CHAPTER 49
Edoardo
A familiar scent brushes my senses, and I breathe in slowly - leather, warm, a hint of something soft, like a memory my heart never learned how to release.
My eyes snap open.
Beside me, curled into the hush of morning, is a silhouette I know too well. A shape my mind has traced in dreams so often it should probably be illegal. For a long moment I don’t move, afraid even a breath might fracture whatever fragile miracle placed her here.
Caroline. My Caroline.
I stretch carefully not to make any noise or movement that would wake her up.
I stop my hands from wanting to drift too close too soon.
I don’t remember falling asleep on the couch like this with her.
Only the low hum of our voices when we spoke last night, both exhausted physically and emotionally. I must have slipped under first.
She sleeps peacefully, breath slow and even, lashes resting against her cheeks. The world could crumble beyond these walls and I wouldn’t notice. In this small pocket of quiet, there is only stillness. Only her. Only peace.
I’d called Celina first, asking for advice I was half-terrified to hear. She hesitated, choosing her words like they might cut me. Then Connor called, steady and blunt, filling in the gaps of Caroline’s life like puzzle pieces I wasn’t sure I deserved to hold.
Of course, I went to Anton. No circling and no games, I asked him straight if he was with Caroline.
If she was happy. Because if she was… if she had chosen a life that didn’t include me, I would have stepped aside.
I’d have waited in the wings, quietly, patiently, until the universe decided I’d earned another chance.
I love her that much. Enough that her happiness, even without me, would still be worth everything.
I flew into Manhattan a few weeks back and went straight to Michael’s hair salon.
I was mentally prepared to really beg him for help, and if he’d kicked me out, I’d have picked myself back up and camped right at the door till he agreed to talk with me.
Though Michael never let it get that far.
The moment my face appeared, eyes wrecked, and pride nowhere in sight, he just sighed and told me to sit my ass down.
His team gave me a haircut, shampooing, and head massage, and then Michael told me to get my stupid self to New Orleans for his birthday circus.
God, I hate New Orleans. I don’t hate the city but I hate the feathers and the dust. My allergies declared war the second I landed. But Caroline’s here. So here I am.
And I know Ethan and Adam had a hand in this somehow, quietly architecting and moving pieces without ever stepping into the spotlight.
I appreciated everything that her circle of friends did for me, for us. Because right now, she’s here, next to me.
And for the first time in months, my chest doesn’t ache when I breathe in.
“Are you going to stare at me like a creep?” Caroline murmurs, voice thick with sleep, eyes still closed.
“A cute creep, I hope.” I slide closer as if this couch has given much space between us. I wrap an arm around her and whisper into her hair. “Besides, between us, who’s creepier? Me watching you sleep, or you watching me watching you sleep?”
A sleepy smile tugs at her lips. God, I love her, equal parts challenge and softness.
Caroline nestles closer, cheek against my chest. “I’m still very sleepy.”
“How long were we out?” I squint toward the clock. “Nine a.m. now.”
“Maybe ten hours.” She yawns, draping an arm over my waist. “How do you feel? Less swollen?”
“Yeah. Just a little itchy.” I nuzzle into her hair, breathing her in like oxygen. “Why did you cut it, Cara?”
“As if you don’t know,” she scoffs softly.
“I like both,” I murmur. “Long, short… it’s unfair, you know. You change your hair and suddenly you’re a whole new person.”
“You could color yours,” she says. “Or shave it.”
“Midlife crisis options,” I laugh. “Imagine me with red hair or looking like Pitbull.”
She laughs, the sound sending warmth straight through my chest and spreading all over my body.
I reach for the phone on the table. “Coffee and beignets?”
“Don’t call,” she says, eyes still closed. “Let me snooze a few more minutes. We’ll go get hot ones, outside. They taste much better.”
I put the phone down, then lean over her, taking my time to kiss her hair, her temple, the curve of her cheek, her neck.
“Mmm,” she murmurs, pressing a hand to my lips. “That is definitely not letting me snooze.”
I settle beside her, lifting her hand and kissing her knuckles instead.
“That’s also not letting me snooze, Edoardo,” she says, opening her eyes, laughter soft and bright.
I take the opportunity and kiss her lips.
She laughs against my mouth. “I have morning breath.”
“I’ve kissed you worse,” I protest.
“No coffee, no kiss.”
I pull back with an exaggerated sigh. “Cruel.”
She pushes up, brushing her lips over my pout. “And we need to talk. I don’t want us getting tangled before we untangle.”
“I agree,” I say softly. “Now, or after sugar and caffeine?”
She smiles. “Nothing important should start without beignets.”
It takes twenty minutes before we finally step out into the crisp New Orleans morning. We catch the tram to a tiny shop Caroline swears by. “Institutional knowledge,” she calls it, courtesy of past trips with Michael.
One bite of a beignet and the world brightens instantly. We demolish three each in record time, powdered sugar everywhere, dark roast cutting through the sweetness. At one point she looks at my sugar-coated lips and leans in, kissing me slowly, deliberately.
Nothing beats this. A morning like this.
We wander the neighborhood, then settle beneath the glossy leaves of a magnolia tree. The air smells green and warm, and finally, we talk.
She tells me everything slowly, giving me time to absorb each piece before moving on.
William. Their uprooting from London to San Francisco.
The quiet discipline of therapy. Brandon and the fracture of that broken engagement.
The miscarriage. The guilt that lingers, the long shadows cast by her past, the reasons she fights.
She tells me without holding back, placing herself in my hands as we decide about us, together.
“Cara,” I say, holding her close, “none of it was your fault. Not William. Not the miscarriage.”
“I know that on good days,” she whispers, leaning into me like I’m something solid. “But some days it still feels like I can’t breathe.”
“Keep talking, Cara.” I say gently. “Therapy, friends, me. Little by little. I’m here. And thank you for trusting me with it.”
She nods, quiet for a moment. “But it’s complicated when it comes to you, Edoardo.”
I tilt her chin so she has to meet my eyes. “It’s not. You love me. I love you. Everything else is just noise.”
“But you want kids,” she says softly. “And your parents want a perfect Italian future for you.”
“My parents don’t get a vote in our life,” I say, steady and sure. “I decide what works for me. We decide what works for us. No one else.”
She studies me, searching. “Would you really be happy if I couldn’t carry a child?”
I pause and think for another moment before I take her hands. “Cara, you are the only thing I need. If we face that, we face it together.”
I draw a breath, letting the truth come without hesitation, “I do want children,” I say.
“I want laughter in our house, scraped knees, school runs, messy Sunday mornings on the couch. But there isn’t just one way to build a life like that.
Surrogacy. Adoption. However it happens, we choose it, together. The only constant I care about is you.”
I don’t look away, not even for a second. I want her to see it in my eyes, in my voice, in my heart as I speak, “I love you. And these months apart have made one thing painfully clear: I can’t imagine a future that doesn’t have you in it. You and me… everything else, we’ll figure out.”
I let those honest words settle between us, hoping she can see what lives behind them - every promise, every quiet fear, every stubborn fight, and every unwavering hope.
Because loving her has never felt complicated.
It’s only inevitable.