16. Elio
As the next few days progressed, it became glaringly obvious that there was no possible way Kayla would be well enough to travel to the mainland, let alone back to America. It was like a battery in her had been drained, with only enough power to keep the flickering red light on, letting you know how empty it really was.
Elio had given Gianna the responsibility of seeing to Kayla’s needs, and even if he hadn’t, she probably would have taken on the role anyway. Isabella, as well, could be seen coming and going from the guest suite with small plates of fruit, dry toast, and cold drinks, reporting to Elio later on that she was slowly getting Kayla to be able to eat something that resembled meals again. Gianna, too, would update him with Kayla’s progress, which was slow and steady. Between his two employees and Dr. Albero, Elio figured Kayla was getting the best treatment from here to New York. So he wasn’t needed. That’s what he tried his best to convince himself, anyway.
Using work as an excuse, because it was always the perfect excuse, he avoided the guest wing altogether, giving Kayla space and privacy. He told himself that it was all for her benefit. Really, he felt like the one needing space, spending a lot of time outside watching over the vineyard and ocean. You couldn’t get more space than that, but he still felt trapped inside his own head. It was the same thoughts circling around, again and again, till the words were starting to lose meaning.
A baby. Kayla was having a baby. His baby. She had flown halfway across the world in order to let him know that she was having his baby. Which either proved that she was a much better person than he had given her credit for… or that she was dead set on getting a lifetime meal ticket from him. Whichever one it was, it didn’t change the fact that she was far too sick to leave the island, so once again they were thrown together purely by chance, trapped by an entirely different sort of storm. He would force himself to look the situation square in the face, but then the cycle would start again and Elio would be frozen by the thoughts, unable to muster up the concentration to get any work done, no matter how long he stared at his laptop screen.
Having kids… It’s not that he didn’t want kids; he had just honestly never thought about it. He’d never thought about having a family. The possibility had never crossed his mind, not when every fiber of his existence had always been focused on working. Since he was a child himself, the goal had always been to go into business, to carry on the family legacy, his father’s legacy and now… well, now it was just him. Except it wasn’t. Now it was him and Kayla and a baby.
He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes with a deep sigh. How was he ever supposed to figure out what to do with this mess when he couldn’t even think straight?
So he kept it simple. He left Kayla to rest and recover under the dutiful care of Gianna and Isabella, and he distracted himself with work. That strategy had never failed him before.
* * *
On the fourth day after Kayla’s arrival, Elio still hadn’t ventured far from the confines of his study or, like today, the balcony of his master bedroom. Watching the ocean stretching out to the horizon had turned into a sort of meditation for him, and at least while he was staring at that straight blue line, he didn’t think about anything at all. Not work. Not Kayla. Nothing. He knew that he was stretching out the inevitable, the fact that he would at some point, simply have to think about these things. But for now he stared out across the water, the sun sinking down to the horizon, desperate to keep some sort of control over his life for just a little bit longer.
He’d been working on the balcony, his computer open to various emails about the roll out of the next line of Oro wine products. Despite Noel Preston’s dramatic olive incident and the ensuing lawsuit, the business side of things had been going well. If anything, the drama Preston had kicked up in the name of his weird vendetta had only brought more eyes to Elio’s business. A competitor choking on an olive pit at a party didn’t seem to detract from the fact that Oro was a good product. As much as Elio hated to admit it, the scandal of it all might have been the best thing to happen at that stupid launch party. Either way, he was riding the wave while the going was good, not relying on one moment of success but, instead, preparing to be one step ahead at all times.
Then, a flash of blond curls, far below on the beach, caught his attention before he could continue with anything else. Was Kayla walking out along the beach? Gianna and Isabella were both brunettes. Had he finally lost it and been imagining things? He stood from the small table and leaned over the edge of the balcony to get a better look, but from this distance all he could tell was that it was Kayla and that she was alone, walking slowly along the sand. The relative amount of zen that he’d been able to muster went up in smoke as a new list of worries rammed their way to the front of his attention.
What if she fell? What if she fainted again? Was she alone or was someone with her just out of sight? Elio snapped his computer shut and made his way out of the house and down to the beach as fast as he could, breaking into a jog and not caring who saw. At least it didn’t take long to catch up to her, and as it turned out, she was alone, her back to Elio as he walked up behind her a hundred yards away, the wind and waves just loud enough that it seemed like she wasn’t at all aware that he was there.
“Kayla!” he called, and she jumped a little as she turned to find him there, eyes wide. Not only that but the closer he got, he could see how red her eyes were. She ducked her head to try and hide that fact from him, and that felt like a knife to the gut.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, right in front of her now, trying to catch her eye and failing completely. Kayla shrugged, her hands supporting her heavy belly, and looked out to the horizon which was now painted pink and gold, as if looking out there gave her the same sort of comfort that it did for Elio.
Then it hit him, all at once, like a brick to the face, how much of an insensitive idiot he’d been.
Yes, he was having a hard time sorting out how he felt about all of this. And sure, he was scared stupid about what the future might hold now that it was entirely unpredictable. But Kayla… she was utterly terrified; you could see it in her shoulders, in the tilt of her head, and it radiated off of her in unmistakable waves. She’d been terrified getting off that boat, sitting across from him, telling him everything that had happened since they’d last seen each other… telling him that the baby was his. She’d been petrified and still pushed through. Thenshe’d gotten sick enough that she’d been forced to be trapped on Malbia again, away from home, away from family. And he hadn’t once gone in to check on her. Good God, he wasn’t the one having a baby, bedridden in a foreign country, relying on the good graces of someone who was still more of a stranger than a friend. Elio felt sick with himself, his neck burning red with shame, especially as Kayla kept her eyes firmly on the ocean, maybe hoping that he wouldn’t notice the few tears that were still trying to escape her eyes, her lips pressed tight together so that they wouldn’t tremble.
“Kayla,” he said, gently this time, reaching out and placing a soft hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
That seemed to tip her over some sort of cliff edge and she hung her chin to her chest, tears running down her face till they dripped down her chin. Elio didn’t hesitate and pulled her to his chest, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing tight as he felt her shoulders trembling.
“It’s okay,” he said, the words muffled by the wild mess of her hair. That should have been the very first thing he’d said to her, so he repeated it now as if he could somehow make up for lost time.
“It’s okay, I promise.”
Kayla pulled away, wiping her face with her hands, which didn’t do all that much good. She was still staring at the ground like she was waiting for it to swallow her whole.
“I got your shirt all wet,” she said in a small voice.
“I don’t care about my shirt,” he scoffed, hands hovering back over hers.
“I think I need to sit down,” she said, her voice a little wobbly as she wiped her hands over her cheeks in another attempt to dry them.
Elio helped her lower down to the sand. She wasn’t green this time, at least, but she was definitely pale. He scolded himself internally. Heshould have been taking better care of her. Not the service staff, but him. He sat down beside her and waited till she’d collected herself a little more before saying what needed to be said.
“I mean it,” he said. “I am sorry.”
She looked perplexed. “For what? This is the second time I’ve shown up on your doorstep, uninvited, with life-changing news, and you’ve taken me in again. What do you have to be sorry for?”
God, how did he put it into words? He stopped to think, trying to pull together a sentence that might come close to conveying at least some of his thoughts, but as he fell quiet, frowning in concentration, he could see Kayla’s expression shutting down again. Like all she needed was for him to say something rather than just being a blank wall.
“I’m not good with words,” he blurted out, desperate to get rid of that look on her face, to never see it again. It seemed to work, at least for now, so Elio kept talking. “I’m not good with words, so I just don’t say anything. Usually it works fine, but… I was wrong.”
He didn’t even really know what he was saying; he was just stringing words together at this point. But Kayla’s face was no longer crumpled. Instead, she was watching him quietly, waiting now that there was a promise of more words to come. Elio took a deep breath and jumped into the deep end instead of being a coward. That needed to stop. Now.
“So,” he said, going in blind. “I’ve been… awful, really.”
“No—” she tried to protest.
“No, I have,” Elio insisted. “I have. Especially when you did the right thing. You’re right, it’s better for everyone that I knew as soon as possible, that you came and told me. You went to all this effort and now you”re sick on top of it, and I’ve just been hiding away in my office like a little boy, not a grown man who needs to take responsibility for himself. Who needs to take responsibility for you.”
Kayla shrugged a little, looking overwhelmed by it all. “I don’t blame you.”
“Yeah, exactly. You’re good enough to not blame me, which is all the more reason to beg your forgiveness for being an idiot.”
“To be fair, I seem to have a habit of being quite dramatic.” A little smile crept onto her face, and the relief Elio felt seeing it was dizzying.
“It’s better than being boring,” he said with a shrug, and it was true. Kayla made a third attempt to dry her face and it seemed to do the trick this time. Elio lent a hand, swiping her cheekbone with a thumb.
“So I’m sorry,” he said, hoping that she knew how serious he was. “Can we start fresh? Give me a chance to act like an actual adult?”
“Plenty of adults run away from things like this, Elio.”
“Not good ones.”
The way she looked at him then… he figured that was the moment she knew he meant what he was saying.
“Could we start fresh?” he asked again. “Whatever this is, whatever we are… I mean, at least let’s start back at square one on the same page, you know?”
He knew how pathetic he sounded. He deserved to sound pathetic the way he’d been neglecting this entire situation. For some miraculous reason, Kayla nodded as if he was worth a second chance.
“Okay,” she said, nodding. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
It was getting darker as the minutes ticked by, the sunset no longer lighting up the beach with golden hues. Elio stood and brushed the sand off of his trousers. Kayla looked like she was going to follow but then stopped mid-movement.
“I think I need help,” she said, looking around for something to grip to get off the sand and finding nothing.
“You know,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. “You’ve really got to stop sitting down in random places if you’re unable to get up. You’re going to get stuck like an upturned turtle.”
Kayla laughed and reached up, taking his hands and letting him haul her to her feet. “I feel like an upturned turtle,” she said, her voice still thick from crying. “That’s a very accurate picture you’ve painted.”
“Exactly. So like I said, at least tell me where you want to sit and I’ll bring you a chair so you don’t end up stuck in a ditch somewhere.”
“And what?” she asked, getting her balance as Elio picked up her sandals from where they’d fallen on the sand. “You’ll just follow me around the island with a chair?”
“Yes,” he said immediately. Kayla was caught off guard by the seriousness in his voice and her tentative smile vanished. Elio swallowed. One apology just wasn’t going to cut it; he knew that…
“I told you,” he said, any hint of joking long gone. “I’m going to do better. I shouldn’t be starting just now, and I wish I could go back in time and fix that…”
He let the words drift off, not sure how to put into words how ashamed of himself he was right now. He looked at Kayla’s hand in his, so much smaller than his own. Then her grip tightened, her fingers threading through his own and strengthening their hold.
“You know,” she said. “If you find yourself without a chair, you could get on all fours and I could use you like a stool.”
Elio grinned, just happy that some of her sarcastic spark was coming back, no matter how small and wavering. He brought her knuckles to his lips and kissed them softly.
“I would be happy to,” he said, meaning every word.
* * *
Kayla was a hard worker; Elio had known that much from the moment he’d met her. People prone to lazing about didn’t fly across the world and sneak onto a private island to serve court documents, and they certainly didn’t come back to the same island half a year later to tell you they were pregnant, in person, because you didn’t pick up the phone. So it was obvious that Kayla was struggling with Dr. Albero’s orders to remain on bed rest. Despite being exhausted and sick, continually a little green about the gills, she would get the fidgets, bored with being stuck in one place no matter how unwell she felt. Gianna and Isabella had told him as much while he’d been hiding out in his office, thinking that emails were more important than the actual human being currently living down the hall. Well, today he intended to find out for himself how Kayla was doing.
The morning after his apology on the beach, Elio had taken the breakfast tray intended for Kayla from a baffled Isabella and made his way to the guest suite — Kayla’s suite now — and knocked on the door. When Kayla opened it, her hair wilder than he’d ever seen it, it was fairly obvious that she hadn’t been expecting him. She’d had a bright smile on her face that fell off in an instant, replaced by surprise. It only served to show Elio how much catching up he had to do to regain her trust.
“Hi?” she said, and it came out as a question.
“Hi. Breakfast?”
She nodded, still looking a little unsure and stepped aside for him to enter. Elio took the tray into the main room of the suite and set it down on the coffee table with a clatter. He’d managed not to spill anything, so at least that was a bonus.
“You look better,” he said, and it was true. There was more color in her face, not a whole lot, but it was better than nothing.
“I feel better,” she said, taking her time to walk slowly over to the window seat, every step seeming to take effort. Elio was glad that he’d brought her breakfast. She needed to rest. At least if he stayed to keep her company, he could help her do just that instead of finding her wandering around on the beach.
“You’ve really got to stop getting trapped on private islands, you know,” he said, suddenly desperate to see her mood improve, even just a fraction. “You’re making a habit of it.”
That earned him a grin, and his heart soared.
“At least I’ve got luggage this time,” she said.
“That’s a bonus. Though I’d be happy to split my wardrobe with you again.”
“Thanks, but your clothes wouldn’t really fit me in my current state,” she said, pointing fingers at her extended stomach, almost comically round under her shirt.
“Is it heavy?” he blurted out before he could stop himself. He felt his neck turn red within seconds, even though Kayla just seemed bemused.
“Sorry, what?” she asked.
“Your stomach, is it heavy? I worry you’re going to fall forwards.”
She smiled, and it matched the brightness of the grin that his arrival had knocked off her face. Elio was able to breathe a little easier after that.
“Yes, it is heavy,” she said, resting her hands on top of her bump. “And yes, I worry about falling on my face as well.”
Elio grimaced at the thought. “Well, please don’t do that.”
Kayla laughed. “I’ll try my best, I promise.”
She sat on the window seat while Elio leaned against the wall, but when she surveyed the breakfast that Isabella had prepared for her before he’d commandeered the tray, Kayla looked slightly dismayed.
“I can get you something else,” Elio said, quick to offer her anything she might need. That just seemed to make her smile again. Making her smile was going to get addictive, it seemed.
“No, it’s beautiful,” she said, nodding at the plates of fruit, juice, and an egg white omelet. “There’s just no way I’m going to be able to eat all of this.”
“Isabella won’t mind.”
“You could share? If you wanted?”
It was so obviously an olive branch, Kayla tilting her head to the empty space beside her, that Elio immediately went and sat down. It earned him another smile. So perhaps he was on the right track.
“You didn’t bring your laptop?” Kayla asked.
God, even the fact that she was so surprised about that told him everything he needed to know. Maybe being a workaholic was more than just a turn of phrase.
“I figured I could take some time off to keep you company,” he said, trying not to grimace at himself. “It’s the least I could do.”
“You’re doing plenty,” Kayla said, gracious as always as she nibbled on a piece of apple.
“Well, I guess my time to shine will come in the future, you know,” Elio said, taking a piece of kiwi fruit from the plate.
“I guess,” she said. “It’s hard for you to do much when the baby isn’t even born yet.”
“I don’t begrudge you for it, you know,” he said, meaning it and wanting to reassure her. But instead of being reassured, Kayla just looked confused.
“Begrudge me? For what?”
“For needing someone to help with the financial side of things,” he said. “I understand completely and I wouldn’t want you to suffer, not when it’s something I can so easily contribute to. You mentioned you changed careers, and that everything back home is upended. I can provide financial stability for you and the baby. We’ll have to work out the details, but I want to make it clear that I don’t hold it against you, you know? For being practical about it.”
She looked at him with a blank expression. “You think the main reason that I tracked you down was for money?” She didn’t seem angry, not even upset, just confused.
“I thought it was the obvious reason,” Elio said, suddenly not sure as Kayla’s eyes pierced him with a thoughtful sort of intensity that he’d never really seen another human achieve before.
With a small frown of concentration, she shifted on the window seat into a more comfortable position and, after a moment’s thought, reached out and put a hand on his. Elio didn’t pull away, but he did go very still as she pinned him in place with those eyes.
“Elio, I want you to take me seriously when I tell you this, okay?” she said, and Elio didn’t think he had any choice but to take her seriously, not with the intensity radiating off of her. He nodded, his hand still in place under hers.
“I’m not here because of money. I’m here because, if it’s possible, I want my kid to have a relationship with their dad.”
She watched him for a reaction, but Elio wasn’t sure what he was feeling, how he was supposed to react right then. His mind was too busy processing to react. Kayla continued, her hand never once leaving his.
“Am I worried about money? Yeah, of course I am, because ninety-nine percent of the world worries about money. It’s just the way it is. But I grew up with a single mom, remember? If she can do it, so can I. So money isn’t why I’m here, Elio. I’m here because I never got to have a relationship with my dad. He wanted nothing to do with me. And if that’s how you feel, I understand, I really do. I don’t want to guilt-trip you into something you don’t want. But I came all this way because I didn’t want to hide this baby from the world, from you. I wanted you to know. And I wanted… even if it turns into a complete mess, I wanted to at least give the baby a taste of what it’s like to have a dad, whatever being a dad means to you.”
She trailed off with a little frown as if her words had gotten away from her. Elio, as usual, was completely lost on how to respond.
“What are you thinking?” she asked, still not upset, just prodding him to not get stuck in his head. How did someone he’d known so briefly manage to know him so well?
“I’m thinking,” he said, trying to put it into a coherent sentence. “I’m thinking that being a dad hadn’t crossed my mind.”
At that, Kayla did look a little disappointed, but Elio squeezed her hand and she looked back up at him.
“But the way you said it,” he continued. “The way that you talked about it, including me in this. I think that maybe it would be nice.”
Kayla broke into a grin at the words, and Elio felt himself smiling as well. A dad. Not just a meal ticket, but a father. Suddenly, there was a whole new light shining on the situation, and Elio found that he liked what he saw.