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“Oh. Okay. Cool.” Luna smiles.
Then, she goes back to her French toast.
I look over at Caterina, who is biting her lip against the laughter she’s withholding.
“Can I call you Dad?”
I look down at Luna.
I smile.
“Of course, Luna my love.”
“Okay. Thanks Dad,” she chirps.
My heart expands. I want to swoop her up in a hug, but I settle for a kiss on her cheek.
Caterina puts her arm on my hand. “See. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
I kiss her too. “No, amore mio. It was the best that it could have possibly been.”
POST EPILOGUE
CATERINA
“Elio. It’s her sixth birthday. Don’t you think you’re doing just a little too much?”
Leading not one, not two, but three horses dressed as unicorns, Elio looks at me. “No, but I am worried that I haven’t done enough,” he smiles.
I shake my head. “You’re going to set a high bar for every birthday in the future.”
He grins. “And I plan on surpassing that bar every time.”
“You’re crazy,” I snort.
“No, carrissima,” he says, handing the horses off to their handler and coming over to press a kiss on my head. “I am making up for lost time.”
I lean into him and hold him tight.
In the few months since I was kidnapped, we’ve been doing a lot of that. We’re planning on having a big wedding pretty soon, but since Luna wants to give a lot of input, the plans have been kind of ever-changing.
I also have one small, small part of me that hopes we’ll be able to find Marco in time.
It’s a hope that is getting smaller by the day, however.
I brush the thought off. It’s a surprisingly nice day out, considering it’s only April in New York. The house, however, looks fantastic. You can’t even tell that Elio has put so many security guards in place that a small nation wouldn’t be able to invade us.
He holds me close again as I watch the company try to install the bounce castle, and the caterers put out the cake.
“It’s a lot, Elio,” I murmur.
“It’s never going to be enough.”
I kiss him at that. Getting Elio to understand that it’s okay for him to let himself off the hook for not being around to be Luna’s dad is hard, because he feels responsible for the fact that he scared the hell out of me, and I kept him out of her life.
To be fair, all of that is true.
It’s just different now.
