15. Chapter 15
Lucy
Town, according to Luca Moretti, is not a town in the way I understand towns.
I was picturing a sleepy little strip of shops, maybe a few restaurants with chalkboard menus, a place where tourists wander barefoot and sunburned while buying postcards and overpriced keychains shaped like dolphins.
To be fair, there is some of that. There are pastel storefronts and bougainvillea spilling hot pink over white walls.
There is music drifting from somewhere unseen, bright and easy, carried by the warm evening air.
There are couples walking hand in hand, people laughing over drinks, little shops glowing open as the sun begins sliding lower.
But with Luca beside me, even a casual walk into town feels slightly cinematic and possibly prearranged.
He has changed into linen trousers and a pale shirt open at the collar.
His sleeves are rolled to his forearms, his hair still damp from the sea, and he looks like he belongs here in a way that annoys me.
I, on the other hand, am wearing the white cover-up over my swimsuit, sandals Bianca declared acceptable, and a pair of sunglasses that cost more than my monthly software subscriptions.
I still do not have my purse.
This feels symbolic.
“You’re quiet,” Luca says.
“I’m monitoring my surroundings.”
“For danger?”
“For context. With you, I like to know whether I’m walking into dinner, a business deal, or a surprise monarchy.”
His mouth twitches. “No monarchy.”
“That sounds like something a surprise monarch would say.”
He takes my hand, lacing our fingers together with the kind of ease that makes my chest ache.
It is not performative now. There is no family table watching, no ex to impress, no emergency requiring fake affection.
And yet he keeps touching me like it is natural.
Like he has done it for years. Like my hand belongs in his.
That is the sort of thing a woman should not get used to too quickly.
Unfortunately, I am a fast learner.
We pass a shop selling straw hats and beach bags, then another with bright paintings propped outside.
A little girl runs past holding a melting ice cream cone, her father chasing behind her with napkins and the tired determination of a man who has accepted defeat.
The whole place smells like salt, grilled fish, warm sugar, and flowers.
It should calm me. It does not. Because Luca said jewelry.
Jewelry can mean many things. Earrings. Bracelet. A necklace to replace the one I am not wearing. Something generous and extravagant that I can return later while making a speech about boundaries. Or it could mean the one thing my heart keeps jumping toward and my brain keeps slapping away.
Do not be dramatic, Lucy. He is not buying you a ring. That would be absurd. This entire situation is absurd, my brain says. Not helpful, brain.
Luca turns down a quieter side street, where the noise of the main square softens behind us. The shops here are smaller, prettier, tucked into old buildings with painted shutters and warm lights. He stops in front of one with a dark blue awning and a discreet gold sign.
I read the name. Then read it again.
The window display is small but unmistakable. Diamonds. Gold. Rings nestled on velvet like tiny glittering threats.
I stop walking.
“No.”
He looks down at me. “You say that often.”
“Because you keep presenting me with unreasonable nouns.”
“Yacht. Bahamas. Jewelry.”
“Exactly. You see the pattern.”
He opens the door. I do not move.
A soft bell chimes inside, and a woman behind the counter looks up with a welcoming smile that is far too unsurprised to be comforting.
“Luca,” I whisper. “Why does she look like she expected us?”
“Because she did.”
My mouth falls open. “You called ahead?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“This afternoon.”
“This afternoon? During the barbecue?”
“After the water.”
“After the water,” I repeat, because apparently I am now speaking in the tone of a woman narrating evidence at trial. “You kissed me in the ocean and then called a jeweler?”
He pauses. “Not immediately.”
“That is not the defense you think it is.”
His hand tightens gently around mine. “Come inside.”
“That phrase has ruined my life at least three times in twenty-four hours.”
“Improved,” he says.
“Under review.”
But I go inside, because I can’t help myself.
The air-conditioning kisses my sun-warmed skin, and the shop smells faintly of polished wood, vanilla, and something floral.
Glass cases line the walls, each one filled with things so bright and delicate they make me afraid to breathe too hard near them.
The woman behind the counter steps forward, elegant and smiling.
“Mr. Moretti. Welcome.”
“Thank you, Elena,” Luca says. “This is Lucy.”
Elena’s smile turns to me. “A pleasure.”
“Hi,” I say, because apparently when confronted with diamonds and destiny, I become incapable of vocabulary.
Luca guides me toward a private seating area near the back. There is champagne waiting on a small table.
I stare at it.
“No.”
Luca follows my gaze. “No champagne?”
“No more champagne around life decisions.”
Elena’s smile deepens like she approves of me.
Luca sits, pulling me gently beside him. “Water, then.”
A glass of chilled water appears so quickly I suspect the entire world moves faster for people named Moretti. I take a sip, mostly to give my hands something to do.
Luca looks at Elena. “The rings we discussed.”
My body goes very still. Rings. Plural.
Elena nods and disappears behind a velvet curtain.
I turn slowly toward Luca. “Rings.”
“Yes.”
“For fingers?”
His mouth curves. “Usually.”
“No. No, do not get charming. This is not a charming moment. This is a rings moment.”
“It can be both.”
“It absolutely cannot.”
Elena returns with a velvet tray, and my lungs stop performing at a professional level.
There are six rings. Six.
I know this because I count them, then count them again, hoping the number will become less alarming.
It does not. Diamonds catch the light from above, white and bright and impossible.
One is a classic oval solitaire. One has emerald side stones.
One is cushion-cut, antique-looking and romantic in a way that makes my heart do something treacherous.
Another is sleek and modern, all clean lines and dangerous money.
I put both hands in my lap.
“Nope.”
Luca looks at me. “Nope?”
“Nope is a complete sentence.”
Elena politely looks at the tray as if she has not heard stranger things from women in this exact chair.
Luca leans slightly closer. “Lucy.”
“Do not Lucy me in front of the diamonds.”
His eyes warm. “We need a ring.”
“No, we need therapy, a timeline, and maybe a very detailed group text to your family.”
“For the engagement.”
I stare at him.
A small rushing sound fills my ears.
“The engagement,” I repeat.
“Yes.”
“The fake engagement?”
He does not answer immediately. That is a problem. Temporary things should have faster answers.
“Luca.”
“If my family is going to believe I chose you,” he says, voice lower now, “I won’t insult you with something temporary.”
My chest tightens so hard I almost miss my next breath.
“Temporary is literally the foundation of this arrangement.”
“Not anymore.”
The words bear the weight of something far bigger than a ring.
I look at him, searching his face for strategy, amusement, control, all the polished pieces I know he can use when he wants to.
They are there, because he is still Luca.
But beneath them is the man from last night.
The one who told me I was precious before he could stop himself.
The one who asked if I had regrets this morning like the answer mattered.
The one who held my hand in the boat and kissed me in the water and keeps giving me exits I don’t seem to want.
I look back at the rings because looking at him is too much.
“This is too expensive.”
“You haven’t asked the price.”
“I don’t need to. That one looks like it has its own insurance agent.”
Elena’s mouth twitches.
Luca reaches for the antique cushion-cut ring first. “Try this one.”
“No.”
He pauses. “No?”
“If I touch it, it becomes real.”
“It is already real.”
I laugh once, softly, because if I don’t, I may do something dramatic like cry in a jewelry store while wearing a swimsuit under a cover-up. “You cannot just decide that.”
“I’m not deciding for you.” He sets the ring back down and turns fully toward me. “Choose nothing if you want. Walk out if you want. Tell me I’m insane. You would not be the first person.”
“Your sisters?”
“Adriana, mostly.”
“That makes sense.”
His mouth curves, but the seriousness stays in his eyes. “I am not buying this to trap you, Lucy. I am buying it because my family already thinks this is becoming real, and I would rather give them the truth than pretend the lie is still holding.”
“The truth being what?”
“That I want you.”
My heart stumbles. He reaches for my hand, but he does not take it until I let him. That matters. It should not undo me as much as it does, but it does.
“I want you at breakfast,” he says. “On the yacht. In my cabin. In your shop, surrounded by tiny bottles and strange glitter. I want you telling me I’m ridiculous.
I want you making my sisters laugh. I want Nonna terrifying you and you terrifying me because you say things I don’t know how to answer. ”
My throat burns.
“Luca…”
“I am not asking you to marry me tonight.”
That should relieve me. It does. A little. It also disappoints some reckless part of me that has apparently been sun-drunk and kissed into foolishness. He sees that too.
His thumb moves over my knuckles. “I am asking you to let this ring mean we stop pretending the fake part — that we’re really committed to one another.”
I look at the tray again. Six impossible rings. Six glittering futures I am not ready to understand.
My gaze keeps returning to the antique cushion-cut one with the tiny emerald side stones.
Not the biggest. Not the flashiest. But something about it catches me.
The emeralds remind me of the dress, the water, the strange bright version of myself I saw in Bianca’s mirror.
The diamond in the center glows softly, less sharp than the others, almost warm.
Luca notices.
“ That one,” he says.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You looked.”
“That is not legally binding.”
“No.”
He lifts the ring from the tray and holds it between us.
Elena says nothing. The entire shop seems to hold its breath.
I should stop this. I should demand more time.
More sanity. More proof that yesterday’s fake boyfriend has not become today’s almost-fiancé because the sun is beautiful and Luca Moretti kisses like a man with no regard for structural damage.
Instead, I give him my hand. His expression changes. Only slightly. But I see it.
He slides the ring onto my finger. It fits. How extraordinary! I stare at it, stunned into silence.
The emeralds catch the light first, then the diamond, then the whole thing settles on my hand as if it has been waiting there far longer than I have known him.
“Oh,” I whisper.
Luca’s hand closes around mine. “Too much?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want me to take it off?”
I look at the ring. Then at him. My chest feels full of sunlight and fear and something dangerously close to joy.
“No,” I say, barely above a whisper. “Not yet.”
His eyes darken, but he does not smile. He lifts my hand and presses his mouth to the ring, then to my knuckles.
“Not yet,” he repeats.
Elena quietly slips away to give us privacy, which is very professional of her considering I may be having a romantic breakdown near several million dollars of inventory.
I let out a shaky breath. “Your family is going to be unbearable.”
“Yes.”
“Nonna is going to know immediately.”
“Nonna knew before we left Florida.”
“That is not comforting.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
I laugh, but it comes out soft and wet at the edges. Luca pulls me closer, not quite into his lap, but near enough that my shoulder presses against his chest.
“You are not useful to me,” he says quietly.
I look up.
“You are not convenient. You are not a piece on a board. You are not proof that I am ready for anything.” His gaze holds mine. “You are Lucy. And I want to know what happens next.”
The words settle deeper than the ring.
I look down at my hand again, at the diamond and emeralds catching the warm shop light. Yesterday, I built tiny worlds in bottles and thought that was the closest I might get to holding something beautiful without losing control of it.
Now I am sitting beside Luca Moretti in a jewelry shop in the Bahamas with a ring on my finger that is supposed to be pretend, except neither of us is pretending anymore.
“That’s the problem,” I whisper.
“What is?”
I look back at him.
“I want to know too.”
His smile comes slowly, not sharp this time, not controlled. Just warm enough to ruin me.
“Good,” he says.
And because this is apparently what my life has become, I let him kiss me in the back of a jewelry store while an engagement ring glitters on my hand like a beautiful warning.