“Ma! I can’t find my science folder!”

“It’s by the door, exactly where I told you to put it,” I called from the kitchen, locked in high-stakes negotiations between two lunch bags, a loaf of off-brand bread, and a coffeemaker in the final stages of a slow, painful death. If it quit today, God help us all.

“It’s not there!” Aria’s voice carried the dangerous edge of pre-teen panic. The kind that could escalate into a full Shakespearean tragedy in under thirty seconds.

“Check your backpack!” I barked, grabbing juice boxes. “Luca! Shoes!”

“I am wearing shoes,” came his muffled reply from upstairs.

“Flip-flops don’t count, Luca. They’re what people wear when they’ve given up on life. Or when they’re my cousin Tony at the shore after too many Coronas.”

Aria flew down the stairs, folder in hand, like she’d discovered the Holy Grail. “Found it! It was in my backpack.”

Madonna mia. “Incredible detective work, Sherlock,” I muttered, handing her a lunch bag. “Bus in three minutes.”

Luca appeared at the top of the stairs in his flip-flops, all elbows, bedhead, and adolescent despair. At thirteen, his greatest skill was looking like he’d just survived a natural disaster. Even fresh from the shower.

“Sneakers. Now.”

He groaned like I’d asked him to scrub the Sistine Chapel ceiling. “Fine.”

The bus wheezed around the corner just as Aria bolted for the door. Luca thundered down again, sneakers this time, laces trailing like he was hoping to break his neck.

“Have a good day!” I yelled over the hiss of brakes. “Ti amo!”

Aria waved without looking back. Luca pretended not to hear, but I caught the little hitch in his shoulders. He’d heard. He always did.

The bus drove away, and suddenly, silence. For the first time in three months, the house was mine.

I stood there a moment, my favorite mug in hand, soaking in the quiet. No video game explosions. No slammed doors. No arguments over recycling duty. Part of me missed it already. A bigger part wanted to canonize their teachers.

Barefoot, I padded through my bedroom and out onto the narrow balcony. Baltimore row houses weren’t built for privacy, but mine had character: Mrs. Liu’s pristine herb garden and Buddha statue on one side, and on the other, a jungle of weeds swallowing up the empty house that had been abandoned long before the Convergence made property values… complicated.

I hadn’t bothered changing out of my silk sleep shorts and tank top, relics from a boutique in Rome back when shopkeepers called me bella ragazza and meant it. Fifteen years later, the fabric clung in ways that reminded me I wasn’t twenty-seven anymore, and the only people calling me beautiful were old men at the Italian market when I bought mortadella by the pound.

Back then, I was translating for the UN, living in a cramped apartment in Rome, drinking real espresso and chasing impossible, beautiful phrases. Now? I scraped dried cereal out of bowls and used my Italian to help Luca stumble through beginner Spanish homework.

I sank into the metal chair, the morning sun warming my bare legs. The coffee was bitter, but it grounded me. If I closed my eyes and ignored the traffic hum, I could almost believe I was still her, the traveler, the dreamer, the woman who hadn’t yet discovered that parent-teacher conferences were a special kind of purgatory.

Then came the crack.

Sharp. Purposeful. From the overgrown jungle of a yard next door.

I leaned over the railing, pulse hitching. The abandoned house had been empty forever; I half-expected raccoons. What I didn’t expect was… him.

Shoulders first. Broad, sun-kissed muscles shifting under skin that caught the morning light like Bernini himself had dreamed him. Golden curls damp with sweat against his neck. And horns. Elegant, curling back from the crown of his head like they belonged in marble.

Not impossible. Not anymore.

The Convergence had cracked reality wide open just over a year ago. Now, trolls worked construction in Jersey, dryads ran yoga studios in Portland, and a cyclops who’d become a minor celebrity on TikTok for reviewing food trucks in Chicago.

Baltimore’s integration program had tucked all kinds of species into abandoned neighborhoods. It was part urban renewal, part diplomatic necessity.

But this? A satyr. In my backyard. Looking like every Renaissance master’s fevered sketch come to life.

He moved gracefully, and with purpose, pruning shears flashing as he tamed a vine. The morning sun worshiped him. And my eyes drank in every inch of his torso with that narrow trail of hair leading down past skin into tawny fur, powerful haunches and hooves pressing into Baltimore dirt.

Heat curled low in my belly, spreading in places that had been cold for too long.

Then he looked up.

Warm brown eyes locked onto mine. He didn’t look away. He smiled. Slow. Like he could taste my interest.

Merda. Could he?

“Ah,” he called, voice rich and unaccented, “my Juliet appears on her balcony. Though we’re missing moonlight for proper romance.”

Heat rushed to my cheeks. “It’s eight in the morning.”

He shrugged, muscles rolling, lifting the shears in salute. “Then you’ll be my sunrise.”

The words landed like a physical touch. Like someone had seen me. Not Ma, not the woman who forgot to buy milk at the store, not the translator currently buried in maritime law, but me. A woman worth calling beautiful.

“Bit much for pruning weeds, don’t you think?” I managed, gripping the railing, hard enough my knuckles went white. My silk shorts suddenly felt transparent, my tank top too thin.

His gaze traveled over me slowly, appreciatively, leaving trails of fire in its wake. When our eyes met again, they held the smug knowledge of exactly what his attention was doing to me, of how my body was betraying me.

His smile curved wickedly. “Beautiful women deserve beautiful words, even at eight in the morning.”

Something low in me clenched, shameless and hungry. I laughed too quickly, too breathless, and stumbled backward like some Victorian virgin catching sight of an ankle.

The coffee mug slipped from my trembling fingers, shattering across the balcony in a spray of ceramic and desperation.

“Cazzo!” The curse slipped out before I could stop it.

His laughter followed me inside, rich, sinful, echoing in my too-small bedroom. It tangled with the scent of wild herbs and something earthier drifting from the yard, something that made me think of summer and wine-soaked nights and hands that knew exactly how to touch a woman’s body.

I pressed my back against the door, heart pounding like I’d run a marathon instead of fled a conversation. I was a grown woman with two kids, a mortgage, and a translation deadline looming. I didn’t have time for fantasies about neighbors with warm brown eyes and voices that made me want things I hadn’t thought about in years.

And yet… my skin still buzzed where his gaze had touched. Despite all rational thought, I was already inventing excuses to go back outside. The balcony needed sweeping. The railing needed paint.

Hell, maybe I needed fixing.