“Aspen, it’s the middle of the night. Go home.”
“I am home, Luca.”
“The fuck are you talking about?”
“‘It all belongs to me.’ Those were your exact words, if I recall.”
“Aspen! English,” he growls, his accent thick with sleep but still sexy. “What are you going on about?”
I lean in close to the camera, hovering just near the mic. I know he doesn't want his one neighbor hearing this, so I make sure my voice is loud enough to send his pompous heart into a full-blown cardiac event.
“Remember that one morning after brunch? You wanted me so bad you fucked me in the elevator. Then you carried me across the threshold of your humble abode and told me the whole place was mine. That I could have it all, so long as you could eat me and lick my—”
Clack.
The door lock disengages with the speed of a gunshot.
“Fucking hell! Just come in!”
“Thought so,” I chirp in the empty hallway. I hitch my bag higher, saunter inside, and use my hip to swing the door shut with a satisfying thud.
Judging by the long pause when Luca saw me on the monitor, I was certain he’d at least come out to greet me. Instead, the apartment is pitch-black and silent. It's a landmine of discarded clothes and stray shoes.
When I step into the kitchen, I nearly gag. It’s a cesspool of expensive takeout containers and neglected surfaces.
“Men,” I whisper, dropping my bag onto one of the barstools at the marble island. “I wouldn't have let things get this bad if I’d been around.”
The thought stings more than I want to admit. Seeing the state of this place—the abandonment of it—reminds me that he made me feel just as discarded as the empty containers littering the counters. But I refuse to give him the satisfaction of another tear. Instead of allowing myself to cry again, I channel that raw ache into pure, spite-fueled productivity.
I go to work.
By 5:00 AM, the kitchen smells like lemon-scented Pine-Sol instead of old grease. By 6:00 AM, I’ve purged the living room of every trash-filled box and hauled it to the curb. I am a whirlwind of petty-fueled efficiency.
I click on the vacuum, the roar filling the open-concept space as I tackle the plush rug in the center of the room. It feels like a physical barrier, a loud, vibrating wall I’m using to keep the silence—and the memory of us—at bay. But then, I feel it. A sudden prickle of heat on my skin that has nothing to do with the morning humidity and everything to do with being watched.
I click the power off. There’s a sudden, deafening silence that follows that straightens my spine.
Luca is there.
He leans heavily against the doorframe at the edge of the room, his large frame nearly filling the entry. He is shirtless, his skin a map of copper tones and shadows in the dim morning light. He wears nothing but a pair of low slung grey sweatpants that hang precariously off his hips, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination. His hair is a chaotic nest of sleep mussed waves, but his eyes are what stop my breath. They are heavy lidded and hazel, dark with desire as they track me with a lethal combination of rugged exhaustion and simmering heat.
He doesn’t spare a glance for the gleaming, lemon-scented kitchen. He doesn’t look at the vacuum or the pristine floors. His gaze is anchored to me. Specifically, the way these thin, form-fitting scrubs cling to my skin and the curve of my hips. My damp skin, still flushed from two hours of scrubbing away the remnants of his grief.
Since I arrived, I’ve been trying to wash away the clutter and the confusion, reaching for the ghost of what we used to be and the memory of what this home once meant for us. I’ve been hoping, praying, that he’ll finally come back to it. Even if I am not sure I want him there permanently.
So much has happened. So many things I always promised myself I’d never let a man do or make me feel. Yet here I am. Despite the betrayal and the rules I’ve set for my own survival, my body is still beckoning for him. All the weight of the last few months—the hollow silence and the sharp sting of being discarded—warps under the heat of this electricity. The nostalgia of the days we chose each other.
“Good morning,” is all he says.
“Morning,” I reply, turning away with a sudden, frantic interest in the space I have spent the last few hours scrubbing. “As you can see, I am nearly done cleaning.”
“You really did not have to do all this.”
“I know,” I say, the words tumbling out too fast. “I could tell you needed it.”
“Do you do this for all your patients?”
“Yes,” I lie. Because I can’t let him know he still gets the version of me no one else sees. I can’t let him know he’s still the exception to every one of my rules.
