I took a breath. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I panicked when you asked about Milan and said no as a reflex. And I’m sorry that every time you’ve been ready to be brave and open with me, you’ve been met with a brick wall. I think I could probably name seventeen different reasons why intimacy and love and commitment scare me, but I also know that I don’t want a single one of those reasons to be the thing that keeps me away from you. You’re the one person in the world that I am happy to be scared with, Angel Fletcher. I love you. And I don’t know if I’ll be ready to move with you when you go . . . but I want to be.”
Angel’s face softened even more. “Luca . . .”
“I love you,” I said again, moving my scalded hands so I could lace my fingers through his. He took a step backward, pulling me with him, so that the steep metal stairs going up to Sunny’s apartment were at his back. He pulled me into a tight embrace, burying his face in my neck.
“I love you too,” he mumbled into my skin. “And I’m sorry I needed time to think. I wasn’t trying to ghost you or break up with you; I was just so hurt that I wanted to make sure I was still making all the right choices. I’m happy to try long distance if that’s what you want. I’m happy to try anything. I don’t even have to take the job at all. Let’s just stay together. Please.”
I could feel his glasses dig in just below my jaw, and I almost wanted to cry. How was it possible to miss something as inconvenient as giant glasses always getting in the way? And yet I had. I’d missed everything about him, even after only two days. There was not a snowflake’s chance in LA that I’d make it for however long his new job would have him there. And he had to go to his new job. I wasn’t about to let him make his own dreams smaller just because chasing my own had become strangely terrifying over the last two years.
“You’re going,” I told him, pulling back so I could see his face. “And I’m going to do my damndest to go too. After all, if Prada won’t have me, then I’ll make sure Moschino or Versace will. And if not, then I’ll brood mysteriously at coffee bars until someone notices my genius and funds my own brand.”
“That’s the spirit,” Angel murmured, his eyes dropping to my mouth. “I’ll do whatever makes you happy, babe.”
“Whatever?”
“Whatever.”
“Then,” I said, leaning forward, “kiss me.”
His mouth crashed forward against mine, hot and hard, his tongue finding mine in a slick demand and stroking until my knees were weak. His hands dug into my hair and our legs tangled as I twisted my fingers into his blazer and held him close. He tasted like cinnamon gum and coffee and sunny mornings halfway around the world.
“I missed you, and I missed this mouth,” he growled.
I gasped as he bent his head to nip at my neck. “I don’t think Sunny and the actors will be here for a while—”
Just then my phone rang. I nearly ignored it, except it was Sunny’s ringtone: The Fairy Godmother from Shrek 2 singing “I Need a Hero.”
With a huff, I pulled my phone from my kilt pocket. Angel’s head fell back against a metal stair; an eager erection was currently pressed into my hip.
“I hate her,” Angel groaned. “I hate her, I hate her.”
I accepted the call and held the phone to my ear. “Yes?”
“Firstly, does this mean your grand gesture wasn’t grand enough? Because I thought you’d be skewered like a 1970s party appetizer by now, if you get my drift—”
“Ahem,” I said.
“Secondly,” she went on, undeterred, “I forgot to tell you the secret Bee and I have been keeping!”
“What secret?” And then I remembered the barbeque, and Bee’s promise to tell me a secret if I went. I made a wounded gasp. “This secret is so overdue, Sunny.”
“Life got busy,” she sniffed. “Anyway, Bee overheard a telephone call between everyone’s favorite hot mommy manager lady Steph D’Arezzo and the Hope Channel. To help launch Duke the Halls on Hopeflix, the Hope people want to do a series of featurettes on the making of the movie. And they want to do one about the wedding dress you made for Bee. Ten minutes of just you and your bridal fashion genius, right at the click of the button.”
A dizzy sort of shock stole over me. “Really?”
“Yes, really. So make sure you tell those people at Prada that you’re Hopeflix-famous, okay? Okay. I’m rounding up Blake, Mackenzie, and the crew to head your way. Be done fucking in my apartment before then, maybe?”
She hung up before I could answer.
“Well?” Angel asked, his eyelids half-lowered, his cock still stiff against me.
“Sunny said Hopeflix is going to do a featurette about the wedding dress I made,” I said, dazed.
Angel gave me a warm look. “Of course they are, because that dress was perfect and you’re brilliant.”
My cheeks burned. I didn’t even have a smart, self-confident remark. I was too shocked. Could this really be happening in my life all at once?
Recognition? Opportunity?
Love?
But then my eyes caught Angel’s again, and I remembered the actual most important part of the call. “Sunny said that we have until she and the performers get here to finish fucking in her apartment.”
“Well, then,” Angel said, grabbing my hand and tugging me up the fire escape steps. “I think we’d better get started. Don’t you?”
Epilogue
Five Months Later
“You’re being ridiculous,” Angel said, watching with an amused expression as I gingerly stepped to the edge of the heated pool, my teeth chattering. My balls had already retreated into my abdominal cavity by this point.
I glared at him with as much dignity as I could muster while also wearing neon yellow swim briefs. “It’s Christmas Eve in the Alps, you dick. My nipples hurt!”
“Oh, poor baby,” Angel said with an expression of immediate concern. “Come here and I’ll help you with that.”
When I stepped into the very warm water, splashing my way down the pool steps, he was there to greet me, immediately folding me into his arms with my back to his chest and his hands finding my nipples under the water.
“Oh, they are so hard,” Angel crooned. He rubbed at them with his thumbs, sending pleasure zinging through my body, which was very confused by now. It had just been freezing cold, now it was deliciously warm, and also his fingers were sending wicked thrills right down to my briefs.
“Is that any better?” he murmured into my neck.
“No,” I said with a mournful sigh. “You might have to keep doing it.”
The huff of his laugh tickled the damp skin of my throat. “I’ll have to think of something more comforting then.” He wrapped his arms around my waist and lifted me so that my feet were on top of his, and then he walked us through the water to the edge of the infinity pool.
The hot water lapped just below our shoulders, and steam drifted around us as we looked out onto the wind-roughed surface of Lake Como. Green and white mountains cradled the lake, and all the ochre and terra-cotta houses perched around it. The forecast had promised a light dusting of snow later, but for now, the sky was a high, pale blue.