Chapter 45
TO LIVE
Catriona
I swallow down the ache in my throat, the one that’s resided there for days now, months if I’m being completely honest, and stuff my shirt into the duffel bag. It’s time. I can’t delay it any longer. I have to tell him.
Matteo is at the desk with his phone in one hand and the room key in the other, already half gone. He’s a second away from calling the jet, plotting the route, and making the next impossible thing look simple.
A life, together, in Manhattan. But nothing is ever simple between us.
“Wait.” I force the word out, around the ache.
He pauses, thumb hovering over the screen. “Kitty Cat, the sooner we’re wheels up—”
“Wait.” My voice is steadier than I feel. I step between him and the door, between us and the life that moves on without her. But I know there’s no future in which she doesn’t exist. I’ve kept her hidden for long enough.
For a heartbeat, we just breathe. Then his hand reaches for mine, tugging me into his lap. I straddle his legs, and a crooked grin lifts the corners of his mouth. Rain dusts the window like static. Then with a deep breath, I slide my fingers to the first button of my shirt.
His eyes flare, a beautiful mix of heat, reflex, and memory and that smile turns wicked like he can’t help it. “Now? You want me to—”
I can already feel him hardening between my legs and with it comes a whisper of heat.
A part of me wants to give into the desire uncoiling between us, but it would only buy me another hour, maybe two.
It’s the coward’s way out, and I’ve already lived that life for years now.
This is a truth I can no longer keep buried.
“It isn’t that.” I give him a careful smile before I undo the second button, then the third. My shirt falls open, revealing my bare chest. “Give me your hand.”
He obeys, still confused, and still a little undone by muscle memory. I take his palm and press it flat to my skin, just above my heart, over the ink that holds the most precious secret.
“Read it,” I whisper.
His gaze drops. The orange blossom sits where it always has, the small script tucked among the petals. His throat works once. “Livia.” He whispers it like a promise.
I nod. “I wanted her to live, Matteo, so damned badly. I wanted her to be a part of me and most of all, a part of you.” A sob works its way up my throat but somehow, I manage to keep it down. “I was so angry with you for leaving, for abandoning us, but I couldn’t… I never had an abortion.”
The room seems to tilt. His palm trembles against my sternum, but he doesn’t pull away.
I find the tiny clasp at my nape and bring the golden locket forward, the one I keep hidden beneath my shirt, the one I never take off and the one he’s never asked to open.
My thumbs worry the hinge until it finally yields.
I can’t remember the last time I opened it.
Two tiny pictures stare up under the dim motel light.
On the left, a little girl stands by a stone wall with hair like copper thread and eyes that can’t decide between sea and sky.
On the right sits a sun-burnt boy and a girl with sand in her hair, laughing into a Sicilian summer like the tide could never touch them.
His eyes are so wide, all I see is that sea and sky. “All this time…” His words fall away. “Dio, I’ve wanted to ask you about the locket countless times, but I—”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper cutting him off, and the words don’t feel big enough for the years they have to cross.
“Livia is three years old. She lives with my great aunt Noreen outside of Belfast. I hid her because men like Tiernan and my father use children like currency. No one knows about her except Saoirse in London. She’s Noreen’s best friend.
I needed to keep her safe. I thought if I hated you enough, forgot about you, about us, that she could just be… ordinary.”
His fingers curl, careful and reverent around the locket like it’s a bird that might startle.
He doesn’t speak as he runs his finger over her cheeks, then her hair.
All the color drains from his face and then floods back in a rush.
His eyes shine, green gone wet, and he bites down on a broken sound that erupts anyway.
“When Tiernan came to Da with your name and a price, I told myself I could do it, that putting you in the ground would keep her safe for good. I tried to make murder sound like mercy.” I lace my fingers over his, thumb circling the tiny photo of us.
“But I couldn’t. Because it wasn’t just her I couldn’t lose.
I couldn’t erase you anymore than I could erase the girl who loved you. ”
He says nothing, only releases a shuddering breath, eyes still fixed to mine.
“I put your name somewhere it couldn’t be used against her,” I manage. “On paper. In lullabies. In stories about a boy who fixed scooters and stole lemons. I should have told you. I wanted to, so many times, but every time I pictured it, I pictured a gun behind it.”
He closes his eyes, jaw shaking, and presses his forehead to the hand still on my chest, as if he can steady himself on the beat underneath. When he looks up again, he’s wrecked and beautiful and more himself than I’ve ever seen him.
“She’s alive,” he murmurs, like he’s testing the words for cracks.
“She’s alive.” My laugh is a sob. “She counts in Italian. She hates green olives and loves lemonade.”
A laugh punches out of him on a breath that’s half prayer, half apology.
“She thinks I’m her aunt, for now.” I breathe out the last secret, and I’m finally free.
“She doesn’t know…”
I shake my head, guilt and embarrassment warring through my insides. “If she knew I was her mother, how could I explain why I couldn’t be with her?” My throat closes again, the years of pain rushing over like a dam bursting.
He shushes me soothingly, pressing a kiss to my forehead. “You did the right thing, Cat.”
“I don’t want to lie to her anymore. I want to tell her everything.”
His thumb traces the petals, then the curve of the small name, as if he could memorize it through my skin. “Me too.” Then he adds, “If you’ll let me.”
I squeeze his hand, nodding, then press a chaste kiss to his lips. I feel lighter than I’ve ever been.
“I missed all her firsts,” he chokes out after a long pause. “Her first word. Her first step. The first time she said your name.” He swallows hard.
“I missed some of them, too.” The weight of grief rolls over me. Aunt Noreen did her best to send pictures and videos, but sometimes, months would go by before I could visit.
“That’s on me, everything we missed. I know that. I left to protect you both and you did right to protect her from our world. But, Cat… Dio. I should have, I wish so damned badly that I’d been there.”
“I know. I wish you’d been there too. Both of us. Together.” My own tears blur the photos until they’re awash in beautiful sunny hues. The girl and the summer and the daughter and what we might still be. “If you hate me for lying to you—”
He shakes his head, violent and immediate. “No. Absolutely not.” His voice fractures and then steadies. “I’m angry at the world that made us choose to do what we did. Not at you.” He glances down at the locket again, a broken smile cracking wider. “Livia.” He tastes it. “Our little girl.”
Our little girl. It lands like a benediction. Finally, after all these years, it’s all real.
He drags the heel of his hand across his eyes, then lifts the locket on its chain and kisses the rim, careful as glass. When he finally speaks, it’s raw. “Where is she?”
“County Down. It’s a lane with no name and a cottage with blue shutters. I’ll take you.”
“Not take.” His palm cups my cheek, thumb catching a tear. “We’ll go together.”
I nod, because there’s no world where I don’t. The relief is a physical thing, my entire body lighter by a war I’ve been carrying alone for so long.
We could finally be a family. A real one. Not what passed for mine. I dare not hope for it for fear it’ll elude me somehow.
Matteo pulls me into him, not with hunger, but with something better.
He fits his mouth to my hairline, to my temple, to the corner of my mouth.
His kisses are gentle, grateful, stunned.
“Thank you,” he whispers against my skin.
“For keeping Livia safe. For keeping a part of me alive when I didn’t deserve it. ”
I lean into him until the shaking stops, reveling in his strength, his solidness. The hell I went through, it’s finally over. When I can draw in a breath without trembling, I take his phone from the desk and hand it to him. “Call the jet.” My voice is steady now. “But change the destination.”
He smiles through the ruin of the last five minutes, soft and fierce all at once. “County Down.”
“County Down,” I echo, and button my shirt back up over the blossom, the name and the locket, not to hide them, never again, but to carry them where they belong as we go find our daughter. Together.