Page 151 of Corrado

Lust.

Anger.

He didn’t know how to deal with it all, but he went to the easiest to handle first, which just happened to be his annoyance. This girl had a bad habit of spying. Being places she shouldn’t and standing there for way too long to listen. Like last week while she watched him with Alessio in this same fucking office.

“What are you doing?” he snapped.

Ginevra’s brow knotted, and she glanced down before lifting the book. “I just … wanted to get another book, that’s all. I thought it would be rude to interrupt.”

“So, instead you eavesdrop?”

“It’s not like you were being quiet. I could hear you all the way down in my room, thanks.”

Corrado sucked in a shaky breath, willing his nerves to calm. He was snappy because of the shit happening around him, and sure, Ginevra didn’t help in a lot of ways, but it wasn’t her fault, either. She didn’t choose to be here, but rather, she had been thrown right in the fucking middle of it.

This whole blow out between Alessio and him had been years in the making, always one step away from it happening. They hung on together by a thread because of literally everything else in their life except Ginevra.

Sure, she was a catalyst.

She pushed them over the edge.

And it still wasn't her fault ...

She didn't ask for this, but here she was. It also wasn’t lost on him that there was an almost poetic irony to the fact Corrado had realized all the things he’d done wrong in his relationship, what he wanted with Alessio, and that he was ready to fix it … at the same time he was looking this woman in the face, and feeling something he couldn’t explain for her.

He wouldn’t say he was in love with her.

But it was something.

The only other time he had felt that for anyone was Alessio, and so, he didn’t know how to correlate this thing he felt to anything else.

Koi no yokan, he knew.

Except … it only made this harder.

More difficult.

Compli-fucking-cated.

Ginevra hadn’t asked for this.

Neither did Alessio.

Corrado didn’t know what to do.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, “I’m just in a mood lately, is all. It’s not your fault, and I shouldn’t be short with you, Ginny.”

She didn’t smile.

She only shrugged.

“Doesn’t even faze me now,” she replied, “I think it makes sense, actually.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Your moods. I thought it was just you before I knew about … him. But now I think it’s really you without him.”

Corrado’s throat tightened, a lump forming there.