16. Leo
Leo
When I opened the front door, the last thing I expected to see was familiar brown eyes, a warm smile, and that handsome face.
Matteo had returned.
When I’d called Signora Ferretti that morning about the leaking skylight, I’d expected her to send someone else. A repairman I’d never met, someone who could fix the frame and leave without making things awkward. That had been the hope.
Instead, I got Matteo again.
He was holding a canvas bag of tools and wearing a soft linen shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, and he looked exactly as he always looked, which was to say devastatingly, effortlessly, entirely too good for a Tuesday morning.
The gap between his front teeth appeared again when he smiled at me.
“Leo,” he said, warm as ever. “This old house is giving you trouble. I was surprised when Signora Ferretti called me again.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was stuck somewhere between an apology for not calling him after our date and making up an excuse. Not a single word left my lips for several seconds.
“The skylight, yes?” He tilted his head slightly, gesturing upward. “She said there is water coming in around the frame.”
“There is, yeah,” I nodded at last. I stepped back to let him in, because what else was I going to do, but I knew Alex wasn’t going to like it. “It’s upstairs. Second door on the left.”
He stepped past me into the entryway, and I became immediately and uncomfortably aware of two things.
One, I was barely dressed and still smelling of Alex who I’d spent the night with in no uncertain terms. And two, Matteo was looking at me with that easy confidence he always had.
The one that reminded me we’d been on a date less than a week ago where he had made it very clear that he was interested in me.
He set his bag down at the foot of the stairs and turned to look up at the ceiling, assessing, already professional and unhurried in that particular way of his.
I stood in the entryway with my arms crossed and tried very hard to look like a man who had simply had a quiet and uneventful night’s sleep.
“You are well?” he asked, glancing back at me.
“Fine,” I said. “Good. Yes.”
He tilted his head at me again, that small, considered tilt that I was beginning to recognize as his version of a raised eyebrow. His eyes moved over my face with a warmth that was entirely genuine and entirely uncomplicated, which made it worse somehow.
“I thought perhaps I would hear from you,” he said. Not accusatory. Just honest, in the way that Matteo was always honest, without weaponizing it.
“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. I should have—”
“No.” He waved a hand, easy as breathing. “You do not owe me anything. We had a nice evening.” He smiled again, smaller this time, something more private in it. “I only wanted to know you were all right.”
The thing about Matteo was that he meant that.
He genuinely, simply, without agenda, wanted to know if I was all right.
It was one of the most disarming qualities I had ever encountered in another human being, and standing here in the entryway of this old house, still warm from a night pressed against my stepbrother, I found it almost unbearable.
“I’m all right,” I said. “Things have just been—” I searched for the word. “Complicated.”
He nodded as if complicated was a perfectly satisfactory explanation, which I supposed it was. “The house,” he said diplomatically, gesturing at the surrounding walls.
“Among other things.”
He held my gaze for just a moment, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that he understood more than I’d said. He was perceptive in that quiet, unhurried way. He’d grown up reading water and pipes and the slow language of old buildings. Reading people probably wasn’t much different.
“I will go look at the skylight,” he said, picking up his canvas bag. “I know the way.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled. “Thank you.”
“Yes.” He was already heading for the stairs. Then he paused, one hand on the banister, and looked back at me. “The man who was here before. Your stepbrother.” He said it carefully, without emphasis. “He is here still?”
My stomach tightened. “He is.”
Matteo nodded once, as if something had been confirmed that he had suspected.
He didn’t say anything else. He just turned and walked up the stairs with that easy, self-possessed stride, and I stood at the bottom and listened to his footsteps cross the landing and disappear through the second door on the left.
I let out a very slow breath.
Then I went to the kitchen.
Alex was at the table, both hands around a mug of coffee. He looked up when I came in, and something moved through his expression that he didn’t quite manage to contain before I saw it.
“Who was at the door?” he asked. His voice was even. Carefully, deliberately even.
I crossed to the counter and poured myself a coffee, hoping it would steady my nerves. “Matteo,” I said.
Silence.
“Why,” Alex said after a moment, and it wasn’t quite a question.
“The skylight.” I turned around, leaning back against the counter with my mug. “Signora Ferretti sent him. I didn’t ask for him specifically.”
His jaw tightened. The muscle in his cheek jumped once. He looked down at his mug and then back up at me, and I could see the effort he was making to keep his expression neutral. He was not entirely succeeding.
“Right,” he said.
“Alex.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to, but I’m not stupid.” I held his gaze. “It’s just the skylight. He’s going to fix the frame and leave.”
“I know that.”
“So why are you doing the jaw thing?”
He looked at me. “What jaw thing?”
“The thing where your jaw goes tight, and you stare at your coffee like you want to murder it.”
For a moment I thought he was going to deny it. He looked like he was assembling the denial. Then something shifted in his face, and he set the mug down on the table and leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling instead of at me, which was just another tell.
“I don’t like him being here,” he said flatly.
“I gathered as much.”
“It’s not—” He stopped. His hand came up and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s not rational.”
“No,” I agreed, trying to keep my voice gentle. “It isn’t.”
He dropped his hand and looked at me again.
His eyes, in the morning light, were the particular shade of blue that I was trying very hard not to think about too often, because every time I did I ended up not being able to think about anything else.
“I know it isn’t,” he said. “I know that. I’m aware of how I sound. ”
“You sound like a jealous lover,” I said carefully.
He was very still.
“And that’s fine,” I added. “But Matteo isn’t a threat. He’s just trying to stop rainwater from ruining the house.”
Alex looked at the table. Then at the window above the sink. Then back at me, with the expression of a man losing an argument he hadn’t wanted to be having in the first place.
“He was on a date with you,” he said. “Less than a week ago.”
“He was,” I said. “And it ended the way it ended, and he came back this morning to fix a leak because that’s his job. That’s all it is.”
“He still wants you,” Alex said. It came out flat and certain and slightly raw underneath.
I didn’t deny it. “Maybe,” I said. “But that’s not the same thing as me wanting him.”
He picked up his mug again, staring into it. His knuckles were pale around the handle. I could hear Matteo moving around upstairs, the soft thud of his bag being set down, the creak of the old floor under his feet.
“I… I don’t like him,” Alex said quietly. Not to me exactly. More to the table. “And I don’t want him around.”
“Can you fix the skylight?” I asked.
“No.”
“Then you’re going to have to deal with it.” I took my mug over to the table and joined him. “I love that you’re all possessive or whatever, but the skylight still needs to be fixed.”
“I’m not possessive,” he shot back. “And I’m not jealous either.”
I just scoffed. “Yes you are.”
“Well, I wasn’t before you.”
“So this is my fault then?” I felt the heat rising up my neck. What had started out as sort of an endearing display of jealousy was quickly turning into an argument. “Is this how you repay everyone who sucks your cock? Or just me?”
The words landed in the kitchen like a dropped glass. Sharp and sudden and impossible to take back.
Alex’s face went through several things in quick succession.
First the blankness, that practiced flatness that he deployed when something caught him off guard, and he needed a second to reassemble.
Then something harder underneath it, the jaw working, the blue eyes going cold.
And then, below all that… he looked hurt.
I set my mug down. “Alex—”
“No.” His voice was very quiet. “You made your point.”
“I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
“But that’s how you meant it.” It wasn’t a question.
I pressed my fingers against my eyes for a moment, colors erupting in the darkness. Above us, Matteo’s footsteps moved steadily across the ceiling. The old floor joists shifted with every step, a constant reminder that we weren’t alone.
“I meant that I’m frustrated,” I said, dropping my hand. “Not that I regret last night. Those are two different things.”
He was looking at the table again. That flat, contained expression was back in full force. But I could read behind it by now. I knew he was protecting something.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he said finally. “I told you that last night.”
“I know.”
“And you said it was fine.”
“It is fine. You not knowing how to do this is fine. You being jealous of Matteo is fine. All of that is fine.” I kept my voice even. “What’s not fine is you acting like I invited him over on purpose just to hurt you.”
He looked up. His expression shifted, fractionally, before settling back into stone.
“You’re delusional,” he said, his voice laced with venom.
My stomach twisted, then went hot with anger. “Don’t fucking call me that,” I growled.
He didn’t flinch. That was the worst part. He just looked at me with those cold blue eyes and acted like I was the one being immature.
“I’m just stating a fact,” he said.
“No, you’re being cruel because you’re scared.” My voice wavered more than I wanted it to. “You’re scared that you like men now. That you like me, your stepbrother. That you loved how good I sucked your cock.”
“Hmph,” he grunted, turning away from me. “I’ve had better.”
The muscle in his cheek jumped once, and I knew he was lying through his fucking teeth.
“I don’t need you, you know,” he added. “I’m fine by myself.”
“So that’s it then, huh?” I asked, trying not to sound like my feelings were hurt, because they were nothing short of crushed. “You just wanted your pity blowjob and now you don’t want anything to do with me?”
“Yep.” He still wasn’t looking at me. “That about sums it up.”
“Fine,” I said, slamming my mug onto the table. I stood up so fast that my chair tipped over, hitting the terracotta floor with a loud thud. “Then I guess you won’t mind if I make plans without you.”
“Be my guest.”
I walked to the kitchen door, but stopped in the threshold. “Matteo?” I called up the stairs. “Can you come down here for a minute?”
Alex’s gazed snapped in my direction, his cold eyes full of fire. “What do you think you’re—”
Quick footsteps coming down the stairs cut him off and a moment later Matteo appeared in the doorway. He’d shed his linen shirt and was already covered in more than a little plaster dust. He stood there staring at both of us with a soft smile, looking like a Greek statue come to life.
“What do you need me for, Leo?” he asked, that accent doing nothing to quell the fire in my belly.
“I wanted to apologize for not calling you.” I held up my hands to stop him before he could tell me not to worry about it again. “I had a really great time, and I was wondering if you wanted to go out again?”
There was a scoff behind me, but I ignored it.
Matteo glanced at Alex, then back at me. “That would be nice,” he nodded. “Alex can come too. I know a place—”
“Alex,” I said, cutting him off. “Is staying at the villa. It’ll be just you and me for the night.”
I could feel Alex’s glare attempting to bore a hole through my back, but I ignored him. If he wanted to be a prick, that was his prerogative. And I, was not going to be treated like that.
So, instead of backing away, I got closer to Matteo, and reached out a hand, placing it on his hairy chest. “I forgot,” I said. “There was something I wanted to give you.”
Without giving him a chance to respond, I leaned forward, pressing my lips to his. There was a sharp gasp behind me and I smiled as Matteo’s tongue slipped into my mouth.
Checkmate.