Chapter 13
chapter thirteen
Mia
"All right, so what if I do all the talking?"
The truck flew down Coastal, me in the passenger seat having a panic attack, Angelo driving with one hand on the wheel and the other on my thigh, as blasé as ever. "I'll structure the conversation in a way that doesn't feel like ripping off a Band-Aid."
"You don't think it'll be easier just to be real with them?"
"And say what, exactly?"
Angelo shrugged, eyes on the road. "We're having intercourse. And plan on continuing to have intercourse for the foreseeable future. Occasionally we may engage in cunnilingus, and fellatio.”
I pressed my fingers to my temples. "Angelo, this is a big deal. How are you not freaking out? Your brother is a special forces veteran. He might actually kill you for disobeying his one strict order."
"Well he can't kill me," he snarked. "He needs me to help him code website security. It would be very detrimental to his business to off his only employee."
I clicked my tongue. Angelo's thumb grazed softly over my skin and he squeezed my knee supportively. We'd spent the night together at my condo, doing everything but sleeping, and decided first thing in the morning we'd drive over to Mateo and Natalia's house and tell them.
It would be a burden off our shoulders, even if their reaction wasn't what we hoped for.
I was ready for that. I had run every possible scenario over and over again in my head in the shower, then during breakfast, while I sent some reply emails I'd received overnight.
If any one of my sisters would understand this, it was Natalia.
She'd fallen hard and fast for a Duran, and kept him to herself for nearly six months before bringing Mateo home to our family.
Camilla and Bella would be a much harder sell. But I believed in us, and I wanted to show Angelo that I was all in on making it work the way that he was.
If the relationship news didn't land, we would be at an impasse for the rest of our lives. There were a lot of awkward years at stake here. Taking this step really was a huge show of how serious we were about each other.
"You're my girl, right?” Angelo looked over at me. His hair was still damp from the shower, curling in a mop on his head, his short beard a bit longer than yesterday and a brightness in his green eyes.
"Your Mia," I said. My lips curled into a smile that matched his.
"Then that's all that matters," he said. "We're adults in a relationship. It happened very oddly, but organically, and we realized it was too good to pass on for the sake of logistics."
"And we did try not to," I pointed out.
Angelo shrugged, pulling into the busy neighborhood. Kids on their bikes raced beside us. There were people casting fishing lines into the man-made pond, and couples on golf carts rolling toward the clubhouse. "Eh, I didn't really."
"So then we can say you seduced me, that you were the bad influence, and I was—"
"Addicted to my charm, unable to help yourself, put under a romantic spell by the way I pronounce caw-fee and hawt dawg."
I snorted. "I was going to say, impressed by your perseverance."
He blew a dull raspberry. "Boring."
Mateo and Nat weren't expecting us. Well, not together, at least. Angelo had told him he was dropping by before work and suggested they carpool like usual.
I walked in the front door behind him and my sister and her husband paused while eating breakfast, staring at us with genuine confusion and a flash of concern.
"Oh, hey, Mia." My sister looked at her cell phone with a raise of her brow. "Did you text me? I didn't see it."
"No." I laughed nervously, crossing my arms over my chest, swaying slightly and remaining in Angelo’s shadow. "No, I didn't."
“Randomly got here at the same time?” Mateo proposed. He was at the window and pulled back the curtain slightly, looking outside. A grin tugged at his cheek.
"Is everything okay?" Nat asked, standing and walking over to me. She grabbed me lightly by the arms and gave me a once-over.
"Everything is fine," Angelo answered for me. "Perfect."
"Just thought we'd drop in and share some news," I said slowly. My pulse rang hard in my ears and I forgot everything I’d rehearsed all morning.
The script had permanently disappeared, not even a starting point.
My tongue went dry and I rolled it a few times in my mouth.
I had never been this panicked, not even in front of a table of investors, or Mr. Branting himself.
"Um…Angelo?" I gestured toward him, passing the torch before my voice began shaking.
"So much for being the one to do the talking," he whispered, bumping me with his hip playfully. I tugged my lips into my mouth and smothered another anxious laugh.
Mateo and Nat looked at each other, then back at us.
"Well, to start, I put in an offer on a house," Angelo said.
"That's great, bro," Mateo replied, smiling. "Proud of you."
"And it was accepted!" I boasted. "Last night."
"That's amazing, Ang!" Natalia congratulated him, giving him a small hug, then patted me on the back, too. "Are you so excited?"
"Thrilled, yeah. It's kind of a fixer-upper.
But very big, lots of potential to really make it my own.
It's all because of Mia," he quipped. "She's a ringer.
Got it done quickly, and now I just have to convince Mom and Dad to extend my room at the inn until my closing, I guess.
Technically, I did find a house in their month. "
"We could always take you in for a bit," Natalia offered, and Mateo shot her a glare.
"Have you not learned your lesson about offering to host my family members?" he said. "We barely made it out alive last time."
"I mean, you could always stay with—" I stopped myself.
"With…um, with Uber. It’s like Uber Pool but called Uber Roommate now.
You just look for a bed somewhere. Airbnb probably can similarly…
" I tapered off breathily and Angelo's arm came down around my shoulders, bringing me closer to his side.
"Can get you a place to rest temporarily. "
Mateo squinted at us. "Is that what you guys did this morning? Uber…Pooled to our house in Angelo's truck at nine a.m.?"
A beat of red splashed across my cheeks.
"Gas prices are really high," I muttered.
"I also couldn't help but notice Angelo’s wearing the same thing he had on yesterday, because there's a red sauce stain from my mother’s spaghetti he ate for lunch on his shirt."
"Matty, why don't we just let them say it on their terms," Natalia suggested, and I shot her a look.
"Say what?" I gasped.
Natalia shrugged, grinning in a small, apologetic way. "I mean…"
"You know?"
"Of course we know," Mateo announced. "You're fucking."
"Woah, woah, we're not fucking," Angelo argued, holding out the hand that wasn't around me. "Well…we are fucking."
"Angelo." I nudged him in the ribs with my elbow, hard.
"We're not just fucking," he said quickly.
"We're together. For real. Seeing each other exclusively.
And we wanted you two to find out first, because you mean the world to us, and we know it will affect you more than anyone else, and that it might be better to ease some of our other family members into the idea slowly. "
A breath was caught in my chest, held there stagnant and getting tighter and more aching every second that passed without a reaction from them. Angelo seemed more on edge, too. His fingers dug into my shoulder, his nostrils flaring when I chanced a look up.
Oh, God, this might be bad. This might be exactly what I feared would happen. And worse than anything else, I couldn’t fathom losing the closeness I had with Natalia that we'd worked so hard on since her wedding.
My ribcage felt close to exploding with tension when she finally turned toward her husband with a jubilant expression and held out her hand. "Ha. Hand it over, baby!"
My chest deflated like a balloon being untied and Angelo and I both glanced at each other in shock as Mateo groaned and reached for his wallet in his back pocket.
He pulled out a crisp fifty and slapped it into his wife's hand. "How do you always fucking win?"
I tried to speak, but the words got caught, surprise reverberating through me.
"What the fuck is happening right now?" Angelo asked. His eyebrows had never more resembled a unibrow, smooshed together at the center of his forehead.
Natalia's smile was still stretching from ear to ear. "Of course we knew, silly."
"We saw you guys making out in the driveway last week. There are cameras everywhere outside this house, after a…learning experience with Mom and Dad," Mateo said.
"You didn't think to say anything to me?" I pressed Natalia. “How did you keep that to yourself?”
"This is sadistic." Angelo ran a hand down his face.
Natalia sat back in her chair, her hand on her little baby bump. "We wanted you guys to figure it out first, and decide on your own when, or if, you ever told us.”
Mateo leaned against the mantle of their fireplace. "We know a thing or two about being forced to bring things to light when you’re not ready. We love you guys, too, and wanted to make sure that you told us on your own time.”
"What was the fifty dollars for?" Angelo asked.
"I bet Mateo you were dating. Mateo thought it was just sex."
I scoffed. "I'm appalled. Wagering your sister’s love life?"
"Haven't lost yet." She grinned. "We promise to keep your secret as long as you want us to."
"Please don't ruin Christmas," Mateo said pointedly. "Pike and O are coming back to visit and I'm begging for a stress-free holiday this year."
Angelo inched closer to me again, intertwining our fingers. I was so happy I was high with it. I smiled at him, and a giddy laugh shot out of me too. "We'll be on our best behavior."
"How did this even happen?" Mateo asked. “You hated the hell out of each other.”
"I really tried to fight it," I admitted.
"I didn't," Angelo said.
"To be fair, I was also trying to keep my job."
"It was all that sexual tension in Vegas bound to boil over," Natalia said.
"I'm taking full responsibility for setting this up, by the way.
Look at how well everything worked out. A new house, a new relationship, I have fifty more dollars now than I did ten minutes ago, and an eternal bragging right to go with it. "
"John and Sistine are going to take some serious work to be sold on this," I said to Natalia.
"Good thing you're an expert. Plus, they'll be preoccupied with a grandson anyway."
My eyes widened. "A grandson?"
"The Duran name lives on!" Angelo exclaimed proudly, crossing the room to put his older brother in a bear hug and kiss both his cheeks exuberantly. “Okay, new idea, what if we renamed the company Duran Duran Duran?”
“I’ll have to sleep on that,” Mateo said. “Forever.”
"I have to start the nursery, yesterday," I gushed. "Oh my god, this news is a way bigger deal than what we had."
"Can I buy him his first baseball mitt?" Angelo asked. "Kid’s a Yankees fan. I don't care if he's born here, we don't bend."
"You two are pretty perfect for each other," Natalia crooned. "It's a mystery we didn't see it sooner."
My heart was so full, it had to have tripled in size from the moment Angelo and I got thrust together into this arrangement.
A month with my enemy turned into the possibility of forever with the greatest man I'd ever met.
Maybe it wouldn't always feel this easy, this light, but I had a sense that it would always feel this destined.
We spent hours with our siblings, blowing off the day to brainstorm baby names and nursery plans.
Angelo happily freehanded an entire blueprint of custom furniture I wanted to incorporate.
By mid-afternoon, when we decided it was time to go, I'd all but forgotten the anxiety I started the day with.
All my worries washed away, or, at least, were filed into a folder to be dealt with at a later date.
But I wasn't scared anymore. What we were doing didn't feel wrong.
It was the most intensely right thing I'd experienced.
It was hopeful.
It was inevitable.
We stopped outside the front door after we'd waved goodbye, and I turned back toward the house where Mateo and Nat were peeking through the curtains at us.
"Fuck off, creeps!” Angelo hollered, and the curtains flew closed.
It was breezy, less humid than the entire month had been so far, and the sky was perfectly clear. Angelo wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me toward him. "That went surprisingly well."
A dug my teeth into my bottom lip to quiet the smile I'd been wearing all day. "I'd say.”
He lifted a middle finger to the camera on the doorbell and leaned in, knocking his forehead into mine. Our noses brushed, my smile parted, and we kissed. With no one watching, with everyone watching. We kissed like we didn't care who might be.
He took me back to the truck, opening the passenger door for me. His arms hung there on the metal frame, closing me in as his shaggy hair blew gently in the breeze and his eyes gleamed like sea glass. So handsome, so incredibly mine.
"What's next?"
"I think we should go back to my place and you install those plant shelves,” I suggested, tapping a finger against my lips until it broke into a toothy grin. “Maybe some other stuff."
Angelo helped me into my seat and stalled at the door with a triumphant smile.
"Yes, ma'am."