“Nothing.”

He seems skeptical, but shows me the tube of lotion he’s carrying. “Come back to the living room, so we—”

“No. Here.”

“On the stairs?”

I nod. Sit on the closest step. Hold out my open palm. I don’t expect him to kneel in front of me and screw the cap off. I’m capable of reaching my own ankle, and the sting is going away on its own, anyway, but he squirts the gel on his palm first, warming it up for a few seconds. That’s why, when it makes contact with the skin of my calf, the feel of it is soothing. His touch is gentle and economical, purposeful but also lingering. Palms rough, anchoring.

The weight in my stomach doesn’t lift, but it morphs. Simmers to something else. Equally heavy, but not as unpleasant.

“Conor?”

He looks up at me. One of his hands rests around my calf. The other cups the arch of my foot. Closes on my heel.

“Can I ask you something?”

He doesn’t say yes, but his thumb swipes over my anklebone.

“You know how you and Eli almost got your STEM PhDs? And then you were asked to leave your programs. And it somehow became the catalyst for the rest of your lives—”

“I’m familiar, yeah.”

I swallow. “If you had a younger sibling…”

“I have three of them, Trouble.”

“Right, right. Let me start again. You…You know me, right?”

He nods. Doesn’t let go of me.

“If I was different from…” I take a too-deep breath. Blink quickly. “If I didn’t have my shit together. If I wasn’t as sure as…As everyone thinks. If I…” I cannot finish the sentence. Still, Conor’s lips press together, and for a heartbeat he looks so displeased, I regret everything. Asking the questions, coming to Sicily, being fucking born.

But then he says, “I doubt that there’s anything in the entire universe that would make me think less of you, Maya.”

My throat feels too tight. I can’t avert my eyes from his. “Yeah?”

Conor leans forward. His lips, cool, only just parted, press against the divot under my knee.

“Yeah,” he says.

Chapter 32

Bitty is, in fact, a puppy. Around eight months, according to the vet, and in very good health. In the next few days, he’ll be given an astounding number of shots, and then…

“Are you really planning to bring him back to the US?” the vet asks.

“If I don’t, my fiancée might kill me.”

The vet’s eyes immediately flit to me. “Oh, no. I’m not the fiancée, I’m his—”

“Daughter,” Eli says with a grin, draping his arm over my shoulders.

“I hate it when you do that,” I mumble.

“I know. That’s why I do it.” Eli presses a fatherly kiss on the crown of my hair, oblivious to the way Conor pinches his nose. Even the most long-standing of jokes hits different, when you just spent a good chunk of your morning going down on your best friend’s not-daughter in a cave.