Page 73 of The Rook’s Obsession

Instead, I sit down.

Within minutes, Lucia comes out, wiping her hands on a towel. When she sees me, her face does something interesting. First there’s surprise, then warmth. Then I see a flicker of concern when she registers that I’m alone.

“Where is the handsome man?” she asks as she slides into the chair across from me without waiting to be invited. Her eyes search my face. “The one who couldn’t stop looking at you,” she teases.

I don’t see the humor. It feels more like she hit a bruise I didn’t know was there. “Don’t worry about him,” I tell her. “That’s over.”

“Over?” She looks at me the way she always has: directly, with no pretense. The kind of honest attention that used to make me feel seen in a world where I was trained to be invisible. “He didn’t look at you like something that could be over, at least not so suddenly.”

“People look at a lot of things they eventually walk away from.”

She’s quiet for a moment before reaching across the table and covering my hand with hers. Her skin is warm and familiar. “You look terrible,” she says gently.

“Thank you.”

“I mean it. You look like you haven’t slept. Have you eaten?”

“I’m fine.”

“That is not what I asked.” She gives my hand a squeeze before standing. “Stay here.”

She brings food I didn’t order and coffee I never asked for, then sits with me while I eat because she knows me well enough to know I won’t eat if someone isn’t watching. We talk. Not about Nick, or about the mission, or anything that matters. She tells me about her sister’s new baby. The plumbing disaster that flooded the kitchen last month. The new waiter she hired, who is beautiful and completely useless.

It’s normal and ordinary. It’s exactly what I’ve needed, but it does nothing to fill the hole in my chest.

At some point, her hand finds my knee under the table. It’s casual, the way it used to be. Testing me, seeing if the boundaries are in place. I look at her, and she looks at me, and something passes between us that’s made of memory and loneliness and the kind of comfort that comes from someone who already knows your body and doesn’t need a map.

“Come,” she murmurs, tilting her head toward the restaurant and wearing a knowing look I recognize too well. “I want to show you something.”

She doesn’t want to show me anything, and we both know it. The back room is where they store the extra chairs, the cases of wine, and the olive oil they buy in bulk. It’s where we used to go when the restaurant was between rushes; the door could be locked, and no one would notice we were gone.

And I follow her, knowing all of this, because I want to feel something that isn’t what I’m feeling now. Anything, so long as I don’t have to feel the way I feel right now. The door closes behind us, and she turns to me in the dim light between the wine racks. Her hands come up to my face the way they always did, her fingertips light on my jaw.

And she kisses me. Her lips are soft. She tastes like espresso and the honey she puts in her tea, which she drinks after she’s already had enough espresso to make her practically vibrate. She kisses the way she always did: slow, deliberate, with the patience of a woman who knows exactly what she’s doing and has no interest in rushing. It’s good, too. It was always good with her. Easy and uncomplicated.

I wait for it to work. For the warmth to spread, and my brain to go quiet. For the gnawing ache in my chest to be replaced by something simpler and easier to manage.

It doesn’t happen. None of it does.

Because I’m kissing her, but all I can think about is pale blue eyes and a rough voice saying my name in the dark. Hands that are larger than hers, rougher. Hands that know how to take apart a weapon and how to hold me like I’m something worth being careful with. The way he drums his fingers when he’s thinking. The way he looks at me when he thinks I’m not paying attention, like I’m the answer to a question he’s been asking for a long time.

I pull back. Lucia’s eyes open to search mine. She sees it before I say it.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

She doesn’t look surprised. She looks like she knows the answer before she asks the question. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

I can’t speak, so I settle for a nod.

She studies me for a long moment, then presses her lips to my forehead in a brief, final sort of way. “Then why are you here with me instead of with him?”

I don’t have an answer. No, that’s not true. I have too many answers, and none of them are good enough. Because I’m scared. Because I don’t trust it. Because every time I’ve let someone matter, they’ve turned into something that could hurt me, and Nick matters more than anyone ever has. That means he could do more damage than anyone ever has.

Because the thing I’m most afraid of isn’t that he’ll leave. It’s that he’ll stay, and I won’t know how to let him do that.

“Go,” she murmurs, opening the door. “Before you talk yourself out of it.”

I leave the restaurant without looking back. The piazza is bright and busy, and I walk through it the way I’ve walked through every city I’ve ever lived in. Quickly, purposefully, like a woman with somewhere to be, even when she has nowhere to go.