All Chapters of After Hours Service: Chapter 41 - Chapter 45

After dinner, we moved to the living room. It was a comfortable space that felt entirely different without the house full of people that had been here the last time I visited. I settled into one end of the couch with my wine, and Antonio sat at the other end, and Rico immediately wedged himself between us.The German Shepherd was large enough that his insertion between two adults on a couch constituted a physical event. He turned in a circle, stepped on Antonio's thigh, stepped on my knee, and finally stretched out lengthwis

The name sat between us like a bridge neither of us needed to cross again. Caterina. Fourteen years of carrying it like a stone in my pocket, and now it was just—out. Spoken. Heard. Received without fanfare or consequence. The absence of its weight left me dizzy, unmoored, like the first time I'd taken off a cast and discovered my arm could swing free.Antonio's thumb traced a slow circle against my hip where his hand rested, and I could feel the calluses on his palm—rough, deliberate, the hand of a man who'd held weapons and steering wheels and probably a few necks in his time. The piano music drifted from somewhere I couldn't place, filling the warm stone space with something that sounded like rainfall translated into chords.I shifted in his lap.Not because I was uncomfortable. Because I was restless. Because the relief of confession had curdled into something sharper, something that buzzed under my skin like a current looking for a ground wire. I'd spent fourteen years being care