Chapter 10 Two Lines, Same Ruin

Chapter 10 Two Lines, Same Ruin
“Luca.” I match his tone without looking at him. “I don’t want to talk about your brother in my kitchen while I’m still wearing a dress I haven’t even taken a picture of for Jade and Gemma. Have some mercy on them.”
He goes quiet for a moment. I can feel his eyes on me, but he doesn’t push. That’s one of the most dangerous things about Luca: he knows exactly when to stop shoving and when to just wait.
“I just don’t like the way he looked at you,” he says finally, softer. “Like… you weren’t just the artist in the gallery. Like he already knew where your soft spots are.”
My head lifts for half a second, automatic. Not toward him. Toward the window. Toward the faint reflection of my face in the glass.
My blue eyes stare back at me, the dark circles a shade deeper than usual, lipstick half gone, hair coming loose from the updo. I look… tired. But still standing. Still sarcastic. Still in an expensive dress.
“Everyone has soft spots,” I answer, dropping my gaze. “If he wants to buy them, let him. The gallery will be thrilled.”
Luca circles back to the bar, grabbing his glass. “I’m not talking about the painting.”
“Of course you’re not.” I shut the empty dishwasher a little too hard. The sound bounces.
Silence stretches. The kitchen feels smaller, even though it’s the same size. The only real change is the name we’re not saying, hanging in the air like cigarette smoke.
“Luca,” I say at last, swallowing down the sour edge in my throat. “Today I survived my first show at the Moreau Gallery. Tomorrow I still have to wake up at seven and pretend to be a normal mom who doesn’t calculate auction numbers while she’s making breakfast. Can we, for tonight, just pretend your brother is some random rich guy with a compensation problem and too much money?”
He doesn’t answer right away. His eyes search my face, like he’s hunting for a crack. I give him the usual: a crooked smile, a shrug, a look that says I’m fine, relax.
“If that’s what you want.” He finally yields. His voice is gentle, but there’s something underneath it. Something that scrapes. “I just—”
“—love me, yeah, yeah.” I wave a hand in the air, cutting him off. “I know. I love you too. Look at us, being that boring couple saying sweet things in the kitchen.”
“Maya…”
“I’m serious.” I step closer, steal the glass from his hand, and set it on the counter. Then I hook my fingers in his shirt collar and tug him down. “Kiss me. It’ll work better than any therapy we can afford tonight.”
His eyes soften a little, even though the tension in his jaw doesn’t completely fade. “You’re using me as a coping mechanism again?”
“Since when have you complained?”
He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. His mouth finds mine, slow at first, then deeper, just enough to push the sound of the ocean into the background like distant static. His hand slides up to my jaw, thumb brushing along my cheek, over whatever mascara’s probably smudged there. The kiss is gentle, not the kind that makes you forget your own name, but the kind that says I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.
That’s the problem. Luca is always here.
Someone else never is.
I pull back first, breaking the distance by a fraction. “See?” My breathing still isn’t completely under control. “Way more fun than talking about your brother.”
Luca doesn’t laugh this time. He just looks at me for a long moment, like he’s reading something I never wrote down.
“I’m going to keep asking until you stop pretending,” he says quietly. “Not tonight. But later.”
I curl one corner of my mouth. “Sounds like a threat.”
“It’s a promise.”
Something small shifts in my chest. Not panic. Not calm either. Something in between that feels deeply uncomfortable.
I step back, turning away. “I’m getting changed. This dress has had enough screen time for one night. If I keep it on any longer, I’ll start believing my life is glamorous, and we both know that’s a lie.”
I almost run to the bedroom. Almost. I force my steps to stay normal. My toenails press into the wooden floor, slow, one by one. In the bedroom, I nearly rip the dress as I yank the zipper down. The satin slides to the floor like a second skin I finally get to shed.
Oversized T-shirt, shorts, hair yanked up any which way. I wipe my makeup off in front of the mirror, not really careful. The cotton pad comes away a pale gray, not a tragedy. My blue eyes stare back at me, a little empty around the edges.
“He’s just a collector,” I whisper to my reflection. “He’s just your boyfriend’s half brother. He’s just a stranger.”
Neat little lies, all lined up in one sentence.
I go back to the living room a few minutes later. Luca’s already on the couch, T-shirt swapped in for the dress shirt, bare feet on the rug, his laptop closed on the coffee table. The TV is on mute, some movie playing that looks like it started ages ago. The kitchen light is still on, a sheet of yellow spilling into the room.
“Hazel?” I ask, half under my breath.
“Still out.” He nods toward the hallway that leads to Hazel’s room. “I checked on her. She’s sprawled across the bed like a starfish. Bruno’s pinned under her leg, but he seems into it.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. “Good. At least one creature in this house is genuinely at peace.”
I drop onto the couch a little too hard. The springs complain. I grab the remote and start flipping channels without really seeing them. Images blur by: news, sitcom reruns, pharmaceutical ads. None of it lands.
“Hey.” Luca nudges my knee. “If you need to scream or throw something… use me, not the expensive porcelain in the kitchen.”
“I don’t want to throw anything.” I lean my head back against the couch and stare at the ceiling. “I’m just… tired.”
He nods slowly, like he’s acknowledging that it’s half true and half bullshit. “Regular tired, or the kind where you want to change your name and flee the country?”
“Been there,” I mutter. “Would rate it two out of five. Too much paperwork.”
He laughs softly, but his eyes stay on me. For a few seconds, I can feel him holding a question on the tip of his tongue.
It finally comes out, quiet, like he knows he’s stepping into territory that isn’t really his.
“The Altar,” he says. “That line you said up there… about ‘sometimes we have to build an altar to bury the too-naïve version of ourselves.’”
I close my eyes for a split second. Of course. That line. The one that hits exactly where nothing is supposed to touch and I’m the idiot who said it out loud.
“What?” I ask, opening my eyes again. “You want to complain because your girlfriend turned out to be poetic on demand?”
“I want to ask…” He hesitates. “That naïve version you buried… who was she?”
The air in the living room thickens. The TV keeps cycling through scenes, the ocean is still there, but everything feels a few inches farther away.
I turn my head to look at him. “Is this a therapy session? We don’t have the budget for that, remember?”
“Maya.”
I blow out a long breath and go back to staring at the ceiling. “The version of me who thought people wouldn’t use love as fuel for their stupidity,” I say at last. “Relax. She’s been cremated for a while. The altar’s just décor now.”
“And the painting…?”
“Interior design,” I cut in quickly. “In my head. I just painted a room I’ve been to. In a dream. Not dramatic, Luca. There’s no corpse under it.”
Second lie of the night. Or third. I’ve lost count.
Luca is clearly not satisfied. But he’s also not the type to rip the door off its hinges. He tilts his head, studying my profile.
“I’ve known you long enough to tell when you’re lying,” he says calmly.
I shrug, still watching the ceiling. “Everyone needs a hobby.”
He lets out a short laugh. But there’s something in it. A little bitter. A little lost.
And there, in the half-dark living room, with the sound of the ocean, the mute TV, and our kid asleep in the next room, I can feel something shifting quietly between us.
Not breaking. Not exactly falling apart.
More like a puzzle that suddenly reveals a missing piece in the middle, and someone just now realizes they’ve only been looking at the frame.
Luca reaches over and pulls my bare feet into his lap. His thumbs start working gently over my ankles, where the straps of my heels left thin red marks.
“Is this your subtle way of saying ‘thanks for not fainting in the middle of the gallery’?” I ask, half drowsy, half on guard.
“This is my blunt way of saying ‘I’m here,’” he answers.
Then we go quiet.
I let my eyes slide shut. Not sleep. More like a temporary shutdown. Behind my eyelids, Hazel’s face flashes by, then the gallery lights, then Rafael’s black-clad shoulders in front of the painting, then Luca’s fingers on my ankle.
Two men. Three Lines of a life. One altar in the middle.
By the time I actually fall asleep, the last thing I feel is Luca’s warm hand wrapped around my ankle and the hazy awareness that someone in this room is starting to realize he doesn’t have the whole story, and maybe, slowly, that’s starting to bother him.