Instead, I find myself saying “You think hiding behind protocols and exit routes makes you in control. But you’re not incontrol, Valentino. You’re just hiding. You hide behind control the way I hide behind jokes. At least I know that’s what I’m doing.”
For a long moment, he says nothing. The only sound is the low hum of the refrigerator and my own pulse, suddenly loud in my ears.
Then he sets his phone down on the counter, slowly.
“You think I don’t know what I’m doing.” It isn’t a question but I answer anyway.
“I think you’ve spent so long managing everyone else that you’ve forgotten how to just exist without an angle. Without a plan.”
“And you think jokes are a plan.” He takes a step toward me. “You think laughing your way through every hard conversation means you’re not also hiding. Ok then I will ask again, were we ever together in Venice?”
The air goes out of the room.
I open my mouth to deny or deflect, to do anything except stand here while that statement settles between us like a stone dropped into still water. But nothing comes out. Because he’s right, I'm hiding and we both know it, and there’s nowhere left to go from here except closer or away.
He’s close enough now that I can feel the heat radiating off him, can see the muscle ticking in his jaw, the way his eyes drop briefly to my mouth before snapping back up like he’s furious with himself for it.
“Valentino—”
“I know you’re hiding something.” His voice is barely above a whisper now. “I have known for days. And I keep telling myself it doesn’t matter. That whatever it is, it changes nothing.”
“Does it?”
“No.” The word comes out rough, almost angry, like he resents how true it is. “It doesn’t change anything. That’s the problem.”
And then his hand is at my jaw, tilting my face up, and I don’t have time to decide whether I’m going to let this happen before his mouth is on mine.
The kiss is not gentle.
It’s the kiss of two people who have spent two days circling each other, who have argued through three years of unspoken tension in the space of five minutes, and who have finally, finally run out of road.
His hand slides from my jaw into my hair, angling my head exactly where he wants it, and I grab the front of his shirt because I need something to hold onto or I am going to come apart right here on the kitchen floor.
He walks me back until my spine meets the edge of the counter, and the solid weight of him presses against me, and every single nerve ending I own lights up at once.
“This is a terrible idea,” I manage, against his mouth.
“I know.” He doesn’t stop. If anything, the words seem to loosen something in him, and his mouth moves to my jaw, my throat, the spot just below my ear that makes my breath catch audibly.
“We work together.”
“I know that too.” His hands find my waist, lifting me slightly, just enough that I’m sitting on the edge of the counter, and the new angle brings us even closer, his hips settling between my knees in a way that should be illegal in at least four countries.
“Valentino.” It comes out as barely more than a breath.
“Livia.” He pulls back just far enough to look at me, dark eyes nearly black in the dim light, and for a moment I think he’s going to stop. I think he’s going to apologize, step back, retreat into the self-control he wears like armor.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he kisses me again, deeper this time, and one of his hands slides beneath the hem of my shirt, fingers spreading warm against the bare skin of my waist. I feel the rough catch of his breath against my mouth, feel the precise control he prides himself on fraying at the edges, and something fierce and reckless wakes up in me in response.
I pull him closer. My fingers find the buttons of his shirt, and his hand tightens against my waist like he’s barely holding himself together, like one more push from me might be the thing that finally breaks him.
He walks us both away from the counter, toward the hallway, never breaking the kiss, like he can’t stand the few inches of distance it would take to look where we’re going.
My back finds the hallway wall, cool plaster against heated skin, and his thigh slides between mine, and the sound that escapes me is not one I recognize as belonging to myself.
“Tell me to stop,” he says against my throat, voice wrecked. “Tell me to stop, and I will.”
