“Afewchanges here and there, eh?”
She chuckled. “I might have gotten carried away. It’s just that I need something to take my mind off things.”
“I thought you were doing this project because you were excited about it?”
“I am. Renovating something that beautiful, my own villa, has been one of my dreams. I have you to thank you for making it come true.”
“But it doesn’t seem to be enough.”
“It is, I swear. It’s just that no matter how hard I try to distance myself, I can’t seem to be able to do it. I mean, can you really blame me for worrying about my sister and nephew? I fucking raised that girl and practically delivered her baby.”
I held her from behind and rested my palms on her stomach. “You’re gonna be a great mother, you know that?”
She stilled for a second, and then she threw a nervous glance at me over her shoulder. “Thanks.”
“Baby girl, I want you off the pill.”
“What?”
“There’s no reason for it anymore.”
Flustered, she tucked her hair behind her ears. “Yes, there is. I’m twenty-one, and I still have school.”
I sighed. “I want to have a family with you, Nicky. I can’t wait to fill you with my seed and watch you get pregnant with our children.”
She fidgeted with the villa plans. “We should talk about that later, after the wedding, after Leo.”
“We should talk about something else now.”
She glanced at me again, warily. “What is it?”
“I didn’t tell you before because I didn’t want to influence you or manipulate you into feeling something for me that isn’t accurate. But now is the time.”
“Time for what?”
“To tell you my story. You wanted to know why they called me Berry. It’s time I told you.”
She spun to face me fully, curiosity filling her gaze. I drew a chair for her to sit and took the one next to it. “I’ve told you about the uncle that married my mamma and raised me as his own.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“His name was Arminio, and he wasn’t a good man.”
She nodded and held my hand. “In your nightmares, you keep talking to an uncle, begging him to stop. Is Arminio the uncle in there?”
The air constricted in my chest. I didn’t know I talked that elaborately in my sleep. I didn’t know she heard it. “Si.”
“Okay. What did he do?”
I filled my chest with hash vapor. “He beat her and me daily, always saying he never wanted us and wished us dead. At first, I thought it was because he was forced to marry his brother’s woman and take care of a boy that wasn’t his, but that wasn’t the real reason behind his hate for us.”
“What was it?”
The memories came racing in. So much darkness. So much blood. “It turned out he didn’t like women.”
“You mean he was gay?”
“I guess you could say that.” Till today, I wasn’t sure if there was a label for guys like him. “Times were different sixty years ago, especially in traditional families like ours. He couldn’t come out, so he…”
