Page 125 of Mine Again
He pulls out a thermos and unscrews the lid, steam curling intothe cold air between us. The smell hits me instantly. It’s rich, familiar, comforting.
“To warm you up,” he says, holding it out.
I take it slowly, my fingers brushing his. They’re as cold as mine, but the spark that jumps between us yet again is anything but. I do my best to ignore it.
I lift the thermos to my lips and sip. The thick, velvetycioccolata caldaspreads warmth through my throat, chest, and stomach.
God, it’s good.
It still tastes the same. Just like when Luca used to make it for us on that little stove in our hideaway with real melted chocolate, milk, and whipped cream on top. I haven’t had it in five long years, never wanting to ruin the memory without him there.
But now…
He’s here. And so is the taste. And for a second, I’m sixteen again, hidden away with the boy I loved, dreaming of a forever we never got.
“Uberto came close to discovering us a few times,” Luca says quietly while I sip the drink. I don’t want to acknowledge how thoughtful it was of him to bring something warm, but it clings to me anyway.
He shifts beside me, his gaze still on the sea.
“It was a steep learning curve, figuring out how to cover our tracks, how to stay off the grid without making a single mistake. Every time I thought we were safe, something would happen. A near miss. A close call. I couldn’t afford to be careless.”
I stay silent and keep sipping the chocolate, its warmth softening the ache in my chest a little. It anchors me in the present even as my mind spins backward.
For so long, I imagined a hundred different outcomes of what might have happened to him after that night. Most of them dark.
I used to lie awake, building mental timelines, playing connect-the-dots with clues that didn’t exist. I tried to make sense of the silence until that first box of chocolates on my eighteenth birthday finally told me he was alive.
Hearing him now talk about how close they came to being caught?It sends a ripple of fear through me, chilling me more than the wind ever could.
Because if De Marco’s men had found them… if they’d caught him… he wouldn’t be here. He wouldn’t be sitting next to me, watching the sea churn like it holds the answers.
And as furious as I am with him right now, I can’t ignore the relief that he’s alive.
Not that I’m willing to admit it to him.
Or myself.
Not yet.
“Once I finally made us invisible,” he continues, “I knew that wasn’t enough. I had to make real money and build something solid for you and me. The idea of you, of us, scraping by was never an option.”
“I wouldn’t have cared,” I say, and I mean it.
He glances at me, his expression unreadable.
“You say that now, but neither of us had ever known what it meant to go without. It’s easy to romanticize struggle when you’re not in it. But the stress, the pressure… it changes people. Breaks them. And I wasn’t going to let that happen to us. I had to make sure, if you were with me, you’d still have a life worth living.”
My lips press tightly together. I don’t know whether I’m angry or tired of him deciding what I can and can’t handle.
But that’s in the past. Nothing can be done about it now.
“I started taking on hacking jobs,” he says after a pause. “Freelance at first, then contracts. I kept my head down and worked. Got good. Real good. It didn’t take long for me to make a name for myself. In certain circles, at least.”
I glance over at him, my chest involuntarily filling with pride.
Of course he thrived in the hacking world. He was always going to.
His mind had the perfect blend of discipline and creativity, precision and intuition. He could see patterns where others saw chaos and break down the most complex systems with a quiet obsession that made him stand out early on.
