Chapter Twelve
Six weeks later
SAM THREW HER backpack under the console table in the small foyer of her parents’ house and kicked off her single sneaker with unwarranted violence.
Which made the grocery bag in her arms shake in her grasp.
The salad she’d picked up at the deli fell to the tiled floor with a quiet thud.
Which meant there was now lettuce and carrots and grape tomatoes scattered all over the floor with the dressing splattered and staring back at her.
Which also meant her dad would have to clean it up because Sam couldn’t bend her left leg right now.
Sudden, indulgent tears filled her eyes, and she pressed her forehead to the door.
Her right hip ached with how much extra load she’d been putting on it to compensate for the giant bruise on her left hip. God forbid she be of use to anyone else. For once in her life, she wanted to be the one who didn’t need looking after.
But it wasn’t just the frustration of the accident she’d had since returning or the anger over how exhausted she was by the end of the week after juggling classes, her portrait commissions and schlepping home every evening from the campus.
It was him.
She wasn’t sleeping because she missed him in her bed. Missed being held by him. Missed his gaze on her, relentlessly digging and probing. Missed the warm curve of his mouth as he pressed it to her skin.
She wasn’t enjoying her college experience because everything felt colorless without him.
She had no appetite, but she forced herself to eat anyway because that’s what grown-up people did. Even when their heart was torn into pieces. Especially grown-up Sam because her damned heart couldn’t be trusted to not fail on her if she didn’t look after herself.
Just another week before she was free of the cast on her foot, she reminded herself.
This too shall pass, she repeated to herself, as if her life depended on it.
She’d wanted adventures and life, and that meant heartbreak too.
Apparently real life for her meant falling in love with the wrong brother in a matter of a few weeks and running away without even telling him how she truly felt because she was terrified of seeing his irrefutable rejection of her love.
But she’d get over him, as she did with all hard things in life, and be stronger for it. Just not yet. It would take her all of her twenties probably. Maybe some of her thirties.
By thirty-five, she’d be ready to throw herself into another red-hot affair. And maybe she would target a man from a different continent this time, just for variety.
That ridiculous plan for the next decade felt like control when nothing else was in her grasp.
Stepping around the wilting lettuce and sodden carrots, she walked into the house, only noticing then that it was too quiet for a Friday evening.
Her mom’s favorite Indian soap opera—hers too, now—should’ve been playing loud enough to drive Dad bonkers.
The thought broke her dark mood. Even her dad’s old excuse that he didn’t understand Hindi didn’t stand anymore.
In the vein of all soap operas across the universe, the show moved so slowly and so dramatically that even he could understand what was happening.
“Mom, what’s happening? Did Rishika discover the truth about her evil twin? Has she—”
Her breath emptied out of her in a loud, long exhale.
Alessandro was standing in their kitchen, a bottle of her dad’s favorite beer dripping condensation all over the granite counter next to him.
White dress shirt and black trousers. His hair needed a cut. His mouth was set in that tight, forbidding line she knew so well. And his eyes… God, his eyes. A rainbow of emotions flickered through them as they roved over her hungrily.
From her hair in two braids to the Band-Aid on her chin to her crop top and low-slung shorts to the large blue-green bruise showing on her hip and her foot in a cast.
His gaze lingered at several points, mainly her foot and the bruise, and then crawled up to her face. Tension thrummed around him, as if he were creating a strange force field around himself.
He should have looked so out of context here in their kitchen, in their house. At least that’s how she’d survived the last few weeks. By compartmentalizing him in her head, like a fantasy. A temporary illusion that had felt incredibly good.
In silence, she walked into the living room where her parents were on the couch, and Alessandro followed. On the big plasma screen on the wall, Rishika was running around the streets of Mumbai chasing after her amnesiac lover who was being stolen away by her evil twin.
Sam registered this on the periphery of her senses, as if they were a background track for her suddenly very vivid life. Someone muted the television.
Her mom finally broke the silence. “Why didn’t you tell us you were dating Matteo’s older brother?”
Sam’s eyes widened. He’d told them? What, exactly?
“For God’s sake, Sameera, he’s eighteen years older than you. I can’t decide if he’s worse than Matteo or not. Because he should know better.” This she addressed to Alessandro with an almighty scowl.
Heat rushed into her cheeks, but Sam couldn’t break away from that gray gaze. Dad’s Hush, Geeta, let them sort it out fell into the tense silence.
Alessandro raised an eyebrow.
Fluent in his facial language, Sam understood him instantly.
He was asking whether she wanted him to answer her mom’s inquiries.
The gesture was so familiar, had haunted her so much, that raw longing flooded her body. For a wild, crazy moment, she wanted to say Go for it. She wanted to let him take on her mom and see the fireworks. She wanted to see what he’d say about them now that they were… Wait, why was he here at all?
“Sam?”
She turned to her mom, hearing the worry in it.
“Whatever it was, it’s over now, Mom.” She heard the catch of pain in her voice but had no energy to fight it.
“So let’s not argue about the irrefutable fact that I’m an adult, and while you’re allowed to express your opinion, you have no say in how I live my life, hmm? ”
“Then, why is he here?” her mom continued. “He’s been here all afternoon and grilled us about you for hours.”
Her belly swooped. He’d been waiting all afternoon?
She turned to Alessandro. “Are you going to just stand there and look at me, or explain why you’re here?
” she said, her stomach twisting. Did he have any idea how hard it was for her to see him here like this and not touch him?
To fight being pulled back into his gravity?
“If not, Mom will continue to talk about you as if you’re not standing there taking up all the space.
” Sudden anxiety flooded her. “Wait, is Matteo okay? Angelina didn’t say anything about—”
“Matteo is fine.”
No one could have missed the jealousy in his tone. No one. Sam blinked.
“Are you in pain?” he asked, tilting his chin at her foot.
“It’s just a hairline fracture,” she said, clumsily wiggling her foot.
That he’d ask her that of all the hundred things he could’ve said…
her heart felt like a fragile piece of glass.
Liable to shatter at one wrong word. And because she would hate him to reach the wrong conclusion, she elaborated.
“This…teen kid was driving a moped and almost crashed into a delivery vehicle. I tried to get him out of his way, right outside. I ended up twisting my foot and falling,” she finished slowly.
He didn’t nod at her explanation. His gaze didn’t relent, as if his intensity had been dialed to the max. “Pack a bag. We’ll go to my hotel suite.” He rubbed a hand over his temple. “Do you need help?”
Her mom’s outraged gasp punctured the silence. God, she couldn’t give them a moment, could she? And what was Alessandro doing, ordering her around, in front of her parents?
Despite it all, Sam was tempted. Beyond tempted to simply follow him.
He could have said they’d go to the end of earth or a different dimension or a parallel universe and she’d still have followed him.
If he’d asked for a few more weeks, or days or even one last night for closure…
she’d be all in. Again. She’d put aside embarrassment, her self-respect, her pain—everything if he’d just kiss her one more time.
If he’d hold her. If he’d make love to her. She was that desperate for him.
But if she did go, she wasn’t sure she could break away again. The thought of his rejection was the slap of common sense she needed.
“I have an early morning class, and it’s my turn to make dinner tonight,” she said, uncaring that it sounded like an excuse. It wasn’t.
He came toward her. A strange dizziness came over her as he took the bag of groceries in one hand, grabbed her waist with the other and simply lifted her and carried her to the kitchen.
Sam breathed him in like an addict.
“I will help with dinner. We can eat and then go. I’ll make sure you get to class on time in the morning.”
Sam simply nodded instead of telling him she was not going anywhere with him.
To his credit, he did help her in the kitchen. But her heart couldn’t simply settle down in his proximity.
Since she’d lost the salad, she heated up leftover rice and used the vegetables he’d chopped to make fried rice.
Her parents watched from the living room as if two aliens had taken over the kitchen.
Sam set the table while Alessandro scrambled the eggs until they were golden and fluffy and just…perfect like everything he did. It was such a domestic yet extraordinary moment that she didn’t know what to think.
“I didn’t know you could cook,” Sam said, when the four of them settled down around the table.
“You don’t know a lot of things about me,” he said, a soft twinkle in his eyes. “You ran away before I could tell you.” The last part was a whisper just for her ears.
“I didn’t run away,” Sam retorted.
He didn’t argue back, but the tight set of his jaw said more than enough.