Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
A my
Sleep is slipping far away when I hear Layla laughing, followed by Matteo’s deep voice. I roll over to find it’s a little after ten in the morning. Sighing, I’m so damn grateful for him letting me sleep in. Of everything, I really am the most grateful for the rest I’ve gotten.
Although I had more time to sleep in the motel room, I’ve spent the time stressed out about finding a job.
I’m finally feeling better. Not just in body…as corny as it sounds, in spirit. It’s not only from sleep. It’s also because of Matteo. How he helped with Layla and seemed to love her as much as I do. The way he understood things about me even I didn’t.
When I first opened my eyes to him, if I had been told what would happen over the last few days I wouldn’t have believed it. Power radiates from him, not because of his muscles and width. It’s almost like it’s a part of who he is. Yet he is nothing like what that power would normally mean—something to be feared, to be wary of crossing.
I blush, thinking of how gently he held me while he was on his knees. He was being nice. I’m sure he didn’t even remember what he said to calm down a nearly hysterical woman.
Except Matteo doesn’t say things he doesn’t mean. It might be less than a full week, but I know it the same way I know my name. He didn’t just say it, he made me repeat it. For a moment, when he told me to say it again… I press my legs tightly closed against the heat pooling at the core of me.
Stop it. Don’t make him hurt you by telling you he doesn’t want you the same way you want him.
In the shower, despite what I told myself, it won’t stop running through my mind. Matteo’s hand gently cupped my chin as his thumb ran over my cheek so slowly I could feel every ridge of his fingerprint. The electricity from his touch wakening every cell in my body. His promise to never leave me and Layla. How he would always be here for us—no matter what.
It was a promise that I have no doubt in my mind he would do everything he could to keep. Yet…how could he know what will happen five or ten years from now? I’m just the housekeeper, right?
The questions swirling in my head are giving me a headache—enough. It won’t be answered now, so focus on what I can control.
In my closet, I don’t know what has me reaching for it. It’s a beautiful silky sundress in lilac with floating tendrils of teal. I barely notice the way I’m biting my lip until I pull it down and hold it against me. I wonder if it really will fit. I’m slipping it on with my eyes closed, certain it will be too small. Except it’s not. It fits perfectly.
I don’t recognize the woman in the mirror. The lilac against her skin gives her a glow I’ve never seen before.
Matteo has the nipple of Layla’s bottle between his lips as he attempts to fix a bottle one-handed because he has Layla on his hip. When he sees me, his mouth falls open, losing the nipple. He blinks a few times.
His eyes are gold. “Good god. I mean, morning. Good morning. Beautiful, you look beautiful.”
Layla cries out, “Mama.”
I’m blushing and don’t dare meet his eyes. I focus on Layla. “Good morning, my sweet girl. Come here.”
I try to take her, but his arm is still tight around her. “Sorry. I, um, yeah. Okay. I’m going to make a bottle. I was making a bottle.”
He lets her go and I cuddle her close. My stomach growls.
“I’m starving.” I open the fridge. “What sounds good for breakfast this morning?”
Motioning to the toaster oven. “I’ve been up since seven this morning. I ordered in. You mentioned liking that fast-food chain’s biscuit breakfast so there’s one in the toaster oven to stay warm for you.”
“Seven in the morning? Did Layla wake you?” My tummy is warm at him remembering my favorite breakfast.
“No, I just woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. I’ve got a ton of paperwork I need to do on a daily basis. I was backed up on it. I’ve worked my ass off to get it done. My eyes feel like they’re about to cross, but it’s almost done.” He sighs as he finishes the bottle and takes Layla from me when I begin trying to reheat the breakfast one-handed.
Her cry of delight at the bottle he offers has both of us laughing.
“Wow, that is a lot of paperwork.” I do a double take at several piles of paper spread out along the long dining table.
“Yeah, sorry. I’m almost done. If you could just slide that pile over.” I do as he asks. “Thanks. No, Layla. Mommy can’t share that with you. Drink your bottle.”
Layla pouts around the nipple in her mouth. “I’m going to get a glass of orange juice. Do you want something while I’m up?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
Filling the glass, it comes out of the container faster than I thought it would. I’m worried about spilling some when I carry it to the table and take a sip.
I’m proud I didn’t spill on my walk from the kitchen. When I set it down on the table, some of it sloshes over the rim of the glass.
“Careful, please.” Matteo murmurs.
I don’t know what comes over me. His words were his usual quiet. There wasn’t even a warning to them. What happens when I don’t do what he wants? When I mess up. The back of my hand sends the glass on its side with a light clink of glass to wood. The moment I do it, my stomach falls to my feet. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right, Amy. Don’t worry about it. Take Layla, and I’ll clean this up.” There’s a twinge of defeat, nothing else. I hear it, but I don’t. Why isn’t he angry? When will he hit me for messing up?
I was wrong. I messed up hours of work. He spent all morning on it, and I ruined it. But he’s not yelling. He’s telling me that he’s going to clean it up.
What? No. I have to clean this up. I have to clean the mess I made. I’m moving fast, trying to save the paper from the orange juice. I swipe the orange juice to the floor, better the floor than the papers. Then I’m on the floor to clean up the orange juice. Only I have nothing to clean it up with. I use the skirt of my dress to try to soak it up. Except it's silk and not soaking up anything.
Matteo is on his knees with me. He takes the dress from my hands. “It’s okay, Amy. It’s okay. Stop saying you’re sorry. It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. It’s all right. I’m not mad. It was an accident. It’s okay. I won’t hurt you. I will never hurt you.”
What does he mean I’m still saying I’m sorry ? Oh, I am. I can’t stop saying it. I mean it. I need him to know I mean it. I’m sorry I ruined all his hours of work. I’m sorry I did it on purpose. I’m sorry that I am going to wreck this because I wreck everything. He’s going to figure it out any day…
I’m in his arms, his hand at the back of my head, pressing me into his neck. Inhaling him, the words finally stop. He’s rocking me like I do with Layla. One large hand is cradling my head, the other is running up and down my back.
Vaguely, I hear Layla speaking gibberish to herself. Still, Matteo doesn’t let me go. I realize I’m clinging to him so tightly my hands hurt. His breath is coming in deep and out slow. I find I mimic him when the deep breath centers me. I allow one hand to unclench his shirt, then the other. But I can’t bring myself to even think of unwrapping my arms from around him.
“I shouldn’t have done that. I did it on purpose and?—”
“Nothing you do will ever make me mad at you enough for me to hit you—hurt you. Not today, tomorrow, or any day of the week. Do not apologize for doing what you needed to do to feel safe with me. It’s another trauma response. And it’s nothing a hundred hours of therapy would fix because you had to know. There was no other way than to do what you did. I’ll give up three hours, three days, three weeks of work if it helps you feel safe with me.”
How does he always know the right thing to say? The only thing he said was for me to take Layla. Matteo was going to clean up the mess I made. I’m positive he didn’t know I did it on purpose. It wasn’t until I lost my shit like some kind of psycho and told him that he knew.
Except Matteo didn’t think I was psycho. Once he figured out why I was waiting for a blow—the math I thought was calculus—he figured out like it was simple addition and subtraction.
Matteo wasn’t mad. Not about the hours he lost to boring paperwork and not about me testing him. He understood, and he wasn’t angry.
“Please tell me you have a weird thing. You can’t be this perfect all the time. Do you have a secret stash of clown paintings or weird old puppets? Please.” I mutter, only half-joking.
His laugh is everything. “No, I’m sorry.”
He’s quiet for a minute. “There is one thing I’ve never told anyone. I mean, my brothers kind of know… I don’t want to say bad because I don’t think it’s bad. I know some people would think—I’m a Star Wars fan. It would be considered geek-level. I have the dialogue of the first three movies memorized. I’ve seen every movie at least twenty times because I have to start from the beginning when a new movie comes out. Since we’re baring our souls here, you deserve to know.”
Another long pause. “Please don’t tell anyone. Especially my brothers. They’ll never leave me alone about it. I’ll be teased mercilessly until the day I die.”
Matteo
It starts low, almost like when the old cars needed to warm up from the cold. The motor would barely hum, then grow louder and louder. That’s how Amy’s laugh begins. At first, I wondered if she was crying again.
When she pulls back, I hate letting her go, but I love the way she’s laughing so hard she’s crying again. Her hand goes to her chest as she tries to stop the great bellows of air she’s taking in.
Hearing her laughter soothes my soul after the heart-wrenching past few minutes. When the glass tipped over, I kissed an early night away. Shit happens. It wasn’t a big deal. Until I saw the abject terror flash on Amy’s face.
It was as if someone reached into my chest and pulled out my heart to show it to me. I wasn’t sure how I stayed standing. Every time she said she was sorry, it sent another lash of pain from a whip across my chest. I didn’t dare get close—standing over her might cause even more fear.
I put Layla on the floor with her favorite toy and prayed she wouldn’t pick today to become mobile. Then I went back to Amy who was on her knees wiping at the orange juice with the skirt of her dress.
The dress she was so happy in only minutes before. I went down on my knees with her. Although I hated the cold juice soaking into my pants, I didn’t give a fuck about anything until I got Amy in my arms.
I’m not one hundred percent certain anything I said made sense. It was all about reassuring her that it was okay. I wasn’t mad. I wasn’t going to hurt her over something so small that was an accident.
When she admitted she did it on purpose, my heart broke. My poor baby, she was afraid. Her fear needed to know for certain she was safe with me. That I wouldn’t hurt her or Layla if something angered me.
Like her previous trauma response, I was a little surprised it didn’t come earlier. Until I realized she was finally feeling strong again. It was because of that strength the trauma response kicked in. If she had done it before she was feeling strong, she wouldn’t have been able to deal with being wrong.
If I failed the test while she was still unable to take care of herself let alone Layla, she wouldn’t have seen a way out. God, I’m a bastard.
Once she stops laughing, I meet her chocolate eyes. “You should stay with my mother.”
All of her glow disappears. “I said I was sorry. I’ll be better. I won’t do it again?—”
I press a finger to her lips, hating the agony in her words. “I don’t want you to go to my mother’s. I know it’s crazy since it’s only been a week, but it’s like you’ve always been here. And I couldn’t imagine how empty the condo, and I will feel with you and Layla gone. However, I see now I didn’t really give you a choice. Since you were already here and felt safe, you didn’t want to leave. Which makes total sense?—”
She wraps her hand around the wrist of the finger I have against her lips. “You’re wrong. I wanted to stay with you . Please, don’t make me leave.”
The relief is so massive that I exhale from my toes. “As long as you stop apologizing. About anything. You don’t need to apologize for taking up space, for being you. Do you understand?”
Tears glisten in her eyes as she nods.
“Good, go get cleaned up while I take care of this mess. Once you’re done, it will be my turn.”
She shakes her head. “I made this mess. I need to clean it up.”
“This isn’t just any mess, it’s your confirmation you and Layla are safe with me. I would clean this up a thousand times with a smile on my face while I do it. Now go on. Any minute, Layla is going to get upset at not being in the middle of the action.” I grasp her at her waist and lift her to her feet.
Eyes wide, one hand goes down to the table to steady herself. “I keep forgetting how strong you are.” There’s something I can’t define in her words as a smile plays on her sweet, pouting lips. “I’ll be right back.”
Watching her walk away, my heart is back together, shiny, and feeling new at how her spine is straight and her shoulders back. She’s never walked so confidently before. I don’t have to take her and Layla to my mother’s. Amy is here, and she’s not leaving.
Thank fuck.
Amy
Shedding the orange juice-covered dress into the hamper, I don’t feel like the same person I was when I put it on. Maybe it’s because I feel like a woman, not a scared little girl fumbling my way to adulthood.
I had a baby. I’m a twenty-seven-year-old woman. Only I often didn’t feel it, even less so as Matteo took care of me and Layla.
It wasn’t that Matteo turned me into a woman. It’s that he tore away the myth I believed in—I had to achieve a milestone or pass some test society set for me. Only then would I get my badge of womanhood.
Except it wasn’t true. I wasn’t a girl, weak and without any control over my life. I was always a woman with the power to effect change. It didn’t get any more powerful than taking control of my life and leaving the group home before I had to, going to school and making my own money, or making a home with my roommate.
For fucks sake, I was the mother of the most amazing baby girl who was already talking at only nine months old. I’d earned the badge of a woman. I didn’t need anyone to give it to me.
Matteo tore away my own self-doubting fears. Just because my lack of self-esteem didn’t let me see it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. I stared the unknown down of what Matteo would do to me, prepared for the worst-case scenario and had the resolve to do it. Because I had to know if we were really safe with him.
It didn’t matter that the aftermath was me a sobbing wreck. While this time it was Matteo who put me back together. I’ve been the one to do it before and if I have to, I can do it again.