Chapter 44 Goes to Luca

Chapter 44 Goes to Luca
Mia's POV

I did not take off my shoes. I did not put down my bag. I walked through the front door and past the coat hooks and past the kitchen and down the hallway to his room.

The door was closed. Light under the gap.

I knocked once. I did not wait for an answer. I opened it.

He was on the bed in a gray hoodie with his back against the headboard. Phone in his hand. His training pants were still on. His hair was damp. He had showered recently. He looked up when the door opened and his face went through three things in half a second. Surprise. Recognition. Then something careful.

"You asked my father to be my partner."

He put the phone down on the mattress. Face down. Slow.

"Yes."

"When."

"A month before you signed with Mercer."

"A month."

"Give or take."

"Don't give or take me right now, Luca. When."

He swung his legs off the bed. He put his feet on the floor. He sat there with his elbows on his knees and looked up at me.

"Five weeks before Mercer showed up. I called your father. I told him I wanted to come back as your skating partner. I told him I thought you'd come back to the ice if the right person asked."

"And he said no."

"He said you were done. He said you'd made your decision and he wasn't going to push you."

"So you called again."

"I called again. Three weeks later. Because I didn't believe him the first time."

"You didn't believe my father."

"I didn't believe you were done, Mia. I have never believed you were done. You are not the kind of person who walks away from the ice. You walked away from me. That's different."

The words landed hard. I felt them in my ribs. I stood in his doorway with my clutch still in my hand and my coat still on and I let them land.

"Why didn't you tell me."

"Because your father said no and I didn't want to make it your problem."

"It was already my problem."

"How was it your problem. You didn't know."

"That's the point. I didn't know. Everyone around me knew and I didn't. My father knew. Zack knew. The entire skating circuit apparently knew. And I was the only person who didn't get to decide what to do with the information."

"What would you have done with it."

"That's not the point."

"It is the point, Mia. If I had come to you five weeks ago and said I called your father and asked to be your partner, what would you have said."

"I don't know."

"Yes you do."

"I would have said no."

"Exactly."

"That doesn't mean you get to skip the question. That doesn't mean you get to go behind my back and talk to my father about my career without telling me. I am so tired of people in this house making decisions about my life without asking me first."

"I wasn't making a decision about your life. I was making a decision about mine."

"Bullshit. You were making a decision about us. And you made it without me in the room."

He flinched. Small. Just a tightening around his eyes. But I saw it. And he knew I saw it.

He stood up. He was taller than me by four inches and standing this close I had to tilt my chin up to hold his eyes. I held them anyway. I was not going to look away first. Not tonight.

"Mia."

"What."

"I have been trying to find the right way to be in your life again since the day you came back."

"Then try harder."

"There is no right way. I have tried everything. I have tried being patient. I have tried staying out of your way. I have tried being in the same room without saying the things I want to say. Everything I do is wrong. I say too much and you pull away. I say too little and you forget I'm here. So I'm asking you."

He took one step closer. Not aggressive. Not a power move. Just closer.

"Tell me what you want from me and I'll do that."

I stared at him. His eyes were steady. His jaw was tight. His hands were at his sides and they were still and I knew, because I had known this boy since I was twelve years old, that the stillness was costing him.

I opened my mouth.

I did not know what I was going to say. I had walked in here with fury and somewhere between the door and this spot the fury had turned into something else. Something that had his face at the center of it and two years of silence wrapped around it and I did not have a word for it and I was not going to find one standing in his room at ten o'clock at night in a dress I had worn for another man.

"Luca."

"Tell me."

"I don't know what I want from you."

"Yes you do."

"I don't. I swear to God, I don't. Three hours ago I was at a dinner with my hand in Zack's and it felt right. And now I'm standing in your room and this feels right too. And I don't know what to do with that. So don't ask me to tell you what I want because I will give you the wrong answer and we will both pay for it."

He looked at me. He did not blink. He did not move. He just stood there with his chest rising and falling and his eyes holding mine and every year we had ever known each other stacked up in the space between us.

"Okay," he said. Quiet. Not defeated. Patient. The kind of patience that had two years of practice behind it.

"Okay?"

"Okay. I asked. You answered. That's enough for tonight."

I exhaled. I hadn't realized I'd been holding it.

Behind me, in the doorway, Zack's voice, "Yeah, Mia. Tell him."