Chapter 24 #2
“I was coming to find you,” he says.
My heart knocks once, hard. “Why?”
His attention dips to the phone in my hand, then back to my face. “You got news,” he says. Not a question. “From the complaint people.”
I open my mouth, then close it. “How did you—?”
“You get small in different way when email comes,” he says. He frowns, searching for words. “Not shrinking. Just… bracing. Like you prepare for hit.”
I didn’t realize it showed.
“They confirmed receipt,” I say. “And they’re scheduling interviews.” The word interviews tastes like metal.
He nods once. “Good,” he says. “Means they take it serious.”
“It means I have to sit in front of a committee and defend every detail,” I say. “Explain my own memory while they decide if I’m ‘credible’ enough to believe. They already have all the documentation—now they want to see if I’ll crack under questioning.”
The bitterness surprises me. Or maybe it doesn’t.
He studies me for a long moment. “Fortuna still with you?” he asks quietly.
My breath catches. We talked about it yesterday—my encounter in the garden, the way she told me to stop shrinking, the certainty that settled into my bones. But somehow hearing him reference it so casually, like he believes it as much as I do…
“Yes,” I say. “Still in my bones. Her words keep echoing: ‘Displeasure is not ruin.’”
He nods, as if this makes perfect sense. “Good goddess to have on your side.”
“You really believe she spoke to me,” I say. Not a question.
He lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “I told you yesterday—I believe you.” A small smile. “Fortuna speaks to who she wants. You are doing big things. She notices big things.”
He shifts his weight off the pillar, stepping closer. Not close enough to touch, but close enough that I can see the tiny gold flecks in his bold green irises. Close enough that the air between us feels thick.
“You look at me different,” he says. Not accusing. Just observing. “After training.”
My pulse jumps.
“I saw more of you,” I say. “That’s all.”
“And?” he asks.
And I love you. And watching you fight made it worse, or better, or both.
“It made things… clearer,” I say. “About who you are. What you choose to be, even when you could so easily choose something darker.”
The muscle in his jaw jumps once, then eases. Whatever he was bracing for, it wasn’t that.
“This is still part of me,” he says quietly. “The fighting. The old way.” He glances back toward the training yard. “I do not want you to think I am only the man who makes sandwiches and bad jokes.”
“I don’t,” I say. The words come out fast. “I think you’re the man who survived that—and then chose to be more than what it made you.”
His fingers flex once at his sides. “You say this like it is simple,” he murmurs.
“I know it isn’t simple,” I say. “That’s why it matters.”
He goes still. The silence between us shifts—less like absence, more like a held breath.
He’s quiet for a moment, then says, “The interviews. You want me there?”
The offer lands deep. He’s not just offering to testify—he’s offering to sit beside me in that room, knowing exactly how they’ll try to discredit him. His lack of education. His status. His “unreliable” gladiator memory.
“They said I can have a support person,” I say slowly. “But Flavius, they’re going to be brutal. They’ll question your memory, your motives, your relationship to me—”
“I know,” he says simply. “I still want to be there. If you want me.”
My throat tightens. “Yes. I want you there.”
He nods. “Good. You tell me when. I will be there.”
Of course he will. I should know by now to expect nothing less.
“Thank you,” I say. The words feel too small for what I mean.
He gives me a small, genuine smile. “You are welcome, Sophia Vitale.”
Another breeze snakes through the breezeway, skimming cool across my heated skin. A strand of hair falls across my cheek.
He reaches up and tucks it behind my ear, his fingers lingering for just a second at my temple. The touch is gentle, familiar—we’re past asking permission for small comforts like this.
“Better,” he breathes.
I lean into his hand for just a moment before he pulls back. Not regretfully. Just… respecting the line we drew. The “after the fight” line.
We’re both holding it. And somehow that makes the small touches—the ones we allow ourselves—feel more precious, not less.
“Go,” he says finally, tilting his head toward the cabins. “Fight your papers. I will teach tourists.”
A laugh escapes me—shaky, but real. “Deal.”
I move past him, letting my hand trail briefly across his arm as I go—deliberate, a silent thank you. The contact sends warmth racing under my skin.
I look back once at the end of the breezeway.
He’s watching me go, expression unreadable but intent. When our eyes meet, he gives a small nod—almost ceremonial—then turns toward the barracks.
Back in my cabin, I close the door and stand for a moment in the quiet, letting my nervous system catch up.
On the table, my complaint folder waits. Laptop. Notes. Printed emails. The timeline we built together, his memory layered over my obsessive record-keeping.
I sit and open my personal notebook instead—the one that isn’t for data; it’s just for… me.
The page after my last declaration is still blank.
I uncap my pen and write, in neat, uncompromising letters:
They are taking the complaint seriously.I am afraid.I am still glad I filed.
My hand trembles once, then steadies.
Underneath, after a long breath, I add:
I love him.
The words look smaller than the feeling. Ordinary ink trying to contain something enormous. But they’re true, and that matters more than scale.
No caveats. No arrows into pro/con columns. I just sit and let my body register the sentence as fact instead of threat.
Eventually, my heart stops trying to beat its way through my ribs.
On the next line, I write a different heading:
Things I want to ask him (when he’s ready to share)
Not for my framework. Not for academic understanding. For me. Because I love him and I want to know the parts of his story he’s never told anyone.
Under it:
How did you come to be enslaved, and how did you end up in the arena?
What was your first real fight in the arena?
Who taught you to be the Jester?
What did you lose when you learned to make them laugh?
What are you most afraid I’ll see and turn away from?
What do you need me to know about the boy you were?
My pen hesitates there, then underlines the last question.
These aren’t interview questions. They’re the things you ask someone when you’re trying to understand the shape of their heart, not the structure of their trauma.
Rome has always been, for me, a collection of texts and artifacts and reconstructed models. This morning, watching him move in the sand, it became something else.
It became him.
If I’m going to stand beside him—through this complaint, through whatever comes after—I want to understand the world that forged him. Not as a scholar. As the woman who loves him.
I close the notebook gently, palm resting over the cover for a moment.
Outside, somewhere across the grounds, I can almost feel the echo of wooden swords striking, bodies moving through old patterns in new light.
On my desk, my notebook waits with its new sentence: I love him.
I open the notebook and touch my fingertips to the ink, as if that will help it sink in.
For the first time, it doesn’t feel like a distraction from the life I’m building.
It feels like part of the truth I’m finally refusing to abandon.