“So,” Rodrigo says, falling into step beside me as we head into the video room.
“No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Do you think I can’t read your mind after all these years?”
He grins. “Please, don’t flatter yourself.”
“You’re such a little shit, you know that?” I shove my notebook lightly against his arm, and he laughs as we head towards the stairs.
Behind me, I don’t look back.
I don’t have to.
Because I can feel her there anyway. Just like the day I stepped into this rink three months ago.
CHAPTER 35
ISABELLA
She’s alreadyin my house.
That’s the first thing I register when I walk in through the back door, the quiet click of it closing behind me barely loud enough to announce anything.
It’s not something I question, not immediately, because people are in and out of this space all the time—Nina, the staff at the rink, the occasional neighbor dropping off Natalie Portman after he’s had a wild night in the streets.
But this doesn’t register the same way in my mind. It doesn’t fit into the same category.
It feelsdomesticandnormal.
Her shoes are by the front entry, not placed carefully, just left there. A few weeks ago, she told me that she didn’t understand Americans’ obsessions with taking shoes off inside the house, so maybe I said something that convinced her, because now they’re there, by the door. There is a jacket draped over the arm of the chair by the window, and I know it isn’t mine.
It shouldn’t feel this way, my brain mumbles. So easy.
There’s absolutely no reason for her to be here, no formal arrangement or message waiting on my phone explaining when she got here or why she let herself in, and for most of my life that would have mattered.
Instead, I set my keys down on the counter and stand there for a second longer than I need to, letting the quiet settle around me and the fact of her presence exist without trying to categorize it or assign it a purpose.
It’s a new feeling. And I don’t move away from it.
“What took you so long?”
I find her in the kitchen, leaning against the counter with a glass of water in her hand, tilting it towards Natalie Portman’s mouth.
“What are you doing?”
She looks up when she hears me. “Hi.”
“Hi,” I reply. “Why are you hand-watering my cat?”
“He’s thirsty.”
I close the distance between us without thinking about it in steps or intention, just a steady movement forward that feels inevitable and foreign at the same time. It’s something I’m not used to allowing, but this woman suddenly broke down everything in me.
My hand comes up to her face before I’ve decided to do it and my thumb brushes along her cheek, slower than anything I’ve allowed myself with her before, slower than anything I’ve allowed myself with anyone in a long time.
“Jesus, Ceci, he’s already incredibly spoiled,” I say with a smile. “What am I going to do when you leave?”
