Pride was always your flaw, a steely armor you wore to keep from ever seeming too open, too visible. And yet it was that very pride that nearly cost you everything.

And that’s where you met Gabriele Caruso—tall, dispassionate, a mind honed to razor-edge precision. At first, he’d infuriated you, though not without reason; his brilliance had the sort of cold beauty that repels. He seemed to insist on his own superiority, as though everything he said was a test you’d either pass or fail. And yet… he was more than the sum of his conceit.

Take that night with your friends. Martino, with his relentless charm and habit of forgetting his wallet at every dinner invitation. Gabriele quietly paid and later, seeing you stranded in the city’s bitter wind, offered you a ride. He’d dropped you at your door without a word of reproach. There was, you saw, a depth to him—a kind of meticulous kindness that emerged only when it had to. But you tried to ignore it.

But then came winter, and with it, the slow, hungry cold that gnawed at the edges of your solitude. You should have asked to stay in his apartment while he was away in Italy. But no. Too much pride again, and you ended up with pneumonia, lungs rattling in some drafty commune house with barely a heating vent. You nearly died, they told you later.

And it was Gabriele—who found you. Gabriele who sat beside you in that sterile, blinding hospital room, smoothing the blanket over your shivering form. He’d stayed by your side, wry and vigilant, like some protective sentinel, pushing the nurses to do their job better, holding your hand when the pain was at its worst. It was terrifying to feel so exposed, yet his presence made it bearable. Oddly, you felt, seen.

When he invited you to his place to recover, you took it as a necessary kindness, until one frigid night made your loneliness too much to bear. You got up, crossed the creaking floors, and found yourself outside his back room.

“Is everything all right?” he asked, his voice steady, as if he’d been expecting you.

For once, your pride was nowhere to be found.