AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m dying to know what he was going to say, but I smile instead. “Well. I’m definitely not Marco’s chief intelligence officer, but I’m not his pet either.”
“How did he manage to keep Luna secret?” Elio ponders.
I don’t answer that question. It gets too close to something that I don’t want to deal with yet.
I’m oddly… content, right now. Luna is in bed, and Elio and I are drinking in the kitchen.
Like… a couple.
Pain stabs through me. The weight of everything that we could have had, the things that we could have done, seems like it’s crushing my chest.
Would Elio and I have done this all the time? Would we have made it a routine, to put Luna to bed, then share a drink while we talked about our days?
He doesn’t let you drink?
I snort.
I should let Elio’s assumption speak for itself. Would we have had something like this?
Not if he automatically assumed that Marco was my keeper, that’s for sure. That fact tells me that Elio thinks the role of the man of the family is to keep all of the other family members in line.
Including his wife.
I am not interested in fulfilling the role he wants for me, if that’s the case.
My glass is somehow full again, and I frown at it. “Didn’t I just drink that?”
“I refilled it,” he rumbles.
“Why?”
“Because, Caterina, this is the most pleasant time I have had in an age. I want to enjoy a good drink with my wife. Will you begrudge me this?”
I grab the glass.
“Bottoms up,” I say, my eyebrow arching in challenge. I down the glass, smacking it on to the table.
Elio follows.
I smile. “No one keeps me, Elio. I keep myself. I choose things myself. I do things for myself.”
“I can see that, Caterina,” he murmurs.
“Good,” I say.
Elio is staring at me, though, and instead of being worried or freaked out by it, I have another feeling entirely.
I kind of like it.
The third drink is a lot.
I’m definitely feeling it. My limbs are heavy and warm, and my lips feel pleasantly tingly, like I put on a stinging lip balm.
Elio has had double the drinks that I have, and he seems fine.
“I guess you spend a lot of time drinking, and not much time apologizing,” I manage to say.
He blinks at me. “Pardon?”
