All Chapters of Claimed by my next door neighbour: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Felix POV:I decided, somewhere between unpacking my new sheets and forcing myself to sleep that first night, that I could handle this. I just had to avoid him. It wasn't like he was some great love of mine, we just slept together once, drunk and reckless, and that was the entire extent of it.All of it could stay exactly where it belonged. If Renato wanted to play whatever game this was, he could play it alone, I'm not interested.The next morning, I stepped out of my apartment at the same moment he stepped out of his.Of course the universe just had to play dirty.We nodded at each other. Neither of us spoke. I walked straight to the elevator, refusing to be the one who broke first, and he followed a few steps behind, close enough to notice, far enough to feel like respect.The ride down was quiet. He split off toward the lobby doors the second they opened, and I told myself that was that. One morning. Nothing worth thinking about twice.It became a pattern instead.His door starte

Felix POV:I stood frozen at the edge of the floor, watching a woman's hips grind slow and deliberate against Renato's lap, and something in my chest twisted so sharp it almost knocked the breath out of me.I didn't understand it. Whatever this was between us had no name I was allowed to use. The shared wall. The night neither of us ever mentioned. The dinner I'd bolted from less than two hours ago with some half formed excuse still hanging in the air behind me. None of it had a name. None of it gave me the right to feel like this and yet my whole body had decided otherwise, some instinct that hadn't gotten the memo about what we were or weren't to each other.The lights swept over him in slow color, red then blue then gone, and every time they caught his face I felt it somewhere low in my stomach, some stupid, useless ache that had no business existing. Her hand slid up his chest. He didn't move to stop her. That shouldn't have mattered to me. It shouldn't have mattered at all.So w

Renato's POV:I kissed him again, slower this time, tasting the cold air on his lips and the faint copper of my own blood still at the corner of my mouth.He made a small sound against me, almost surprised, and his hands finally moved, one fisting in the front of my shirt, the other hovering near my side like he wasn’t sure where to put it.I deepened the kiss carefully, tongue sliding against his when he opened for me. He tasted like the club and nerves and something sweeter underneath. My hand at his waist tightened, pulling him closer until his back was fully against the car door and there was nowhere left for either of us to pretend this wasn’t happening.He was still shaking. I felt it under my palm, the fine tremor running through him. I broke the kiss just enough to speak against his mouth.“Still shaking.”“Shut up,” he whispered, but there was no real heat in it. His fingers tightened in my shirt.I kissed the corner of his mouth, then lower, along his jaw, feeling the rapid

Felix POV: "Felix. You need to come home. Now."I gripped the phone tighter, my stomach twisting cold and sudden. "Sofia, slow down. What happened?""Nothing happened, that's not — " She cut herself off, and I heard her exhale hard, the specific sound of someone trying to steady themselves before they said something they'd been holding in too long. "I just need you to come home.""I can't just—""You left the country, Felix." Her voice cracked slightly on my name, and something about that crack hurt more than actual anger would have. "You left Italy. I didn't even know that. I had to hear it from Adam, who heard it from someone, because apparently my own brother doesn't think I deserve a phone call before disappearing to God knows where."I sat down slowly on the edge of my bed, the last of tonight's warmth draining out of me entirely. "I'm fine. I needed space.""You were nineteen the first time you disappeared on us. Do you remember that? I sat outside your door every night for t

Felix POV:I sat on the edge of my bed after the call with Sofia ended, some heavy, aching gratitude settling into my chest that I didn't quite know what to do with. ‘God, she's worth everything’ Sixteen years old, holding my hand through our mother's funeral, and here she was two decades later still throwing herself in front of whatever came for me, still fighting battles that weren't even hers to fight.My eyes stung before I could stop them. I pressed the heel of my hand against them, annoyed at myself, at how easily she could do this to me from three hundred miles away with nothing but her voice and a bad connection. She'd been the one steady thing since our mother died, the one who'd learned to braid her own hair because neither I or my brothers knew how to, the one who'd shown up at every apartment I'd ever lived in with soup and zero judgment about the state of my life. And somehow, 10 years later, she was still doing it. Still calling to check if I was eating. Still asking que