“Hey, Dean,” Ethan called ahead of us, “your mom officially rejected our invitation, by the way.”
Dean laughed. “Yeah, she told me.”
Ethan’s eyes gleamed. “Oh,Iget it. She’s abandoned us to go off in pursuit of Olympic-level retail therapy.”
He snorted. “She said she wanted one afternoon where nobody discussed protein intake.”
Nathan grinned. “Wow. It’s like she knows us.”
“She should do by now, she spends enough vacation time around you guys.”
Noah pointed at him, grinning. “Your mother likes me best though.”
Dean laughed. “Absolutely not.”
“She called me charming.”
“She called youloud.”
He pouted. “Duh. Same thing.”
The group dissolved into laughter again.
I walked in the middle of all of it feeling increasingly detached from the version of life I had accepted as inevitable. None of this should have felt extraordinary: friends wandering through a city together; athletes arguing over food; couples touching casually in public without scanning crowds beforehand; Dean handing me half of a pastry Ethan forced on him earlier because he noticed I had stopped paying attention to my own hunger.
Normal. This feelsnormal.
I found myself trying to imagine it continuing. Tomorrow. Next month. Next year.
That should have frightened me more than it did.
The realization slowed my steps before I consciously registered why.
Dean noticed immediately. “Are you all right?” I didn’t miss the quiet note of concern in his voice.
I took a moment to study him, noting the openness in his expression, his patience… the complete absence of fear whenever he stood beside me.
And then I couldn’tunsee it.
This was why walking away from him had already started destroying me. I spent weeks fearing that wanting him would feel catastrophic. Instead I found myself beside a man who made the world feel larger, brighter, frighteningly possible.
“I’m fine,” I said automatically, though the lie sounded thin even to me.
We continued toward the Arch of Peace while crowds moved around us beneath banners and Olympic flags snapping sharply in the cold wind. Somewhere farther down the boulevard the Olympic flame burned against the darkening afternoon sky.
For several hours I existed simply as myself.
Not Velkarya’s polished representative. Not half of a federation-approved partnership designed for cameras and sponsorships. Just Luka, walking through Milan with people who liked me without requiring performance in return.
And beside me walked the man who had unknowingly shown me how small my life had become before this. Who had somehow made this new version of myself feel possible.
By the time we returned toward the Village entrance, dusk had settled over the city. Nobody appeared eager for the afternoon to end. Noah and Nathan still argued about gelato with astonishing commitment. Keisha had somehow acquired an Olympic volunteer hoodie despite possessing absolutely no legitimate reason to own one. Donna stood close beside Mila with their hands hidden together beneath the sleeve of Mila’s coat, the gesture so instinctive by now neither of them appeared aware of it anymore.
Across from me, Dean shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and watched me with an expression I could not safely examine too closely.
“I’m glad you came,” he said.
They were simple words with no pressure attached to them, no attempt to revisit our conversation from two nights earlier. Yet hearing them tightened my throat anyway because I understood exactly what remained unspoken beneath the surface.
