Almost an hour later, Vittoria had her cheek pressed flat against the counter.

When she raised her head, her mouth was still full, but that couldn’t stop the barely visible smile she was trying to show.

Leo stared at her, then shook his head before gesturing for her to take her time.

"This," she said while swallowing, "is so good."

"Thank you," Leo said while bowing slightly before continuing to eat his own.

"How did you learn to cook like that?"

"I think it’s a matter of how I couldn’t after living with Mia and Sofia. One of them is a fanatic about eating good food," he said, meaning Mia, "and the other is a fanatic about cooking it."

"It’s hard not to pick something up when you’re around that every day."

He glanced down at his plate.

"This one’s actually one of three dishes I’ve properly mastered. Garlic butter pasta. Simple enough, but the way Sofia taught me makes it so much better than the rest."

"Still, I practised and practised until mine tasted better than hers!"

"Oh really?"

"Yeah!"

"So you wouldn’t mind me telling her then?"

"Please don’t."

Vittoria laughed at that, shaking her head a bit, and then, some even minutes later, it was empty.

Leo looked at it and then at her.

Then he picked the pan up without a word and brought it over, and she didn’t protest.

After that, the dishes became Vittoria’s idea and Leo’s problem.

"I’ll wash," she said, already sliding off the stool.

"You won’t," Leo said, which made her turn to look back.

"I’m a guest. Guests don’t wash up?"

"Guests especially don’t wash up."

"That doesn’t make any sense."

"It will when it’s your turn to host."

Still, Vittoria continued moving towards the sink, only for Leo to quickly step in front of her.

"Rock, paper, scissors," Vittoria said, to which Leo looked at her in the equivalent of an adult asking for a kid’s meal at a fast food shop.

"Come on. Indulge me, huh. Best of three," she added.

He looked at her for another moment and then held out his fist.

She beat him in the first round, which got her excited, but Leo won the next, which threw her off a bit.

Then Leo went for the same thing he’d done in the second round, which was to throw another rock to meet Vittoria’s scissors, since she had thought he would change it.

"That’s not right," she said.

"Step away from the sink, Vittoria."

She stepped away, slowly, with her arms crossed, and then she climbed up onto the countertop near the sink and sat there watching him wash with the energy of someone lodging a silent but firm complaint.

After a moment, she said, "Do you have any more questions? About everything."

Leo glanced up at her.

He tilted his head slightly and went quiet, his hands moving through the washing automatically while he thought about it properly.

Then he shook his head. "No."

She blinked. "Really."

"Really."

"That’s it?"

"Well, what were you expecting?"

"They just seem to make it seem so difficult in the movies," she said, which caught Leo a bit off guard.

"Of all the sources you could choose to trust," he said, and then he set a plate on the drying rack and looked at her briefly.

"It’s not what I expected, I’ll give you that. But it’s not something to be afraid of. At least it’s better than what I thought."

"What did you think?"

"I mean, I did think for a while that your family was in the mafia."

She turned to look at him slowly.

"You kept saying, my family, my family, there are things about my family," he said, not unkindly. "What was I supposed to think?"

"Something other than mafia."

"I got there eventually," he said, which made her press her lips together to keep from smiling, and she mostly succeeded.

He finished the last of the dishes, dried his hands and leaned against the counter.

"How does it actually work?" he said. "Your family. The house and everything."

Vittoria thought about it for a moment, as though deciding where to start.

"Italy isn’t a monarchy anymore," she said.

"So it’s not that we rule anything or that there’s a throne somewhere, but the name still carries weight. Politically, diplomatically. My father sits in rooms with people who make decisions, and the name is part of why they let him in."

"And then there’s the expectation that the people carrying the name behave in a way that protects what it represents."

"Which is why the photos were a problem."

"Which is why the photos were a problem," she confirmed.

"It wasn’t a scandal. It was just—" she searched for it, "something colourful in a space that was supposed to be neutral."

Leo nodded slowly and said nothing else on it.

After that, the duo went back to the couch to watch a film that had just been put on for the sake of filling the blanks in their conversation.

"Personally, I thought you’d be some stuck-up girl," Leo confessed as they talked, causing Vittoria’s mouth to widen before hitting Leo. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

"Noooo!"

"True. And most of it stems from the night we talked. During whatever it was on that boat!"

"But I told you I had no idea it was for me until that evening when I was made to appear because of my aunt, you know, for publicity. I was going to leave after a while, but I ended up talking to you, which made me stay!"

"Guess I should be glad that you approached," Leo said, which made Vittoria turn her head towards him so sharply it could have whiplashed.

"Whattttttt? That was not what happened," she said, causing Leo to laugh at her over-the-top head turn.

"Let’s agree to disagree," Leo said, but Vittoria wasn’t having it.

A while later, the movie suddenly got interesting due to the lack of talking points, and the movie also reaching the climax.

When it ended, Leo realised it was later than he’d realised.

He turned to say something about it, but as he did, he found Vittoria with her eyes closed and her head slightly dropped to one side.

On her face was a particularly pleased expression with her hands folded loosely in her lap, and at the moment, she looked genuinely at peace.

Leo looked at her for a moment.

Then he stood up very carefully, transferring his weight slowly enough that the couch barely moved, and he stood there in the middle of his living room doing nothing before biting his knuckle a moment later.

This was new territory, and he was aware of that.

He moved a few paces in one direction, stopped, moved back, stopped again, and stood staring at her with the expression of a man taking stock of a situation that his usual instincts weren’t fully equipped for.

The position she was in was going to be a problem.

He could see that from here.

Her neck at that angle for a few hours was going to make itself known in the morning.

After gathering whatever spine he had left at the moment, he moved toward her carefully and reached down toward the hem of her knitted shirt between two fingers, just enough to have something to work with, and then brought his other palm slowly toward the side of her head.

After she didn’t stir, he tugged gently, catching the side of her head in his palm as she shifted, and in one slow, careful motion, he brought her whole being down until she was lying on her side along the length of the couch with her head resting properly now.

After that, he stood back up with an almost triumphant look.

He then went to his bedroom, came back with a light blanket and laid it over her, and then he stood there again looking at her.

He looked at the hallway that led to his bedroom.

Then back at her.

Then at the hallway again.

He was also starting to feel a bit sleepy, but he felt bad going to sleep on the bed while she slept on the couch.

A moment later, he pulled one of the chairs from the side of the room, dragged it over slowly on its back legs so it didn’t scrape, and positioned it beside the couch.

He sat down, folded his arms across the top of the backrest and rested his chin on them, looking over at her.

It wasn’t comfortable, and he was aware of that too, but at the moment, the scene in front of her outdid whatever ache he would feel later.

He looked at her sleeping face in the low light of the room, and he stayed like that for a while, not thinking anything in particular,

At some point and without deciding to, he also fell asleep.

It was one of the better nights he’d had in a while, which made no sense given the chair, but there it was.

.....

[The next morning]

Vittoria’s phone buzzed, snatching her from the coffers of sleep before she could drift in again.

She opened her eyes to find a chair positioned directly in front of the couch that she was almost certain had not been there the night before.

She looked at it for a moment, then she looked around, taking in the room, before she remembered where she was.

She pressed her palm flat against her face and held it there.

Then she fell back into the cushions, stared at the ceiling for exactly one second, and sat back up.

She looked around again.

The apartment, with her now being the only person, felt serene, and she was starting to understand why Leo might have chosen it.

She stood, folded the blanket loosely and set it on the arm of the couch, and then moved through the space with the careful steps of someone in a home that wasn’t theirs.

The main bedroom door was slightly ajar when she pushed it gently and looked in.

The bed was made, but it felt too made, almost like no one had touched it the night before.

She stood in the doorway and began to move around the rest of the room.

"Tidy," she muttered, which was less a compliment and more an observation she hadn’t been able to keep to herself.

She moved on, into the second bedroom, then along the short hallway, then back to the living room, where her thoughts soon came back to the chair.

She was still thinking about it when she heard the sound at the front door.

The particular fumbling of someone managing a key and a handle at the same time.

Then the door opened, and Leo came through it in running gear, his shirt darkened at the collar, earphones around his neck.

He stopped when he saw her standing there.

"Morning," Vittoria said.

"Morning," he replied with a tired smile.

He toed off his running shoes near the door and stepped into a pair of slides.

"You sleep alright?"

"Really well, actually," she said and watched him for a moment.

"Where did you sleep?" she suddenly asked a moment later.

At that, Leo’s eyes went to the chair before he could stop them, which Vittoria caught but didn’t say anything.

"I also went to sleep early," he said after a moment.

It answered nothing, but neither pursued as he moved past her toward the kitchen without elaborating further.

He set a paper bag down on the counter and then slid it toward her.

She picked it up and looked inside.

Toiletries, a toothbrush still in the packaging, a small tube of face wash, a few other things selected with enough thought that it couldn’t have been accidental.

She looked up at him.

"You got these on your run?"

"Why, are you charmed?" he said while turning to look at her.

"Hmmm, maybe," Vittoria said as she took a step forward.

"Any way, what are you doing today?" she continued.

"Nothing," he said, leaning briefly against the counter.

"We trained hard yesterday, so I might go into the complex later for some gym and recovery work. That’s it." He pushed off. "You?"

She shrugged.

"Nothing planned at the moment."

He nodded once and disappeared into his bedroom, and a moment later reappeared holding a towel which he held out in her direction.

"Bathroom’s the second door past—"

"I know where it is, Leo."

He raised a brow at her and set the towel on the arm of the chair without pushing further.

"Get ready then. We can go somewhere for breakfast."

"Okay."

He disappeared back into his room while she turned towards the bathroom in the other bedroom.

A while later, Leo found himself sitting with his phone on the couch.

He had relinquished his bedroom sometime ago after Vittoria decided that she needed the full-length mirror in there.

When the door finally creaked a bit, he turned on once again, and he couldn’t help but find himself staring.

She was still wearing the same clothes from the day before, but it somehow felt different from the way it had been the day before and somewhat better.

Leo finally got to his feet as she came toward him and stopped a few feet away.

"Ready?" he said, to which she nodded.

He nodded back, grabbed his keys from the counter, and the two turned and headed toward the door.