The air was warmer than he remembered.
Or maybe it was just that everything felt closer now — heavier.
Alessandro stepped inside, quietly. His shoes landed against the hardwood like they used to when he was sixteen, seventeen. When he'd come over after school, after family dinners, during long summer nights when he and Bell couldn't stand to be apart.
It looked almost the same.
The same pale cream walls. The ornate frames filled with family photos. That curve in the staircase rail he'd once slid down and gotten scolded for. A scent of lemon, lavender, and something distinctly Casanova lingered in the air.
But the air shifted when he saw the boy.
He didn't know what he was expecting.
But not this.
Not the small figure standing near the armrest of the couch. Wearing a clean shirt, dark jeans, and the most guarded, curious expression Alessandro had ever seen on a child.
The boy had curls — Bell's curls. But those eyes… God.
Those were his.
And the dimples too. They flashed and vanished just as quickly when the boy gave a quiet, uncertain smile, then looked down, hands fidgeting in front of him.
Alessandro forgot to speak. His throat was dry.
Bell's voice came beside him, soft but steady.
"Enzo… this is Alessandro."
The boy looked up again.
Alessandro dropped his gaze to meet him, still frozen by how familiar this child looked. Like he had somehow stepped back in time and was staring at a reflection of himself — only warmer, smaller, untouched by the ache that had hardened Alessandro's own features.
"Hi," Enzo said. The voice was light, sweet, but cautious.
And all Alessandro could manage — quietly, reverently — was:
"Hey… Enzo."
There was a silence that followed. Not uncomfortable, but thick with something unspoken.
Bell's father stood nearby, his arms loosely crossed. Her mother was in the kitchen doorway, watching. Protective, but not intrusive. This wasn't their moment. It was Enzo's.
Alessandro crouched slightly to get on the boy's level. He didn't reach out. Didn't push.
"Can I… sit?" he asked gently.
Enzo nodded. Slowly. And walked over to the couch.
Alessandro followed and sat a few feet away, unsure what to do with his hands, his breath, his heart.
"You like soccer?" he asked quietly.
Enzo's eyes lit up a little. "Yeah. I'm on a team."
"What position?"
"Midfield. But sometimes forward. Coach says I'm fast."
A small, genuine smile tugged at Alessandro's mouth. "I bet you are."
And for the first time since he walked through the door, Bell allowed herself to breathe.
From across the room, she watched them — her son, and the boy who had once broken her heart now facing the son they'd made together. It wasn't healed. It wasn't fixed.
But it was something.
The beginning of something.
"Coach says I'm fast," Enzo said again, a little bolder this time, his voice carrying a thread of pride.
Alessandro leaned in a bit, his elbows on his knees. "Yeah? You race your friends at practice?"
Enzo nodded, warming up now. "Sometimes I beat all of them. Except Jackson, but only because he cheats and starts before the whistle."
Alessandro let out a soft laugh — low and real — and Bell, from where she stood by the archway, felt something deep inside her pull tight.
Her son was smiling. Not politely, not shyly — truly smiling. His shoulders had eased, and so had his voice. He was talking. Opening.
He was… comfortable.
And for Bell, that realization unraveled something she hadn't known she'd kept stitched so tightly in her chest.
She quietly slipped out of the room.
No one noticed, and that's how she wanted it. She walked down the familiar hallway — the same one she'd run through as a child — and pushed open the back door.
The garden was exactly how she remembered it. Her father still trimmed the hedges perfectly. Her mother's flowers were in full bloom, soft pinks and peaches and violet blues.
And there — just a little farther down the stone path — was the oak tree.
Still tall. Still rooted. Still there.
Bell paused at the edge of the garden, her fingers curling at her sides.
She hadn't come out here in years. Not really. Not this far.
Because the last time she'd stood beneath that tree… it had been the day Alessandro left her.
The day he wouldn't turn around.
The day she watched the car pull away with tears on her face and a secret she hadn't yet understood growing inside her.
Now here she was — older, stronger, successful, a mother.
But the ache was still there, just as sharp.
She slowly walked to the tree and rested her hand on the bark, tracing one of the ridges with her thumb.
"You don't get to win," she whispered under her breath — not to the tree, not to the past… maybenot even to him.
But she needed to say it.
Because for the first time since that summer, he was back inside her house.
And their son — the one she raised alone, the one who brought her back to life after Alessandro had broken her — was laughing.
...
The bench was colder than she expected.
Bell sat with her arms folded gently, her back straight, legs crossed at the ankle — as if holding herself together in posture alone. Her gaze never left the oak tree. Not once.
It loomed ahead, unbothered by time, unchanged by heartbreak. Unaware of the things it had witnessed — whispered childhood secrets, first confessions, soft kisses… and the moment that split her in half.
The sunlight filtered through the branches, catching motes of dust in the air. The wind barely stirred.
She didn't know how long she'd been sitting there. Ten minutes? Twenty?
It could've been hours.
All she knew was that her cheeks were wet — and she hadn't even realized she was crying. Her hands remained still in her lap, her breathing shallow. She didn't sob. Didn't shake. The tears just fell, quietly, as if pulled down by years she hadn't dared to mourn properly.
Behind her, footsteps crunched against the gravel.
She didn't turn.
Didn't flinch.
She just wiped at her cheek quickly with the back of her hand and kept staring ahead
The air shifted.
She knew it was him.
"Enzo?" Bell asked in a hoarse voice, the way it sounded when you hadn't spoken in a while.
"He's with your dad," He said quietly. "He's showing him his soccer cards." His voice was low— careful, like he wasn't sure what he could say.
Silence again.
And then she asked, still not looking at him—
"Why did you come out here?"
The oak tree swayed slightly in the breeze ahead of her. The same breeze that carried Alessandro's voice when he finally spoke.
"Because I was looking for you."
His tone was low. Not smooth or calculated like it had been in meetings. Not sharp like it had been that day in her office. Just… tired. Real.
He took another step closer, gravel shifting beneath his shoes.
"You left the room, and I didn't want to ask in front of him… but it felt like something changed. I could see it in your face."
Bell didn't respond at first. Her jaw tightened. Her fingers twitched once in her lap.
He stepped off the gravel now, onto the grass. Still not close. Still respectful.
"This house…" he murmured, "It was like a second home to me. I think I spent half my childhood here. Ate more meals in that kitchen than I did my own."
She still didn't speak, so he added, quieter this time—
"But it doesn't feel the same. Because you're different. And so am I. And now there's a six-year-old inside who has your heart and my eyes and… God, Bell."
He exhaled slowly, like he'd been holding that breath for too long.
"I just wanted to be near you. Even if you wouldn't talk to me. Even if you didn't turn around."
A long pause stretched between them again.
And this time, Bell blinked up at the tree. Her voice was steadier now, but cool:
"You wanted to be near me? You had years to do that."
Bell didn't move.
Not even when she heard him shift his stance behind her — shoulders squaring, the weight of his guilt pulling his voice low again.
"That's true. I did," Alessandro said quietly. "There's nothing I can say to excuse that."
She closed her eyes for half a second, just long enough to steady herself.
He looked past her then, and when his gaze settled on the oak tree — their oak tree — his expression changed. The storm began to roll in behind his eyes. Not rage. Not bitterness. But the pain of memory, of youth, of love once whole and now fractured.
"If you want to know…" he said slowly, "I can explain to you why I did what I did. And why I left without planning to tell you."
Bell's breath caught in her throat.
Part of her wanted to scream that it was too late for explanations. That her heart had been broken in the cruelest, coldest way. That there had been years — seven years — where she raised their child alone. That she had sat under this very tree the night he left, waiting for him to come back, praying it was a mistake.
But another part — smaller, quieter — was listening.
Because despite all that hurt, she had loved him once.
Maybe… she still did.
She didn't turn around. Not yet. But her voice came, calm and clipped.
"Then say it."