35. Lorenzo
“I left for two weeks and everything went up in flames,” I joked, even though a pinch of tension tightened in my chest.
Goldyn smiled awkwardly and my husband barely registered my words.
If Sincere could find a way to be in Goldyn’s skin right now, he would be. He hadn’t stopped touching her since we found her with Romeo at the overlook this morning.
After breakfast, we came home and straight to my office. It was just the three of us, because Romeo said we needed the privacy, and I tried to think of the best way to break the ice.
Even though Goldyn had been with us nonstop for the past month and a half, it felt like we’d entered new territory and I didn’t want to fuck this up.
Sincere’s lips stamped loving kisses along the inside of her wrist, reminding me of that first day when we asked her to be ours. So much had changed since then. Everything had changed since then.
We’d both fallen in love with her and couldn’t see our life moving forward without her in it.
“I think I should go first,” Goldyn started, looking from me to Sincere and back again. “This has been bothering me for weeks and I need to get it off my chest.”
Sincere stopped kissing her and I sat up straighter, expecting the worst to fall from her lips.
“I don’t think I can keep doing this with you two, feeling how I feel. I’m already too deep and I know what I agreed to, but I didn’t expect it to get this real for me this fast. Apparently, I can’t do casual. Not when the people are as great as you. And I’m tired of hurting my own feelings imagining the day I have to leave. So…” Her eyes flitted back and forth, the uncertainty in her tone amplified in the amber depths.
“Goldyn.” Sincere and I spoke at the same time, but I nodded, giving him the floor because the emotion tangled in my throat was making it hard to form anything other than her name.
“Love, we don’t want you to leave. That’s what we were going to talk to you about before you left.”
“You were?”
Sincere squeezed her hand, his eyes piercing and intense. “Yes. We were waiting for Lorenzo to get back from his business trip so we could tell you together. We’ve known for a while we didn’t want you to leave. But we didn’t expect his trip to last as long as it did or you would’ve known before it got to the point of you running away from us.”
Goldyn’s mouth dropped open. “Oh.”
“Goldyn, I’m in love with you,” he confessed, voice thick. “I can’t imagine ever going back to the way things were before you showed up. And we don’t want to. Right, Enzo?”
“Right. We can’t do this without you. We need you.”
“It was never supposed to be three months,” Sincere confessed, rubbing his nose along the column of her neck before his lips followed the path.
I loved watching them like this. How easily he surrendered to the affection he wanted to give and how freely Goldyn accepted it. It was like they shared an invisible current, the love pouring freely into their connection and it made me happier they were both mine. They balanced me out while complementing each other. We’d unintentionally struck the perfect harmony.
“When we met you, I knew I wanted to see where this could go but I was too scared to tell you that upfront, so I masked it as a summer fling.”
“Really?” Goldyn’s eyes flashed to mine for confirmation and I gave her a nod.
“You mean too much to us to think we can’t see it. Or that we’re suddenly gonna stop wanting you after this summer. I’ll never stop wanting you, Goldyn.”
Pride pulsed through me as I watched him cling to her, not caring that his feelings were clear as day. He wasn’t letting fear dictate his words and his eyes hadn’t flicked to me for reassurance once while he poured his heart out. Who knew our little intruder would unlock Sincere’s assertiveness?
“I’m in love with you, too. Both of you.” She stared at me, biting her lip. “But I have a question.”
“Anything, mamas.”
“I’m in love with Romeo, too. I need to be with him just as much as I need to be with you. Are you sure that won’t cause any friction?—”
“It doesn’t change anything, Goldy. If anything, it makes this easier. You having a connection with all of us makes me believe this was supposed to happen. Regardless of how messy it started, this was always supposed to be how we ended up. Romeo deserves the love you give him and I’m just happy that he’s letting it happen. You’ll never have to choose between us.”
“Okay.”
“Now, back to you,” Sincere said firmly, shifting the topic. “No more running, Goldyn. I couldn’t sleep all night thinking you were leaving us and we couldn’t reach you to find out why.”
Goldyn cupped the side of his face and nodded. “I’ll work on that. I shut down when I’m overwhelmed, and it’s usually fine because I’ve always been alone. But I won’t sneak out again. I’ll tell you that I’m leaving.”
His brow dipped at that compromise and I tamped down my laugh by adding my own conditions. “We’re not tryna put a leash on you, mamas, but a text would save us a lot of stress. And your phone needs to be charged to do that.” I finished with a pointed look.
She flashed a sheepish smile. “Sorry about that. The battery has been replaced three times since I got it and it’s getting bad again. I’ll take care of it.”
“We could just buy you a new one,” Sincere suggested.
Goldyn shook her head. “I love you for offering, but the only reason I haven’t is because the last time I tried to upgrade, they told me I would lose my voicemails. Which doesn’t make sense because when I upgraded from a six to the eight, the voicemails transferred without a problem.” A crease formed between her brows as she thought it over and her voice took on a wistful quality. “The messages are from my grandma, I can’t lose those. It’s all I have left.”
Understanding bloomed in my chest. This whole time, I thought she was holding on to that phone because of her…frugal nature, but it was deeper than that, and now that she’d said it, it made so much sense.
Sincere spoke before I could. “I think I know how to get those voicemails off your phone and onto your cloud so you can listen to them on your laptop or your new phone.”
Her eyes lit with hope. “Really?”
He nodded. “Yep. I wish you’d said something a long time ago.”
Goldyn crossed her legs, clearing her throat. “I have one more thing before I head to the shop for the day.”
“What is it, love?”
Her throat worked in a swallow. “It’s about Chance.”
“I fucking knew it. Did he touch you?” I was on my feet, shoving my chair away from me as I strode around my desk.
“What do you mean you knew it?” Sincere balked at me and then swung his gaze back to Goldyn. “Goldy, what the hell is going on?”
“I’ll fucking kill him,” I promised.
“Enzo, please. Nobody is getting hurt.” She dropped her hand from Sincere’s hold and reached out to grab my clenched fists.
I let her soft touch consume me, soothing me until my fingers relaxed against her palm.
The frown on her face told me she wasn’t expecting my reaction and that confused me more than her cryptic opening. I would end anybody who hurt her, Sincere, or Rome without question.
“It’s not like that. Nobody touched me.”
“We’re listening.”
Uninterrupted, she revealed everything Chance told her yesterday. While Sincere’s brows jumped on his forehead, apprehension tightened my jaw.
Goldyn finished and the weight of her sigh sat on my chest. I wanted to erase the despair shining in her eyes. “I was fine not knowing. That’s how it was all my life and it was fine. It was safe.”
My words came out before I could check them. “Tell me how to fix it.”
She smiled up at me. “There’s nothing you can do to make up for twenty-seven years of not knowing. That’s the part I can’t make peace with. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do if I take a test and it turns out he’s right. I’m not a child anymore, so a part of me feels like there’s no point in knowing. What can a dad really offer me at this stage of my life? And yes, I know , relationships shift over time and adults are close with their parents. But we have no foundation. It feels like we’re starting from scratch when we should be close to the middle of our story.”
I tipped up her chin, and smiled when she turned trusting eyes on me.
“Whatever you want to do, we support it. I’ll go with you to take a DNA test. I’ll go with you to tell him you don’t want to know if he’s your father. I’ll go with you to tell him that you do wanna get to know him, but on your terms. Whatever you decide, just know you won’t have to do any part of it alone. We won’t let you.”