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“How can you go from wanting more to wanting nothing?” he asked, dazed by this turn of events.
“You aren’t going to give me more, and nothing is a better option than settling for what we had.”
“There was no settling. You wanted me as much as I wanted you,” he said again, as if repeating it might make her get the concept.
“Things change.”
He cursed loudly, using a word in the Sicilian vernacular rarely heard in polite company.
“You promised.”
“What did I promise?”
“To let me walk away without a big scene.”
Damn it all to hell. He had, but he had never expected her to want to walk away. “What about my mother?”
“What about her? She’s my friend.”
“And my son?”
“He is my student.”
“You do not intend to ditch either of them?”
“No.”
“Only me.”
“It’s necessary.”
“For who?”
“For me.”
“Why?”
“What difference does it make? You won’t give me more and I can’t accept less any longer. The whys don’t matter.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Not my problem.”
“I did not know you had this hard side to you.”
“I wasn’t aware you could be so clingy.”
Affronted at the very implication, he ground out, “I am not clingy.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Goodbye, Tino. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”
“Wait, Faith…”
But she was gone and the maître d’ was apologizing and offering to move their table, asking what they had done to offend. Valentino had no answers for the man. He had no answers for himself.
In a near catatonic state of shock, Faith stood beside her car outside the restaurant. The coldness she had felt toward Tino at the table had permeated her body until she felt incapable of movement.
She had broken up with him.
Really, truly. Not a joke. Not with tears, or hopes he would try to talk her out of it, but with a gut-deep certainty the relationship they had, such as it was, was over.
She hadn’t gone to the restaurant with the intention of breaking up. Had she?
She knew her pregnancy hormones had her emotions on a see-saw and she’d been trying to ride them out. She laughed soundlessly, her heart aching. A see-saw? More like an emotional roller coaster of death-defying height, speed and terrifying twists and turns.
She didn’t just teeter from one feeling to the next, she swooped without warning.
It hadn’t been easy the two weeks he had avoided her calls, but it had been even worse since Tino had denied their friendship to his mother. Faith had realized that what she believed was affection had only been the result of lust on his part. He wanted sex and she gave it to him. Only, she couldn’t do that anymore.
She wouldn’t risk the baby.
The doctor had said normal sexual activity wouldn’t jeopardize her pregnancy, but then he didn’t know her past, how easily she lost the people who meant the most to her. She’d known she would have to put Tino off from being physically intimate for at least another few weeks, but she hadn’t realized that somewhere deep inside that had meant breaking things off with him completely.
It had all crystallized when he said he wouldn’t marry her—at any cost. Once he knew about the baby, that attitude would change, but the underlying reasons for it wouldn’t. She knew that. Just as she knew that a marriage made for reasons of duty and responsibility was the last kind she wanted.
It was one thing to marry someone knowing you loved them and they only liked you and found deep satisfaction in your body. But to marry someone you knew did not want to marry you and did in fact see something so wrong about you that they would marry someone else over you, that was something else entirely.
She wasn’t sure she could do it.
But could she take the baby from Sicily, from its family and raise it alone, knowing it could have a better life in its father’s home country? She didn’t know. Thankfully, that decision did not have to be made right this second.
She forced her frozen limbs to move, and slid into her car, turning on the ignition.
She drove toward her home while those questions and more plagued her. Plagued by a question she told herself did not need an immediate answer. Her mind refused to let it go, the only eye in the storm of her emotion being that she had no intention of revealing her pregnancy until she was through the more-dangerous first trimester.
At that point she would have to have answers.
Though she normally saw the older woman at least once a week, Faith managed to avoid showing Agata the pregnancy statuary. Faith promised Tino’s mother she would be the first to see all the pieces for the new show she was putting together for a New York gallery. Faith had sent pictures of the pieces she’d been doing to a gallery owner on Park Avenue who loved TK’s work. The woman had called Faith, practically swooning with delight at the prospect of doing a show for the fertility pieces.
Like her emotions, Faith’s work swung between hope and despair, touching on every emotion in between. It was the most powerful stuff she’d done since the car accident that had stolen her little family. As much pain as some of the pieces caused her, she was proud of them all.
An art teacher had once told Faith’s class that pain was a great source of inspiration, as was joy, but that either without the other left an artist’s work lacking in some way. Faith was living proof both agony and ecstasy could reside side by side in a person’s heart. And she had no doubt her work was all the better for it, even if her heart wasn’t.
Tino tried calling Faith several times, but his calls were sent straight to voice mail every time. He left messages but they were ignored. He sent her text messages that received no reply either.
He could not believe his affair with Faith was over.
He wouldn’t believe it.
She wasn’t acting like herself, and he was going to find out why. And fix it, damn it.
Morning sickness was just that for Faith, with the nausea dissipating by noon. While that did not impact her ability to work much, it did make it more difficult on the days she taught. She’d considered canceling her classes for the first trimester, or withdrawing all together. She doubted they would want an unwed pregnant woman teaching art to their children; it was a traditional village. However, she saw little Gio only on the days she taught and she could not make herself give up those visits, brief though they were.
She loved the little boy. A lot. She hadn’t realized how much she had come to see him as something more than a pupil, something like family—until she broke things off with his father and contemplated not seeing the precious boy again. She simply could not do it.
He was as sweet as ever, showing he had no idea she was now persona non grata in his papa’s life. He hung back after class to talk to her and she enjoyed that. Today, though, he was fidgeting.
“Is something the matter, sweetheart?”
He grinned. “I like it when you call me that. It’s like a mama would do, you know?”
Suppressing the stab of pain at his words, she reached out and brushed his hair back from his face. “I’m glad. Now, tell me if something is wrong.”
“Nonna said I could invite you for dinner.”
“That is very kind of her.”
“Only, Papa said you probably wouldn’t come.”
“He did?”
Gio looked at her with pleading eyes only a heart of stone could ignore. “Why won’t you come again? I thought you and Papa were friends.”
“I didn’t say I wouldn’t come.”
“So, you will?” Giosue asked, his little-boy face transforming with the light of hope.
“When does your nonna want me to come?”
“She said this Friday would be good.”
“It just so happ
ens I am free this Friday.”
Gio grinned with delight and gave her a spontaneous hug that went straight to her heart.
Perhaps it was foolish to agree, but she couldn’t stand to see the hurt of disappointment come into Giosue’s eyes. Besides, Faith had told Tino that she had no intention of giving up her friendship with his mother and son. And she’d meant it.
Being pregnant with Giosue’s sibling and Agata’s grandchild only made those two relationships more important. Tino wasn’t going away and she needed to work on her ability to be around him and remain unaffected. The dinner invitation was an opportunity to do just that.
Her unborn baby deserved to know his or her family and Faith would not allow her own feelings to stand in the way of that.
Besides there was a tiny part of her that wanted to show Tino he was wrong and that she could handle being around him just fine.
Just a small part. Really.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LESS CERTAIN OF HER ABILITY to withstand Tino’s company unscathed than she had been in the safety of her art classroom, Faith rang the doorbell of the big villa.
The door opened almost immediately, making her heart skip a beat. However, it was only Giosue on the other side.
Relief flooded her, making her smile genuine. “Good evening, Gio.”
“Bueno sera, signora.”
She handed him a small gift.
“What is this?” he asked, his voice tinged with anticipation mixed with confusion.
“It is traditional to give one’s dinner host a gift. I forgot yours when you invited me before, so I’ve brought it tonight along with one for your grandmother.”
“Because this time she invited you?”
“Exactly.”
Gio looked at the present and then up at her, his eyes shining. “Wow. Can I open it now?”
