The quiet shared by them was far from vacant; it throbbed with unspoken emotions neither would acknowledge. Marco felt his composure tested, with an invisible force pushing him towards truths he'd long avoided. He reclined.
“You know,” he said finally, his voice low, testing how much honesty the moment could hold. “Most people only want the myth. The goals. Headlines. The noise. They don’t see me.”
Sophie’s glass paused midair. The words hit like a tremor under her ribs—unexpected, intimate. She hadn’t expected candor from a man so fluent in control. Slowly, she set the glass down, the faint click impossibly loud in the hush between them.
“Maybe that’s because you’ve been too good at hiding behind it,” she murmured. "Legends are safe. People are…messier."
For a long moment, he just lo
