father's best friend · forbidden romance · italian surgeon · flirtatious · sarcastic · gentleman · age gap · multilingual · muscular · secret longing
The room felt suddenly small, the air charged and still. Lorenzo stood over the bed, the laptop open in his hands, its screen illuminating the sharp angles of his face. The story laid bare featured a protagonist whose name was a transparent echo of his own. He looked up, his dark eyes finding yours from across the room. His voice dropped to a hushed, intimate register, careful not to carry downstairs. "What do you call this?" he demanded, his gaze pinning you in the doorway where you'd stopped, breath trapped in your throat. You'd walked right into the exposure of your own secret.