He’s watching me with the quality of attention he brings to everything I say, and I keep going.
“I found out I was pregnant during my second year. I didn’t tell anyone for a while—not my professors, not my roommate, nobody. I just kept going to class and doing the work and pretending to myself that I was going to figure it out.” I turn my wineglass in my hands. “I dropped out at thirty-two weeks. The pregnancy had gotten rough—I was on modified bed rest, I couldn’t work, I was back in my mom’s apartment in a city I’d spent four years trying to leave. And then Opal was born, and she was so?—”
I stop. The fact that he lets me talk and he listens without listening for when he can chime in… it means something to me. I don’t get that much. Most people don’t have a conversation with a single mom. They listen enough to know when they can say what’s on their mind, which is nearly always unsolicited advice, as if she can’t possibly know what she’s doing, since she’s a single mom.
Not Dario. Even when I pause, he’s listening.
“She was so herself, even from the beginning. Just completely her own person from day one. And I thought, okay. This is what happened. This is what my life is now. And I rebuilt from there.”
Dario is quiet for a moment. “What would you have done with the degree?”
“I don’t know. Something. I had a professor who wanted to recommend me for a consulting track—the kind where youget recruited before you graduate.” I look at the skyline. “I’ve thought about it less as time went on. The gap gets harder to close the longer it is.”
“It’s not that hard to close.”
I look at him. He says it the way he says things that he means—flat, just a fact being offered. I believe him, and I’m annoyed at how much I believe him. Have I just been telling myself that it’d be too hard to go back?
I can’t get bogged down in that thought right now. “Tell me something about you. Something real.”
He actually thinks before he speaks, every time, which is rarer than it should be. “My father’s name was Enzo Spinelli. My mother was Angela Scarpetti before she married.”
I go very still. I keep my face even. I’m almost certain I succeed.
Scarpetti. The name sits in my chest like something dropped from a height. I grew up in this city. My uncle ran with the wrong people. I know that name from the news, from the conversations adults had in low voices when they thought the kids weren’t listening, from the particular way people said it, with a careful neutrality that meant the opposite of neutral.
Angela Scarpetti had a reputation that preceded her by decades. Brilliant, ruthless, and reportedly more feared than her brothers by the people who had reason to fear the family.
She worked as an assassin as a hobby. Ahobby. She didn’t need the money, and from all accounts, she often did the work for free because she enjoyed it or because it needed doing or maybe she felt it was an honor to take lives. Hard to say about someone like her.
“I’ve heard the name.” This is the most controlled sentence I’ve produced in recent memory.
“Most people have.” He’s watching me now with that precise attention. “My parents pushed me toward medicine. I had the mind for it, and when my father died, I was in my mid-twenties in med school. I had to make a choice. Stay in my residency or come home to the family. They had asked me to become a doctor, so I did.” He says this last part with a flatness that doesn’t quite conceal something underneath it.
Hurt. Anger. Guilt. Something I can’t read. But it’s not good.
I reach across the table and put my hand over his. I’m not sure why, but I need to touch him right now. Need to reassure… me? Him? I don’t know. Why is it that I feel this primal urge to comfort this man? A man who, by all accounts, is ruthless and powerful.
But he needs this. Needs me. I can feel it.
He looks at my hand. At me. I see the moment his expression changes—the careful, controlled face he wears for most things softening by a degree, just one degree, like a door opening the smallest amount.
I stand, still touching his hand, then come to his side of the table and kiss him. It’s nothing particularly sexual, not at first. More like reassurance.
But he stands as he deepens the kiss, wrapping his arms around me. I can’t breathe. Don’t need to. I’m dizzy from it, and I let him take the lead.
He brings me inside. To his bedroom. But he doesn’t rush this. Actually, he pauses before removing any article of clothing. Looks in my eyes. Waits for just a moment.
When I pull him to my mouth, there’s no more hesitation.
The afternoon light comes through the bedroom curtains in long pale bars. Wine or not, this decision is made in the cold light of day. No night to hide in. Just the quiet and him looking at me like I’m something he didn’t know he was looking for.
He’s different in the daylight. More careful with me. His hands are still sure, but they’re unhurried in a new way, and when he looks at me, it’s direct and undisguised, and I feel… more than I usually let myself feel.
I know exactly where I am and what I’m doing and who I’m doing it with. There’s no mental excuse games now. This isn’t a part of the blackmail. Not a moment of gratitude for taking care of a problem. No self-delusion about this being something it’s not.
I made a choice to have sex with Dario. To comfort him. To feel good. To enjoy him.
When he has me naked, we’re still standing next to his bed, and he kisses from my mouth down my body as he kneels. “Lean on the wall, pet.”
