You had grown used to men who decorated lies with language.
Luca’s silences made you confront your own thoughts.
One evening in your courtyard, six months after Ryan’s sentencing, you found him fixing the hinge on your garden gate.
“You know I can hire someone,” you said.
“I know.”
“So why are you doing it?”
He tightened a screw.
“Because it squeaks.”
“That was almost a personality trait.”
He looked up.
“You like quiet.”
You did.
You had never told him.
That was Luca.
He noticed what people needed and rarely made them ask.
You sat on the stone bench.
“Did my father order you to fix my gate?”
“No.”
“Did Matteo?”
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
He stood slowly, wiping his hands on a cloth.
For once, he did not answer immediately.
Then he said, “Because I wanted to see you.”
Your heart shifted.
Simple words.
No performance.
No ownership.
No claim.
The kind of sentence that would have terrified you a year earlier because you would have searched for the hook inside it.
You searched now too.
Old habits.
Found none.
“I’m still healing,” you said.
“I know.”
“I don’t want to be rescued.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know what I want.”
