Please Divorce Me, Alpha! {BL}

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Lorenzo stayed silent for a few seconds. The question I had just asked hung in the air between us, blending with the warm steam and the smell of chlorine, mixing in with whatever fancy soap he must have used before coming down here.

I was watching him from the other side of the pool, trying really hard to ignore the fact that he was closer now than he had been just a little while ago, which was getting harder by the second.

The water lapped softly against his waist as he stood there with one hand resting casually on the edge of the pool.

I hated that I was paying so much attention to these details. It annoyed me even more that my brain seemed to have taken a liking to this new habit.

Lorenzo’s gaze stayed locked on mine.

"I don’t think there was one specific moment," he finally responded.

I blinked, a bit taken aback. "That’s it? That’s your answer?"

A small smile played on his lips. "You asked when I figured out I wanted you to stay. You didn’t ask for a specific date or time."

"I would have taken a date and time."

His soft laugh echoed around the room, and somehow that sound made the atmosphere feel even more intimate.

Lorenzo dropped his gaze for a moment, looking at the water between us before meeting my eyes again.

"It happened gradually, Alex." His tone had changed, almost serious. He wasn’t teasing or trying to get a reaction out of me anymore.

Instead, he sounded deep in thought, like he was considering whether he could let me see something he normally kept hidden away.

"Like I had said before, I started watching you. For months."

That made my stomach twist in a way that wasn’t quite pleasant.

Not like the kind where armed men are chasing you, but more like that quiet realization when you think you’re alone in your own home, only to find out someone’s been watching you from the doorway this whole time.

I crossed my arms defensively. "That still sounds a bit creepy when you put it that way."

He smiled a little. "I never said I was proud of how I went about it."

"Well, good."

"But I did notice things."

He moved just slightly; it was only a gentle step through the water, but the ripples traveled toward me.

He didn’t seem to be in any rush. Still, something about his movement made me sit a little straighter. "What kind of things?"

"The way you stayed with my father."

I blinked, surprised. "Frederick?"

Lorenzo nodded. "You didn’t have to do that. You were married to me due to an agreement. Your job was to stay at the estate and fulfill your role. Spending time with my dying father wasn’t part of it."

I looked down, lost in thought.

Frederick.

For a moment, I could almost hear his laugh in my head. The old man had been on a wheelchair when I first met him, yet he still managed to make me feel welcomed.

"I liked him," I admitted quietly.

"I know."

I shot him a look. "How do you know?"

Lorenzo’s expression softened. "You kept visiting him even when you didn’t have to."

I shrugged, suddenly feeling exposed. "He was lonely."

"He was."

"And I was lonely too." The words slipped out before I could stop them.

Lorenzo didn’t respond right away. The water shifted as he took another slow step forward.

"I watched you be there for hours," he continued. "Sometimes you talked to him, even when he fell into a coma. Other times, you read. Sometimes you just complained about the food."

"I had valid complaints."

"You once spent twenty minutes explaining to him why the chef was trying to ruin your relationship with mashed potatoes."

"He used cinnamon!"

Lorenzo actually laughed, a soft, genuine sound that made me stare at him.

"You remember that?" I asked, that was about nine months ago. Even I had forgotten it.

"I remember most things about you." Lorenzo responded.

I felt my cheeks heat up even more than before, but I chose to ignore that.

"Anyways," he said, "you stayed with him because you wanted to, not because someone told you to."

I looked away, there wasn’t anything especially noble about it. Frederick had treated me kindly when so many others had looked at me as if I were a burden.

Being with him had never felt like an obligation. But hearing Lorenzo talk about it made it feel different, like he was collecting those moments without my knowledge.

"The staff too," he added. "You were terrible at talking to them."

"I was not!"

"You were terrible, no social skills whatsoever."

"Hey, I was trying my best! I can’t help that I...say the wrong things sometimes."

His smile got wider. "But you were kind to them."

That made me pause. Lorenzo’s gaze was steady on mine. "You were awkward with them, you were sarcastic. You complained about almost everything. But you never acted like anyone was beneath you."

My throat felt tight all of a sudden and he went on in that same low voice. "Especially when you thought nobody important was watching."

I had a pretty good idea where this was heading. "Leon."

Lorenzo nodded. "The day that guard of mine cornered him."

I recalled that day vividly.

"He was disgusting," I muttered.

A small smile appeared on his face. "You didn’t ask who the man was. You didn’t consider what kind of influence he had at the time. You didn’t even really know Leon."

"He was uncomfortable."

"You saw that."

"Anyone could see that."

"Not everyone cared."

That silenced me. Lorenzo stepped closer again. The water was higher against him now, and the space between us had become noticeably smaller. I swallowed.

"And then there was the maze."

I frowned. "What maze?"

Something in his expression changed. It wasn’t entirely a smile, more like something softer. "I think that’s when I stopped pretending this was all temporary."

My heart did a little flip. "What happened in the maze?"

He looked straight at me for a long moment before quietly saying, "You don’t remember?"

I stared back at him. "Uh...not exactly."

"You will."

The way he said it made the memory begin to creep up even before he finished speaking.

Five months earlier...

I had been so bored. Not the kind of boredom you could shake off with a good book or a walk.

This was the full-on, existential kind that had me seriously contemplating whether downing an entire cake in one go counted as a legitimate afternoon activity.

I had been married for about seven months at that point, which sounded far more dramatic when said quickly.

In reality, my days mostly consisted of reading, wandering the estate, annoying Leon, avoiding Lorenzo after he basically told me to fuck off after I baked him a birthday cake, attending the occasional required event, pretending to be a devoted husband in public.

It was exhausting, mostly because I had nothing to do.

That afternoon, I had been wandering around the grounds with my hands stuffed into my pockets, staring at flowers I couldn’t identify and wondering if the gardener would even notice if I plucked one and stuck it behind my ear. Probably not.

There were cameras everywhere. The Castellis had cameras pointed at things that didn’t even need monitoring.

At one point, I seriously thought about throwing a rock at one, just to see if anyone would pop up to confront me.

But I backed out of that idea; as I was passing the hedge maze, I heard it. A child crying.

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