Chapter 3 — Mateo Returns (Rooftop)
836 Words
The rooftop party smelled like summer and paint—Mateo’s kind of chaos. He found me before I found him, paint on his jeans and a grin that still made my knees remember old rhythms. He moved like someone who’d never learned to hide his feelings, which was both infuriating and intoxicating.
“Anna,” he said, as if the name itself was a brushstroke he’d been saving. “You look…different.”
“Younger,” I offered.
“Wiser,” he corrected, and there was no pretense in it. He meant it.
He handed me a paper cup of wine and then, without ceremony, sat beside me on the ledge. The city lights glittered below like a scattering of promises. He looked at me like a man who’d been rehearsing apologies in the mirror and finally decided to stop practicing.
“I painted something,” he said. “It kept asking for you.”
“Paintings don’t ask for people,” I said, amused.
“This one did,” he insisted. “It wanted the way you tilt your head when you’re thinking. It wanted the laugh you try to hide. I thought if I painted it, maybe I could understand why I left.”
He was earnest in a way that made my chest ache. There was no corporate polish here, no carefully measured regret—just messy, human contrition.
“Why did you leave?” I asked, because I wanted the truth more than the comfort of a rehearsed excuse.
He looked at the skyline, then back at me. “I was scared,” he said simply. “Scared of being ordinary, scared of being tied down. I thought leaving would make me more of who I wanted to be. Instead I became less of who I wanted to be.”
The confession was small and brave. It didn’t erase the past, but it showed a man who had looked at his own cowardice and decided to name it. That mattered.
“You can try to make amends,” I said. “But amends are not the same as permission.”
He nodded, as if he’d expected that. “I don’t want permission. I want a chance to be honest. To be present. To be better.”
We sat in a comfortable silence, the kind that felt like a held breath. He reached for my hand—not to claim, but to connect—and I let him. The touch was warm and tentative, a question rather than a demand. I answered with a squeeze that said, I’m listening.
Mateo’s apology was messy and real. Rian’s had been measured and careful. Both had weight. Both were tests. And both made my pulse quicken in ways that had nothing to do with needing to be fixed.
When he leaned in to show me a photo of the painting on his phone, the light from the screen painted his face in soft blues. He looked at me with a hunger that was less about possession and more about wanting to be seen. The nearness of him made my breath hitch. I felt the old chemistry—electric, dangerous, and deliciously alive—but this time I felt it with a new filter: I was not desperate to be chosen. I was choosing.
“Stay,” he said suddenly, voice low. “Stay with me tonight. No promises, no plans. Just…stay.”
The invitation was simple and honest. I thought of Lina’s words—no shrinking—and of the list I’d made in my head. Curiosity. Boundaries. Honesty.
“Okay,” I said, and the single word felt like a small rebellion.
We spent the night talking until the city blurred into a watercolor. He told me about the studio he’d rented, the pieces he’d been working on, the way he’d realized that leaving had been a coward’s attempt at freedom. I told him about waking up younger and the strange, delicious power of being anonymous. He listened like a man who wanted to learn how to be present.
When he kissed me, it was slow and careful, like someone learning the map of a place they’d once taken for granted. The kiss was hot because it was honest—because every touch was a choice and because I was the one choosing. I felt giddy in a way that had nothing to do with being pursued and everything to do with being the author of my own desire.
We didn’t rush. We let the night be a test and a gift. When I left his rooftop at dawn, the city was a soft hush and my pulse still hummed with possibility. I had two men circling, different in their regrets, different in their promises. I had a list of rules and a new vocabulary for desire.
And I had, for the first time in a long time, the delicious knowledge that I could be wanted and still be the one who decided what came next.
- Writer
