly, but the warmth stays in his eyes. “What?”
“You should do that more often.”
“Laugh?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll consider it.”
“Please don’t make it sound like a business proposal.”
He moves farther into the room, but he doesn’t come too close. Somehow that makes me more aware of the space between us. He gestures toward the bathroom door. “You can take the bed. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”
I look at the sofa. It is sleek, elegant, and clearly designed by someone who has never had hips or regrets.
“That sofa is decorative.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s a punishment with cushions.”
“Lucy.”
“No. If you sleep on that, I’ll feel guilty.”
“If I sleep in the bed, you’ll feel nervous.”
I look down at my hands, smoothing the emerald fabric again. “I already feel nervous.”
“I know.”
My eyes lift to his. “Because of you?”
“Yes.”
The answer is immediate. No games. No deflection. My breath catches.
Luca steps closer then, slow enough that I could move away if I wanted. I don’t. Of course I don’t. Apparently my survival instincts have joined the rest of me in mutiny.
“I don’t want to be useful to you,” I say.
His expression changes.
I force myself to continue before I lose the nerve. “I don’t mean I don’t want to help. I just mean… I don’t want to be another convenient thing. Another piece that makes your family see you differently. I can’t be that.”
For a moment, he says nothing. Then he closes the distance by one more step.
“You were useful for about ten minutes.”
I flinch before I can stop myself.
His jaw tightens. “Then you became inconvenient.”
“That is not better.”
“It is.” His voice lowers. “I know what to do with useful things. I control them. I position them. I make them serve a purpose.”
His hand lifts, but he stops just short of touching my face.
“I don’t know what to do with you.”
The words move through me more deeply than any perfect answer could have. Because they are not polished. They are not strategic. They sound like something dragged out of him before he could make it safer.
I step closer, enough that his fingers finally brush my cheek.
“Maybe you don’t have to do anything with me,” I whisper.
His eyes darken. “No?”
“Maybe you just have to be here.”
The air between us changes.
The yacht, the family, the lie, the Bahamas, all of it falls away until there is only this room and this man and the strange, impossible truth that I no longer feel like I’m pretending when he looks at me.
Luca’s hand slides fully against my cheek. “Tell me to stop.”
I should.
I should remember that somewhere beyond this cabin door, the Morettis are probably placing bets on whether I survive breakfast. I should remember that this started as a lie, that my dress is borrowed, that my purse had to be rescued from land, and that I still don’t know exactly where this yacht is going.
Instead, I lift my hands to his shirt.
“No,” I whisper. “I’m tired of stopping before something real happens.”
And this time, when Luca kisses me, there is no audience, no lie, and no water left between who I was when I stepped onto this yacht and the woman I am becoming in his arms.