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Raphael laughed and put an olive in his mouth, chewing for a long while like he was trying to delay his answer. “Twice.”
“That doesn’t sound like a good twice.”
“One was…impulsive,” he said, shrugging. “She was from Rome, and she was like walking fire. Beautiful and dangerous. She saw the world differently than most people—she saw things she wanted to collect and take with her wherever she went.”
Luca heard what he wasn’t saying. “Why didn’t it work out?”
“I was just part of her collection. She knew how to love, but not in the way I needed her to. But I don’t regret it. She was fantastic, and she helped me find a freedom I didn’t know was possible. My mother,” he breathed out a sigh and shook his head, his mouth curved in a slight smile. “She loved me to a fault. She never quite stopped believing those old doctors who told her that I would never be able to live on my own. Her fear was suffocating, and Chiara helped me breathe again.”
“Tell me what happened,” Luca begged, because part of that sounded like how Wilder made him feel, and he needed to know it could end differently than breaking up.
Raphael rolled and unrolled some of the prosciutto, then set it aside and folded his hands in his lap. Luca could see a tremor in his body, which probably meant his legs were spasming, but Raphael ignored it. “I wanted to do something with my life, even if I couldn’t have NASA, so we traveled. We stayed with a friend of hers in Oslo, and he let me work for him in his salon doing massages—and he taught me other things about the business. I didn’t love it, but I loved being there. Only, she was getting restless. I woke up one morning, and she was just gone. She left a note, and she promised she’d be back in a few weeks, but I knew better.”
Luca’s heart twisted in his chest because he could hear the hurt inside Raphael. “Did you ever see her again?”
At that, he smiled, a soft and sad thing that reached his eyes. “Once, right before I left for America. I was with Cody then—he was the American, on vacation when we met. We dated for the weeks he was in Oslo, and he asked me to come back with him when his trip was over. I couldn’t say no. I wanted the adventure.”
“And you loved him too,” Luca said. Raphael had told him this before, but he’d been so vague.
Raphael shrugged. “I think so. Not the same sort of love I felt for Chiara, but it was enough. I thought it was enough,” he amended. Raphael had shared the barest bits and pieces about his life before he’d come to Savannah, but not like this, and Luca heard the gift for what it was. “I don’t regret him. Cody and I were together maybe six months before he decided that loving me was too hard. That loving me in a body like this was too much work.”
“Raphael…”
He held up a hand and looked Luca directly in the eye. “When it doesn’t work out with love or with friends, it’s not always my body, but sometimes it is. Most of the time I’m just a way for people to prove to themselves that they’re not shallow. Usually, though, they just show the world they were right the first time.”
“Is that why…?”
“Yes,” Raphael interrupted. “It’s why I don’t make friends so easy, and it’s why I don’t date. But I’ve become an expert at being able to spot those kinds of people.”
Luca looked down again, guilt threatening to choke him. “I came to Savannah to prove I was a better person. That I was capable of not being shallow.”
Raphael reached across the table and grabbed his hand. “But you didn’t use me for it. And your goals didn’t come at anyone else’s expense. And that’s why you’re home now.”
Luca swallowed thickly, but by the look on Raphael’s face, he realized that his friend was right. “Thank you.”
Raphael laughed and let him go. “That’s what I’m here for. Now, eat up. We have a long drive ahead, and you have a new apartment to settle into.”
* * *
Settling back into the bakery was a lot easier than sitting around his empty apartment waiting for Wilder to text. He hadn’t let him know he was back yet, mostly because he was consumed with fear over the tiny risk that Wilder might have changed mind. So, he got up at the crack of dawn and met Dmitri at Whipped, spending most of the morning on the books, then offering to help after Adam got in. He wasn’t good at baking, but he was passable at taking directions, and that’s how he spent most of the day.
Luca flicked his wet hands into the sink, then turned to find the towel that was resting on the bench a foot away. He caught Adam’s disapproving stare and Dmitri’s smirk, and he sighed. “Look, at least I didn’t wipe them on my ass again.”
Adam rolled his eyes and moved to the baking table, gesturing at the spinning cake stand. “I’m going to finish up these fillings, because if I try to teach you this anymore, I may actually strangle you.”
Luca pursed his lips and hip-checked Adam gently as he moved to the table. “I am not that bad.”
“You are. This is not your forte, and I think you’d be better off putting your ass back in the desk chair and finishing the books,” Adam said with a sniff.
Luca couldn’t help the smallest sigh as he grabbed the cake stand, a cupcake he was sure to mutilate, and the bag of icing. “I just want to help.”
Dmitri touched his arm. “You are helping.”
Luca glanced over at the small pile of ruined cupcakes and knew that he should probably give up, but he wanted to be able to do something tangible to show Wilder that he was worth keeping around—that he could hold down the fort and keep the place running if shit went sideways. He’d been back in town for three days, and he’d only shared a handful of texts with him, but the fact that Wilder responded at all made him feel like it wasn’t over.
“Listen,” Adam told him, “Talia is an amazing baker and even more amazing manager, but she can’t cook for shit. She can’t tell the difference between sugar and salt without tasting it first, and she’s fucked up more orders than she’s gotten right.” Adam’s whisk moved expertly in the small silver bowl he had cradled in his arm with all the tenderness one might use to hold an infant. “I want her in my kitchen, not because she’s good at being useful, but because I love her with every ounce of my soul and even if she’s screwing things up, I want to be near her. And trust me when I say Wilder feels the same way about you. What you’re doing is enough.”
They were surprising words of kindness from Adam, who had been irritated by Luca’s presence since he showed back up at Whipped and demanded to be allowed to participate.
