12. Something Real
SOMETHING REAL
LUCA
Ihit the water before sunrise, cutting beneath the surface until the world narrowed to salt, silence, and the burn in my lungs.
It was the only place I still knew how to be honest.
No cameras. No investors. No staff pretending not to watch me. Just water sliding over my shoulders and dawn lifting over Miami.
Then I surfaced and saw them.
Ava was down the beach in her purple rash guard, crouched near the tideline with her bucket between her knees.
She picked up one shell, examined it, set it in the bucket, then shifted three steps to the left and did it again.
Same rhythm. Same distance. Pick up, inspect, decide.
A small, orderly pattern drawn against an ocean that refused to hold still.
Riley stood a few yards behind her, sandals hooked in one hand, hair loose from sleep, watching Ava with that quiet attentiveness that made something dangerous happen inside my chest.
"She woke up asking for sunrise shells," Riley called softly. "Apparently they're different from regular shells."
"They are," Ava said without looking up. "Because the sun is new."
Riley's smile tilted. "See? Very official."
I waded toward shore until the water sat low on my hips. The morning air hit my skin, cool against the heat I couldn't blame on swimming.
"You were already gone." Riley glanced toward Ava, then back to me. "We followed the footprints."
Ava held up a shell. "This one is almost a spiral but not perfect. I'm keeping it."
"Good call, princesa," I said.
She went back to sorting, humming under her breath.
"Secret training session?" Riley said softly.
I wiped water from my face. "Secret escape."
Her smile shifted, softer, like she understood.
She stepped into the shallows, hissing when the water touched her ankles. "That is aggressively cold."
"It's the Atlantic, not a bath."
"Good morning to you too, sunshine."
Riley stepped closer but kept space between us. Smart woman. Better than me, because my first instinct was to reach for her.
Her gaze dropped to my mouth. Only for a second. Long enough.
The ocean pushed around my legs. I watched her catch herself and look away, cheeks warming in the thin gold light.
"We can't," she whispered.
"I know."
"I mean, Ava is right there."
"I know that too."
Her breath shook once, almost a laugh, almost not. "Then stop looking at me like that."
"I've been trying."
"And?"
"It's not going well."
"We should be careful," she said.
"I know."
"Ava trusts me."
"She does."
A wave slid around Riley's ankles, knocking her slightly off balance. I caught her by the waist before I could think better of it. Her hand landed against my chest, fingers curling once against my skin.
"I don't want to mess that up," she whispered.
"Neither do I."
Neither of us moved to claim it or dismiss it. The words just stayed there, doing their quiet work.
She looked down at my hand, still resting on her waist, then lifted her eyes to mine.
"Then what is this?" she asked quietly.
My thumb moved once against her side. "Something we don't rush."
Her lips parted, a small breath leaving her. "Okay."
Ava dropped another shell into her bucket with a tiny click, counting under her breath. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. The sound brought Riley's attention back to the beach. The want in her expression softened into care.
That was what undid me most.
Not the wanting. I understood wanting. I knew how to lock it down, bury it, pretend it was just heat or loneliness or the memory of a night we never finished.
But Riley caring for Ava while wanting me back? That was something I had no defense against.
"I should take her in soon," Riley said. "She wants to arrange them before breakfast."
"By size?"
"Texture first. Then size. Then possibly emotional importance, but I'm still unclear on the ranking system."
I smiled despite myself.
Riley saw it. Her expression softened, then sobered. I looked down the beach at Ava, safe in her ritual, then back at Riley. For a moment, we stood there with a few feet of wet sand between us and everything we were not saying pressing into the morning.
Then Ava lifted her bucket with both hands. "Riley, the shells need the blue towel. Not the yellow one."
Riley stepped back first.
"Blue towel," she said, voice steady again. "Got it."
She turned with Ava toward the house, carrying the sandals in one hand and something heavier in the careful set of her shoulders. I stayed in the water and watched them go, wanting still in my hands, where I had not let myself use it.
By the time I came back to the house, Riley was at the breakfast island with her damp hair twisted up, while Ava arranged blueberries by color gradient beside her cereal bowl.
Ava looked up the second I walked in. Then she looked at Riley. Then back at me. Her little eyes narrowed with the kind of forensic precision that had once made three therapists smile into their clipboards.
"You're quiet," Ava said.
"I'm always quiet," I answered.
"No." She placed one blueberry in the wrong row, saw it, and fixed it immediately. "Today quiet is different."
Riley froze with the orange juice halfway to Ava's glass.
I crossed to the espresso machine. "What kind of different?"
Ava considered this while tapping the edge of her spoon against her napkin. Three taps. Pause. Three taps.
"Not mad quiet," she decided. "Not sad quiet." Her gaze moved from me to Riley. "Warm quiet."
"What makes it warm?" she asked.
Ava pointed her spoon at me. "His eyebrows aren't doing the line. And he keeps looking at you."
Riley lowered the juice very carefully. "Excellent. Nothing unsettling about being profiled before coffee."
"Warm, quiet sounds nice," she added.
"It is." Ava picked up her spoon. "Can we have pancakes with the banana circles today?"
"You already have cereal," I said.
"That was before warm quiet."
Riley coughed into her shoulder, badly hiding a laugh.
I pulled down the skillet. "One pancake."
"Three small pancakes."
"One and a half."
"Two, because halves are upsetting."
Riley smiled at the counter, but when Ava turned back to her blueberries, the smile thinned. I saw it because I watched Riley too closely now. At the stove, she came beside me under the pretense of reaching for plates.
"She knows something shifted," Riley murmured.
"She's perceptive."
"She trusts patterns, Luca. If we become one and then break badly, she'll feel it before we ever explain it."
The batter hissed when it hit the pan. I looked at Ava, calm in the morning light, then at the woman beside me, already trying to protect my daughter from a hurt that hadn't happened.
"Then we don't make promises we can't keep," I said.
Riley's expression tightened. "That isn't exactly reassuring."
"No." I lowered my voice. "But learning how to do this right before Ava has to absorb our mistakes is."
Her breath caught, but she stayed beside me while the pancake browned.
The call from Bianca came while Ava was in the media room building what looked like a structurally unsound hotel out of magnetic tiles.
Riley had her laptop open at the dining table, one foot tucked under her, a pencil twisted into her hair.
She had shifted from nanny mode to work mode without changing clothes, and somehow that made it worse.
Like she belonged in every corner of my life before either of us had agreed what that meant.
I pretended to read a contract when her phone lit up.
"Bianca," she said, sitting straighter.
"Take it."
She gave me a look that said she did not need permission.
Good. I liked that too much.
"Hi," she answered, reaching for a notepad.
I heard Bianca's voice only in pieces through the speaker Riley had not meant to turn up loud enough.
Celebrity client. Waterfront ceremony. Three-day event. Privacy concerns. Press risk.
Riley stopped writing.
"I'm sorry," she said carefully. "Did you say co-lead?"
My pen stilled.
Across the table, Riley's eyes lifted to mine, wide for half a second before she looked down and pressed the pencil harder to the page.
"Yes, absolutely," she said. "I can handle that. I would be honored."
Bianca said something that made Riley's shoulders draw back. Not wounded. Bracing.
"I understand," Riley replied.
I watched excitement fold into professionalism, pride tuck behind caution.
Bianca's voice sharpened enough for me to catch the rest.
"People in this world love a story, Riley. If they decide Luca Santoro opened the door for you, they'll stop asking what you did once you walked through it. So know every detail. Stay calmer than the men questioning you. And make yourself impossible to dismiss."
My jaw tightened.
Riley didn't look at me this time.
"I know," she said. "And thank you for saying it straight."
When the call ended, silence settled between us and the soft click of Ava's tiles from the other room.
I wanted to tell her Bianca was wrong. That talent should be enough. That no one would dare reduce her work to my name. But I had lived too long inside rooms where power pretended to be merit. Bianca wasn't wrong.
That was the problem.
Riley stared at her notes, then breathed out.
"Co-lead," she whispered.
I stood and came around the table, stopping far enough back that she still had space to own the moment.
"You earned it."
Her smile hit fast, bright, and scared. "Now I have to prove I earned it."
"No." I leaned down, bringing my mouth close to her ear because I was weak and getting worse. "Now they have to keep up."
Her laugh was quiet, but some of the fear left her face. "Great. I'll add terrifying the wealthy to my onboarding checklist."
"You're a natural."
"That sounded dangerously close to praise, Santoro."
"Don't get used to it."
She looked back at her notes, smiling now, and started building the event before anyone else had finished imagining it.
Ava was at camp for the morning, which meant Riley had started her day with sunscreen negotiations, a packed sensory bag, and a laminated schedule Ava had inspected three times before agreeing to leave the house.