14. Mel
— ? —
Mel
I’m elbow-deep in applesauce when I hear the truck.
Not Hattie’s truck, Hattie’s truck has a distinctive rattle that sounds like a dying accordion, and this engine is quieter, newer. I wipe my hands on my apron and move to the kitchen window, already knowing what I’m going to see and already furious about it.
Santino’s rental is parked at the end of the gravel drive. He’s getting out slowly, like he’s approaching a bomb, and he’s holding -
Are those flowers?
“You have got to be kidding me,” I mutter.
I watch him walk up the path. He’s dressed differently than yesterday, no expensive suit, no watch worth more than the house it’s standing in front of. Instead he’s wearing a dark hoodie and actual decent pants, and his hair looks like someone took a comb to it for the first time since he landed.
It’s his trying outfit. I remember this. The way he’d dress down when he wanted to seem approachable, like putting on jeans made him a regular person instead of a man whose family owns half of Tuscany.
The fact that I find it slightly endearing makes me want to scream.
He reaches the porch. I don’t move from the window.
He knocks. Three times, polite, not demanding.
I could ignore him. I could absolutely ignore him, go back to my applesauce, let him stand there until he gets the message. The twins are napping, miracle of miracles, they went down at the same time, and I have approximately forty-five minutes of peace before chaos resumes.
He knocks again. Softer this time.
“Melanie?” His voice is muffled through the door. “I know you’re in there. I can see movement through the window.”
Damn it.
I yank off my apron, throw it over a chair, and stomp to the front door. When I open it, I make sure my face is arranged to say leave immediately or face consequences.
He’s standing there with sunflowers.
Actual sunflowers, bright yellow and cheerful and completely out of place against the fury currently radiating from my entire body. He holds them out at arm’s length, hopeful and doomed, like he genuinely believes flowers are going to fix any of this.
I take them.
Then I drop them straight onto the porch boards.
His face doesn’t change. He just looks at the sunflowers lying there between us, then back at me, and his expression might be respect.
“What do you want,” I say flatly. “And why aren’t you gone.”
“You told me to buy a house here.”
I blink. “What?”
“Yesterday. You said I should settle down. So I did.” He shrugs, casual, like we’re discussing the weather. “I bought the Johnson place. Moved in last night.”
The ground pitches sideways under me.
“You-” I can’t even form the words. “You what?”
“Bought a house. Two bedrooms, needs some work, but the bones are good.”
“WHAT THE FUCK?”
He winces. I realize I’ve whisper-shrieked it, mindful even in my rage that the twins are sleeping, and somehow that makes me even angrier, that I’m protecting his ears from my children’s nap schedule.
“You were supposed to be halfway back to ITALY,” I hiss. “Not SETTLING HERE like some kind of - some kind of-”
“I lost my passport.”
I stare at him.
“Can’t go back without it,” he continues, serene as a lake. “Very unfortunate. I’ve contacted the embassy, of course, but these things take time.”
“You’re lying.”
“Probably.”
“You’re definitely lying.”
“Almost certainly.” He doesn’t even try to hide it.
Just stands there on my porch with his trying outfit and his earnest face and his absolute refusal to leave me alone.
“The point is, I’m not going anywhere. You can call the sheriff if you want - the woman at the convenience store already threatened to have me leave in a bag - but I’ll just bail out and come back. ”
“This is insane. You’re insane.”
“I’ve been insane since you left.” His voice drops, loses some of its careful lightness. “Two years of insane, Melanie. This is just the latest chapter.”
I want to slam the door in his face. Call Hattie and have her bring the shotgun. Rewind time to yesterday morning when my biggest problem was getting Leo to stop putting applesauce in his hair.
Instead, I watch as Santino takes a breath, squares his shoulders, and slowly, carefully, lowers himself to his knees on my porch.
“What are you doing.”
“Groveling.” He looks up at me, and his eyes are so dark and so raw that I have to look away. “Chiara said I should start with flowers, but since that didn’t work, I’m moving to phase two.”
“There are phases?”
“She made a list.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Get up. You look ridiculous.”
“I love you.”
The words hit me like a truck. I actually take a step back.
“I love you,” he says again, steadier this time.
“I’ve loved you since the day you tackled me into the dirt running from a pigeon.
I’ve loved you through every dinner I was too stupid to defend you at, every late night I should have been home, every single moment I failed to show you what you meant to me.
I love you, Melanie. You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted, and I’ve been lost and miserable every single day since you left. ”
“Santino-”
“I spent two years becoming someone who might deserve to find you.” His voice is shaking now.
“I changed everything. The job, the family, the way I move through the world. You know what I did about my mother. I go to therapy every week. I’ve spent every morning in the gym trying to burn off the rage that had nowhere to go, and every night I’ve dreamed about this moment - finding you, being able to tell you-”
I see the goat.
It’s coming around the corner of the house, head lowered, eyes fixed on the back of Santino’s head with the kind of single-minded determination I’ve come to recognize over the past year.
“Santino-”
“-and I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, I know I have to earn it, but I’m willing to spend the rest of my life-”
“Santino, there’s a-”
The goat hits him square in the back.
One second he’s kneeling on my porch mid-declaration, and the next he’s flying forward, arms windmilling, and then he’s flat on his back in the yard with his hoodie covered in dirt and a cut opening above his left eyebrow.
The goat, Gerald, named after my ceramic cat, because Hattie has a strange sense of humor, walks away with an air of deep satisfaction.
Santino stares at the sky, breathing hard.
I stare at Santino.
“Did I just get attacked by a goat?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“During my heartfelt declaration of love?”
“Yes.”
He’s quiet for a moment. Then: “This feels symbolic.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it. It’s horrible, rusty and sharp and completely inappropriate, but it’s there, bubbling up from somewhere I’d forgotten existed.
“The universe is sending you a message,” I say.
“The universe can go to hell.” He sits up slowly, wincing, and touches the cut on his forehead. His fingers come away bloody. “Is that normal? Do goats just attack people here?”
“Gerald has a thing about headbutting men. We don’t know why.”
“Gerald?”
“Long story.”
He’s bleeding more than I’d like. The cut isn’t deep, but head wounds are dramatic, and there’s blood running down his face now, dripping onto his trying outfit.
I sigh from somewhere very deep in my soul.
“Come inside,” I say. “I’ll clean that up.”
“You don’t have to-”
“I’m not going to leave you bleeding in my yard. That’s a whole other kind of drama I don’t need.”
He gets to his feet unsteadily. I hold the door open, and he walks past me into Hattie’s kitchen, and I try not to think about how normal this feels, him in this space, blood on his face, me reaching for the first aid kit like we’ve done this a thousand times.
“Sit,” I say, pointing at a kitchen chair.
He sits.
I wet a clean cloth at the sink and come back to him, tilting his chin up with two fingers so I can see the cut better. It’s shallow but jagged, the goat’s horn caught him at an angle.
“This is going to sting.”
“I don’t care.”
I press the cloth to his forehead. He doesn’t flinch.
We’re close now, closer than we’ve been in two years. I can see the new lines around his eyes, the gray starting at his temples, the way his jaw has gotten sharper under the stubble he never used to wear. The tattoos climbing up his neck are new too, dark ink disappearing under his collar.
He’s different now, harder and more weathered.
But his eyes are the same. Pale blue, almost silver, watching me like I’m the only thing in the universe worth seeing.
“Hold this,” I say, pressing his hand to the cloth. “I need to get bandages.”
I turn to the first aid kit, and that’s when I hear it.
The cry from the nursery. One voice, then two. Nap time is officially over.
“I’ll be right back,” I say. “Don’t move.”
I head down the hall to the twins’ room, heart hammering. They’re both awake, Leo standing in his crib grinning like nap time was just a suggestion, Junie sitting up with her serious face and her arms raised for pickup.
“Hey, babies,” I murmur. “Good nap?”
Leo bounces on the mattress. “Mama! Mama mama mama!”
“Yeah, that’s me.” I lift Junie first, she’s the one who needs the comfort, and settle her on my hip. “Let’s go get your brother.”
When I turn around, Santino is standing in the doorway.
He’s still holding the bloody cloth to his forehead, and his face has gone completely still. He’s staring at the twins like they walked out of a dream, like he’s afraid that if he blinks, they’ll disappear.
“Melanie,” he says quietly. His voice is barely there. “Can I - would it be okay if I-”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t have to.
My breath catches hard in my throat.
I look at Junie in my arms, at Leo still bouncing in his crib, at this man who broke me standing in the doorway of my children’s room with blood on his face and hope in his eyes.
I should say no. I should tell him to wait, to earn it, to prove himself before he gets to touch anything this precious.
But Leo is reaching toward him with both arms, and Santino’s hands are open at his sides, not demanding, just asking, and I crack.
“Yeah,” I say. It comes out rough. “You can take him.”
Santino moves forward slowly, like he’s approaching an altar. He lifts Leo out of the crib with hands that are shaking visibly, settling the baby against his chest with a care that makes my throat tight.
Leo grabs a fistful of his hoodie and grins up at him.
And Santino, this enormous man covered in blood and tattoos and two years of grief, looks like he’s about to cry.
“They’re beautiful,” he whispers. “They look exactly like you.”
I snort. It’s out before I’ve decided to let it. “Please. Your genes didn’t even try.”
He goes completely still.
Looks at me.
I watch the realization move across his face, the math clicking into place, the confirmation of what he already suspected landing like a physical blow.
“So-” he starts.
“They’re yours, Santino. I was pregnant when I left.”
His jaw tightens. His arms tighten around Leo. For a moment he doesn’t speak, just breathes, and I can see him fighting for control.
“Actually,” I add, because I can’t help the knife, “your mother was the first to know. Funny, huh?”
His face turns to stone.
“My mother knew?”
“That’s what I said.”
“She knew you were pregnant. She knew, and she-” He stops. When he speaks again, his voice is so cold it doesn’t sound like him at all. “What else did she do?”
There are things he doesn’t know. So many things, the clinic, the threats, the way Vittoria smiled while she promised to take my baby. It’s not my job to catalog his mother’s sins for him. Not today. Maybe not ever.
“That’s a conversation for another time,” I say instead. “Right now, we need to talk about terms.”
“Terms?”
“If you’re staying. If you’re going to be around the twins.” I shift Junie on my hip. She’s watching Santino with her careful green eyes, not reaching for him, just observing. “There are rules.”
“Tell me.”
“Not one euro of your money touches anything of mine. The orchard, the house, anything related to my life here - you don’t get to buy your way in.”
“Done.”
“No family. No press. No one from your world shows up here without my explicit permission.” I keep my voice level, though my heart is going hard.
“Done.”
“And you’re ‘Santi’ to the twins. Not Dad, not Papa, not any of that. Just Santi. Until you earn the rest.”
His face flickers, pain, maybe, or acceptance. “Done.”
“You can work at the orchard to be near them. Hattie needs a hand anyway - her regular guy is on vacation. You’ll be picking apples and mucking stalls and doing whatever she tells you.”
“Done.”
I narrow my eyes. “You’re agreeing very quickly.”
“I’d agree to anything.” He says it simply, without drama. “Tell me what else. I’ll do it.”
I stare at him. This version of Santino is new, or maybe old, maybe this is who he was before his family got their claws into him. Willing to bend. Willing to kneel on a porch and get attacked by a goat and agree to every demand without negotiation.
It should be satisfying. It’s not. It’s terrifying.
“Fine,” I say. “You can start tomorrow. 6 a.m. Don’t be late.”
He nods. Then grimaces.
“When you said no family-”
“What?”
“Does that include Chiara?”
My heart trips over itself.
“Why?”
“Well.” He has the grace to look guilty. “She lands Friday.”
“She’s-” I stop. “Chiara’s coming here?”
“I couldn’t stop her. She was already booking the flight when I called her last night, and she’s spending the week rearranging her entire life to be on it. She made a list for me - the groveling plan, she called it - and then she said she was coming to help and I wasn’t allowed to argue.”
Chiara. My best friend. The only person in his family who ever treated me like I mattered. The woman who warned me about Vittoria, who tried to protect me, who cried when I said goodbye.
I’ve missed her so much it hurts to breathe.
“She’s the only exception,” I hear myself say.
Santino’s whole face changes. Not a smile, softer than that. Hope, maybe.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. You haven’t survived the goat yet, and tomorrow you have to deal with the horses.”
“The orchard has horses?”
“The orchard has everything.” I turn toward the door, Junie still on my hip. “Now get out of my house. I have applesauce to finish.”
He follows me to the front door, still carrying Leo like the baby is made of glass. When I hold out my arms, he passes him over reluctantly, his hands lingering for just a moment longer than necessary.
“6 a.m.,” I remind him.
“6 a.m.”
“Don’t forget the bandage.” I nod at his forehead, still bleeding sluggishly. “Head wounds scar.”
“I don’t care about scars.”
Of course you don’t. You never did.
I close the door.
Through the window, I watch him walk back to his truck, slower than before, like he’s carrying a weight. He turns back once to look at the house, and even from here I can see his face.
He looks shattered. He looks hopeful. He looks like a man who just found out he has children and doesn’t know what to do with his hands.
Santi, I think. Not Dad. Not yet.
But maybe, maybe eventually, possibly -
I shake my head and go back to my applesauce.