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“But do you love her?” Daniel asked. The question seemed genuine. “You need to give her something real instead of an empty promise.”
Nico reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the crumpled envelope containing the DNA test. The seal was perfectly unbroken, though the once-crisp edges of the envelope were now worn and folded.
“I asked her to take a test because I didn’t believe I could trust her.” He’d never been so ashamed of an action in all his life. “And I’m here now to prove that I’m a changed man. That’s her influence, her power.”
The men were silent for a moment, looking uncertainly between one another.
“Nico?” Marianna stood in the doorway, her face ashen. “What on earth are you doing here?”
In the week since she’d gone, Marianna’s stomach had grown. Their baby had grown. The sight made him want to drop to his knees, right in front of the whole family, and beg forgiveness.
But Marianna wasn’t having any of his small talk. “Why did you come, Nico? How did you even find me? You didn’t call.”
“I couldn’t risk you telling me to stay away.” He hung his head. “I had to do this in person.”
“Do what?” She wrung her hands in front of her belly.
He held up the envelope, and her eyes widened when she saw the logo.
“Is that my test?”
“I couldn’t bring myself to open it,” he said. “I know it’s my baby. I know you’re not a liar. I also know that the way I treated you is something I’ll regret for the rest of my life.”
In his pocket, he’d also packed a lighter that he’d purchased on the way over. Not usually one with a flair for the dramatic, Nico knew the only way to prove to Marianna that he trusted her—now and forever—was to get rid of the test for good. He took the lighter in one hand and ran his thumb over the spark wheel. Once, twice, three times. A single flame flickered to life.
“What are you doing?” She brought her hands to her face.
“I love you, Marianna. S’ agapo.” He repeated the words she’d spoken to him in her most vulnerable moment—the moment she bared herself to him. “You are mine and you mean everything to me. You’re my world, and so is our baby.”
The flame caught on the envelope, and the fire gathered pace, consuming the paper and sending smoke billowing into the air. He held on until it was almost burning his fingertips. Then he dropped the last piece to the ground and put it out with his boot.
“I never needed a test,” he said. “It was my way of trying to prove that I was too broken to love you, to convince you to leave before I could get hurt. But I want to hurt, I want to feel everything that goes along with a real marriage. And I want to apologize.”
Nico tried to run through all the things he’d rehearsed on the way over, but his mind was a jumbled mess of fear and sleep deprivation. All he did remember was that he wanted to do things properly this time.
“For what?” she whispered.
“For being a blind, stupid, and stubborn asshole.” He chose his words slowly, carefully. “You came into my life at a point where I didn’t know myself anymore. So I twisted you in my head, gave you ulterior motives so that I could protect myself from falling in love with you. I turned you into a monster so I could stop myself from seeing what I had become.”
Marianna watched him closely, her expression guarded. Her arms wrapped protectively around herself.
“The day that we met and went swimming was the first day I felt like myself in years,” he continued. “Because of you. And the more time I spent with you, I stopped grieving for all the things I’d lost, for all I’d missed out on. And when I saw our baby on that monitor, it was the happiest I have ever felt. Since the day I was born, people have rejected me. After a while, I caused them to reject me because I believed it was inevitable. You were the only person who even in the face of my terrible behavior didn’t push me away.”
Slowly, he dropped down to one knee. Marianna’s eyes widened, and the rest of the family—her brothers, a woman he assumed was her sister-in-law, and Jules—all watched.
“Marianna, I want you to be my wife. My real wife. I want you to share my home and my bed. I want us to raise our child together as partners. I want us to be the example you want us to be, to show this child, and hopefully more to come, what it looks like to be truly, overwhelmingly in love with someone.” He sucked in a breath. The words were an avalanche; everything he’d kept long-buried was roaring out of him now like a stopper had been yanked. “I want to show our little girl every day that we love her and each other without fear or reservation. I want us to be a family.”
In his pocket was the porcelain cat. When her eyes landed on the figurine, she laughed. Tears glimmered in her eyes, pooling until they dripped down onto her cheeks. “That damn cat.”
“You mean everything to me,” he said. “This baby means everything to me. I want to meet our little Katherine so badly.”
