“I know. I’m sorry. It’s—it’s a long story.”
Kai approaches, hands in his pockets, looking awkward but pleased. “I have so many questions,” he says, glancing at Lorenzo. “But he let me drive his R8 here, so I guess he’s alright.”
I glance at Lorenzo, who’s watching all of this with a smug, satisfied smile. His cousin Costa is there too, congratulating him while sneaking looks at my sister.
“You did all this?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
“I would tear the world apart for you, Zara.” He stepped closer, cupping my face. “Flying your family here was the easy part.”
I kissed him again. Harder this time, pouring everything I can’t say into the press of my lips against his.
“Alright, alright, break it up,” Marcus called out, clapping his hands. “Drinks! This calls for a toast. Where’s the champagne?”
I pull back, laughing, and look at the ring on my finger again. It glints in the candlelight, beautiful and impossible.
Two weeks ago, I was drinking alone in a bar, heartbroken and lost.
Now I’m in Verona, surrounded by roses and candles and the family I thought I’d lost, engaged to a man who looks at me like I’m the only thing in the world that matters.
Love, I think, isn’t something you go searching for. It finds you when you’ve stopped believing you’re worthy of it. When your heart is bruised and guarded, and exhausted from surviving. It slips into the cracks, anyway.
For so long, being loved felt fragile to me. Temporary. Like standing on thin ice and waiting for the first crack beneath your feet. I learned early that people leave. Those promises disappear. That if you leaned too hard on someone, eventually they’d let go and watch you fall.
So I made myself smaller. Easier to leave. Easier to disappoint.
Then Lorenzo found me.
Not when I was confident or whole or ready for something beautiful. He found me heartbroken and dragging a suitcase through a bar, convinced I was too damaged to deserve more than scraps of affection and temporary attention.
And somehow, impossibly, he loved me like none of those things mattered.
Not carefully.
Not halfway.
Completely.
He loved me in a way that forced me to confront every ugly thing I believed about myself. Every wound. Every fear. Everyquiet voice inside me that whisperedyou are too much to keep and never enough to stay for.
Lorenzo silenced those voices without even realizing it.
Not because he saved me.
Because he looked at me—really looked at me—and treated me like I was worth protecting. Worth choosing. Worth loving without conditions attached.
I looked up at him then, at the man who had turned my entire life upside down. The man who could be possessive and terrifying and impossibly tender all at once. The man who made me feel seen in ways I didn’t know I’d been aching for.
“Thank you,” I whispered softly.
His expression immediately softened as he brushed his thumb across my cheek. “For what?”
“For teaching me that I deserved to be loved.”
Something vulnerable flickered through his eyes at that.
Then he leaned down and pressed a slow kiss against my forehead, holding me close enough that I could hear the steady rhythm of his heartbeat beneath my ear.
“Always, Tesoro,” he murmured quietly. “Always.”
