Aria's POV
I do not sleep.
Not one hour.
I lie on my back staring at my ceiling listening to the silence coming from my living room and trying to convince my brain that the stranger on my couch is not my problem.
My brain is not listening.
Every time I close my eyes I see him. Dark and sharp and looking at me like he already knows things about me I have not told anyone.
I give up at five forty-five and get out of bed.
I do not think about how I look.
I pull on my sleep shorts and my big shirt and wrap my cardigan around myself and walk out of my bedroom and stop so fast I nearly trip over my own feet.
He is awake.
Of course he is awake.
He is sitting on the edge of my couch with his elbows on his knees and his shirt hanging open at the front and his dark hair slightly messy from the night and he looks up the second I appear like he sensed me before he heard me.
Those eyes find mine and stay.
My stomach does something I am going to pretend did not happen.
"You look terrible," I say.
His mouth moves. Not quite a smile. Something better than a smile actually. Something slow and private that he does not seem to share with many people.
"Good morning," he says.
His voice in the morning is lower than last night. Rougher. It does something to the back of my knees that I am choosing not to think about.
I walk to the kitchen.
I fill the moka pot and put it on the stove and stand with my back to the living room and tell myself firmly that I am not thinking about the way that man looks sitting on my couch at six in the morning with his shirt open.
"How is the wound?" I ask without turning.
"Better."
"Let me check it."
"It is fine, Aria."
The way he says my name.
Like he owns it. Like it was already his before I told it to him.
I turn around.
"Come here then," I say.
He looks at me for a second. Then he stands.
And I realize immediately that standing Dante is a completely different problem from sitting Dante.
He is tall. Really tall. The kind of tall that makes my small apartment feel like it shrunk two sizes. He crosses the room and stops in front of me and looks down at me with those dark eyes and I have to tilt my chin up just to hold his gaze which I absolutely am going to do because I am not someone who looks away first.
"Sit," I say.
He sits on the kitchen chair.
I crouch in front of him and peel the bandaging back carefully and check the wound. It is clean. Better than it has any business being. I press gently at the edges and he does not make a sound and I look up.
He is watching me.
Not the wound. Me.
His eyes are moving over my face the way you read something you want to memorize and my heart does something embarrassingly loud in my chest and I thank God he cannot hear it.
"It needs proper stitches," I say. My voice comes out steady. I am proud of it.
"What you did is enough."
"You keep saying that."
"Because you keep doubting it."
I sit back on my heels and look up at him and we are close like this. Too close. His knee is almost touching my shoulder and he is looking down at me and the morning light is coming through my kitchen window and hitting the sharp line of his jaw and I need to stand up right now.
I stand up.
He catches my wrist.
Not hard. Just his fingers wrapping around it before I can step back and I go completely still and look down at his hand on my skin and then up at his face.
"Thank you," he says quietly.
Two words. That is all. But the way he says them with those eyes on mine makes my whole body feel like something that has been plugged in.
"Don't thank me," I say. "Just leave today."
He releases my wrist slowly.
His fingers drag slightly as they go and I feel every single one of them.
I pour two cups of coffee and push one across the counter toward him without getting close enough to make it easy.
He notices the distance.
I watch his eyes drop to the space between us and come back to my face with something in them that looks almost like amusement except darker than amusement. More dangerous than amusement.
He reaches across and takes the cup anyway. His fingers brush mine on the handle.
I pull back.
He drinks his coffee and watches me over the rim with those eyes that have not stopped moving over me since I walked out of my bedroom and I wrap my cardigan tighter and sit in the armchair across the room and put as much furniture between us as my small apartment allows.
"You need to leave today," I say.
"I know."
"I mean it. Today. Not tonight. Now. As soon as it is light enough."
"I know, Aria."
"Stop saying my name like that."
He pauses.
"Like what?"
I open my mouth.
My phone goes off.
Sofia's face lights up the screen and I grab it before it rings twice.
"Ciao," I say low.
"Why are you whispering?" Her voice is already at full morning volume. "Are you sick? You sound strange. I'm coming over."
"Sofia I'm perfectly fine you do not need to—"
"I'm already at the corner. The cornetti just came out. You cannot say no to warm cornetti Aria that is physically not something I will allow."
"Today is really not—"
"I'm at your door."
The line dies.
I lower the phone.
I look at Dante.
He is already on his feet.
He moves to the window before I can say a word and presses himself against the wall beside it and looks down at the street and even hurt and in yesterday's clothes this man moves like something that was built specifically to be difficult to catch.
"Who is it?" he says.
"My best friend. She is completely harmless."
"Nobody is completely harmless."
"Sofia is. She runs a bakery."
He turns his head and looks at me.
Those eyes go from my face down to my sleep shorts and back up so slowly I feel it like a hand.
"Go get dressed," he says.
"Excuse me?"
"You are going to open that door in your sleep clothes and she is going to know immediately that something is wrong because you do not open your door in your sleep clothes."
I stare at him.
He raises an eyebrow.
I hate that he is right.
I hate even more that he noticed.
I go to my room and pull on jeans and a top in two minutes flat and come back out and he has already moved himself to the bedroom door. He leans against the frame with his arms crossed and looks at me and I point at the bedroom behind him.
"In there," I say. "Now."
"You are very bossy for someone whose apartment I could buy."
"Dante."
Three loud knocks at the front door.
He holds my gaze for one long second.
Then he goes inside.
The door closes without a sound.
Sofia bursts in like she always does.
Yellow coat. Wild hair everywhere. Paper bag crushed to her chest. Already talking before she is fully through the door.
"Okay you will not believe the morning I have had. This man came into the bakery and told Marco the brioche was too sweet. Too sweet Aria. At our bakery. Marco smiled at him and honestly I thought I was going to witness something criminal."
She drops onto my couch.
I sit in the armchair and take the cornetti she holds out and work very hard on looking like a woman having a completely ordinary morning.
"What did Marco do?" I ask.
"He smiled. You know the smile."
"I know the smile."
"The man left without his change." She bites into her cornetti and looks around my apartment with those sharp warm eyes that have never missed a single thing in the ten years I have known her. Her gaze moves slowly. The couch cushions. The coffee table. The two cups on my kitchen counter.
She goes very still.
"Aria."
"Don't."
"There are two cups on your counter."
"Sofia."
"You live alone."
"I am aware of that."
She looks at me.
I look back.
She chews her cornetti slowly and deliberately like she is making a decision.
"Okay," she says finally. Real quiet. "I will not ask right now." She points her cornetti at me. "But you are going to tell me. And it better be the most interesting story I have ever heard."
"It might be," I say honestly.
She stays forty minutes.
She fills my apartment with all her warmth and noise and I sit across from her and listen and laugh in the right places and feel the gap between my ordinary life and last night stretch into something I cannot measure anymore.
At the door she hugs me tight.
"You are not fine," she says into my hair.
"I will be."
She pulls back and looks at my face for a long moment.
"Call me," she says. Not a suggestion.
She leaves.
I close the door.
I press my back against it and let out the breath I have been holding for forty minutes.
The bedroom door opens.
Dante steps back into the room and his eyes go straight to me and the way he looks at me right now standing against my door with my hair loose and my heart still running is something I am completely unprepared for.
Like he was waiting.
Like he has been thinking about me on the other side of that door for forty minutes the same way I have been thinking about him.
He walks toward me.
He does not stop until he is close enough that I have to press further back against the door and even then the space between us is too small to be anything but deliberate.
He reaches up.
His hand goes to the door beside my head. Not touching me. Just there.
"She knows," he says.
"She suspects," I breathe. "There is a difference."
"Is there?"
It is not a question.
His eyes drop to my mouth and come back up and I feel that look in places I absolutely should not be feeling anything right now.
"You need to step back," I say.
"Do I."
"Yes."
"You do not sound very sure about that."
I open my mouth to tell him exactly how sure I am.
My phone buzzes on the counter.
Unknown number.
One message.
Your friend is very pretty Aria.
It would be a shame if something happened to her on the way home.
Tell the man you are hiding to come outside.
Or the next visit will not be so polite.
The phone falls from my hand.
Dante catches it before it hits the floor.
He reads it.
And the man who has been calm and controlled since the moment I found him bleeding goes completely and terrifyingly still.
He is not close anymore.
He is everywhere.
"Lock this door," he says. His voice is not rough now. It is flat and cold and absolutely certain. "Do not open it for anyone. Do you hear me?"
"Dante what is—"
"Aria." His eyes cut to mine and whatever is in them makes my argument die completely. "Lock. The door."
He picks up his phone.
He is already dialing before he reaches the window.
And I stand in the middle of my small apartment with my heart slamming against my ribs and realize that the man I pulled out of a dark alley two nights ago has just pulled me into one.
And I have absolutely no idea how to get out.