Chapter Twelve #2
If the fried rice was too spicy for him, he didn’t let on. He ate two helpings as if it was the most delicious dish he’d ever tried, and a fierce kind of joy stabbed through Sam’s middle.
Mom stayed quiet, but Dad and Alessandro chatted about computers and business and the Ricci branch in California without an ounce of awkwardness.
Soon they’d piled up all the dishes around the sink and she’d cleaned the dining table. Her heart started rabbiting in her chest.
“I’ll see to these,” Dad said, gesturing to the dirty dishes while Mom filled the kettle and turned it on. Sam didn’t know what to do with herself. Or the sudden tremors that seemed to overtake her at the thought of him leaving.
Alessandro thanked her parents for their hospitality and did it with such genuine regard that even her mom cracked a smile. Then he turned to her. “Ready to go?”
Sam followed him into the living room so that they could have some privacy. Not so much that she’d lose the little sense of self-preservation that was holding her back. “I’m…exhausted, to be honest. It’s been a long week.”
He crowded her until their chests grazed. “I can see that, tesoro. You can just sleep. We don’t have to talk.” His knuckles traced the dark shadows under her eyes. “I just…need to hold you.”
Sam stared, in shock. She hadn’t imagined the slight catch in his tone. Hadn’t imagined the bob of his Adam’s apple. He sounded on edge. Stepping back, she looked up into his face, and something slid into place. “Wait, did Angelina tell you about my accident?”
“Does it matter, Sam?”
“Yes, it does,” she said, her voice rising, aware that her parents were staring at them. “Where’s your blasted honesty now?”
“Fine,” he said with that infuriating calm in the face of her temper. “She was at the house yesterday. She mentioned that you had a short stay in the hospital two weeks ago. I flew here overnight.”
She felt as if she’d been punched in the gut. Pushing away from him, she’d have stumbled if not for the wall at her back. “Did you come because you thought I was dying?” Tears pricked, never far these days. “As you can see, I’m perfectly fine, and you can fuck off with your pity. I don’t have—”
She never finished. Because the blasted man picked her up in his arms all the while being extremely gentle with her foot and walked up the stairs.
Sam buried her face in his chest but didn’t protest. Or fight. Or say anything. She was too busy crying, falling apart, to put up a fight. And it felt like her heart was breaking all over again.
To leave him once had been heartbreaking, but to do it again…she wasn’t strong enough.
Alessandro deposited Sam onto the small bed in the attic room.
While every cell in him wanted to crowd her into the bed, kiss her and generally railroad her into submission, he backed off.
This wasn’t a small thing, and the last thing he wanted was to restart their relationship with him minimizing her complaints.
He looked around the small room. Pictures of Sam greeted him from a bulletinboard, from all ages and sizes. Framed art hung from the wall, some her own pieces and some not. Her room was a kaleidoscope of colors and sunlight and shimmer. Just like her.
Seeing a familiar face on the board, he went closer for a better look. It was a picture of Matteo and Sam with his arm around her, younger and grinning into the camera.
He backed away, that prick of jealousy as fresh as always. But before he turned, one last thing caught his attention. It was a sketch of him, rendered in nothing but dark lines. That dark void that had opened up within him since she’d left ate it up hungrily.
Finally, he turned to find Sam glaring at him, her face etched with exhaustion. “Go to sleep, bella. You clearly need…” He swallowed the rest.
“As soon as you leave.”
“I’m not leaving, Sameera. Not until we talk. It’s not too late to go to the hotel. We’ll have privacy and more room,” he said, eyeing the single bed. There was no way he could sleep next to her on that.
“There’s nothing I want to do with you that requires privacy.”
He crawled onto her small bed, nuzzled into her temple and whispered, “I do.”
She sniffled, and a tear made a track down her cheek. He wiped it away with his sleeve. “That’s gross. I have tissues,” she said.
“I’ve licked things off of your body, tesoro. This is nothing.”
Pink crested her cheeks, and a tentative smile curved her mouth. When he reached for her hand, she gave it reluctantly. He laced his fingers through hers, and something in his chest settled. Like a key sliding into place, turning tumblers, unlocking a whole new world of joy and contentment for him.
It had started turning from the first moment. He’d been too numb inside to see it happening, to appreciate it.
“Why did you leave without saying good-bye?”
“My cousin Kavi…remember her?”
“The one that called you a stubborn goat? Sì. I like her.”
He felt her surprise rather than saw it. Did she think he’d forgotten a single moment of the time they’d spent together?
“She finally told me what was happening here. She always tells it like it is. Mom and Dad…are pregnant. That’s what set her off to a near breakdown.
She…she’s forty-six, and she was terrified the baby might have the same genetic heart condition I have.
They were doing all these tests to see if it was even viable.
Her blood pressure was out of control. A little baby brother… Can you imagine?”
Fresh tears filled her eyes, and he tucked her face into his shoulder.
Relief made him shudder when she stayed there.
“Anyway, they’re having this baby, and I told them I’d cut them off completely if they kept secrets from me ever again.
Or if they treated me like a child anymore.
I love the idea of him so much already, Alessandro.
I think I understand some of her overprotectiveness with me. ”
“She and the baby are healthy?”
“Everything’s good. Perfect.” She pulled back to look into his face. “After Kavi told me, I wanted to be here for them. But of course I had an accident not two weeks after coming back.”
“I’m sorry you were hurt, tesoro.”
“That’s not the point.”
“What is?”
“I wanted to look after her. Not the other way around.”
“But this is just an unfortunate accident, and you saved a kid from getting hurt worse. It’s got nothing to do with your abilities.
” He lifted her knuckles to his mouth and kissed them.
“As for looking after you…why do you automatically assume that it’s a burden?
It’s abundantly clear how much she loves you.
” He gentled his tone. “You didn’t tell me she’s a lawyer.
She grilled me for hours today. It’s natural that she…
worries about you. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t think you capable, Sameera.
” With a bracing breath, he added, “Some people have a hard time dealing with boundaries when they love someone. You say you understand her need to protect you a little now? Then, give her some grace, no?”
Sam stared at him. She’d been at odds with her parents ever since she’d returned, even though they’d finally gotten their act together.
But one look at her face and Alessandro seemed to understand exactly what she needed to hear.
It was why he’d helped with dinner too. Because he understood it was important to her.
“Why didn’t you at least call me?” he said.
There was something in his words that tugged at her, but she was too exhausted to figure it out. Neither could she manage flippancy. “You know I hate confrontations.”
He tensed. “Good-bye would have been a confrontation?”
“Yes, because I couldn’t have stopped blurting out that I’m in love with you. And you’d have given me a hundred reasons for why we don’t suit, super politely and then—”
Sam squealed as in a blink he’d flipped her onto the bed and covered her body with his.
The delicious weight of him pressing down made her eyes roll back.
His mouth hovered over hers, his gray eyes roiling with such emotion that it made her chest ache.
“I wish you’d stayed and confronted me. Then I’d have told you I’m in love with you too, and then it wouldn’t have felt like my heart had been trampled when I found you gone. ”
Sam wondered if her heart might jump out of her chest. Tears gathered in her throat and trickled down her eyes onto the bed. “I…”
Shifting to his side, he pressed his face into her neck, one hand palming her all over.
“I rushed here after Angelina told me, sì. But I’d have been here anyway in a couple of weeks, bella.
Some of the arrangements were taking time.
Especially with Matteo still in recovery and my father grumbling about coming out of retirement. ”
“What arrangements?” Sam finally whispered.
Her chest still felt too full of wonder and disbelief. Too vulnerable about this sudden happiness. She couldn’t believe he was saying these words to her. That he was here, touching her, kissing her and looking at her as if she meant everything to him. It was the stuff of her wildest dreams.
“Moving headquarters from Milan to California is quite an upheaval.”
“You’re moving to Cali? Why?”
“I want to be near you.”
A vast ocean of happiness opened up in her, sucking her in. “Why?”
Gray eyes held hers, but this time Sam needed words.
And he seemed to know that. He kissed the corner of her mouth, rubbed the tip of his nose against hers, as if he needed to brace himself to say them.
“Because my life is colorless without you, tesoro. It is unbearable. Every morning, every evening, every moment in between…it’s empty.
And because I’m an arrogant asshole, it took me too long to realize that my happiness is a choice I have to make. That it lies with you.”
Sam tried to smile but more tears rolled down her cheeks.