Page 35 of The Saint

I thought I’d died.

Heat rushed up my neck and to my cheeks, and I desperately wanted to wipe my sweaty palms on my shorts.

Almost as badly as I wanted to stay there forever with my fingers touching his.

“You were good with him.”

Ocean waves crashed over me, the feeling made stronger by the salty smell of the breeze. There was a battle in those eyes, one I wanted to fight for him.

With him.

If only he’d let me.

I gave a small shrug, my fingers tightening slightly so he wouldn’t let go. “I…”

“There you are!” The voice drew Rolly’s attention from me, and his grip on my fingers slipped away. My throat tightening, I turned to face—

“Mom.”

“I know I’m early,” Carmen Giordano said as she descended the stairs leading to Rolly’s apartment, “but your father and I are heading to Paulo’s for dinner, and I wanted to see you.”

She pulled her son into a hug, and I shifted foot to foot. Half of me wanted to bolt. The other half wanted to shrink into nothingness, to become nothing but a fly on the wall, watching this boy and his mom.

The Giordanos were a family, the way my family never was. Kind, caring, always there for each other. Whereas Lorenzo and Carmen loved each other and their son, my father moved to another country and started a new family, while my mother carried on a secret affair.

When was the last time my parents had dinner together? Were in the same room together?

Were in the same country with each other?

Rolly squeezed his eyes shut as he hugged his mother, and I wrapped my own arms around myself, wishing I was anywhere else.

They pulled apart, and before I could excuse myself, turn around and run back home, Carmen turned her brilliant smile my way.

“My, my,” she said, taking my hand and pulling it out to the side. She twisted, spinning me in a circle the way she always had when I was a child. “Look at you, Miss Jael. Beautiful as always.”

A blush heated my cheeks, but that heat drained away with one look at the tight smile on Rolly’s face. Carmen, not noticing her son, placed a hand upon my cheek.

“It’s been too long. How are you?”

Too long? We’d seen each other the night I got my stars. Not that I’d talked to her. Avoiding Rolly’s family had seemed like the right thing to do. And seeing the pained look on Rolly’s face only confirmed it for me.

“I’m okay,” I said, though my voice did its best to prove my words a lie.

But Carmen, she tucked my hand around her arm, smiling the whole time. “I’m so glad you’re here. Come, let’s go upstairs and catch up.”

“I really should be going,” I tried, eyes darting between Rolly’s mother and the pained look on his face.

As if he didn’t want me here.

As if he couldn’t wait for me to go.

“I insist.” Carmen’s voice had that same quality as her brother’s, and her command wasn’t one I could ignore.

Throwing an apologetic look Rolly’s way, I allowed her to lead me up the stairs and to his apartment. She held my arm the entire way up the elevator, as if she sensed I was two seconds from heading back down and outside. Away from her and her son and this uncomfortable position. She tugged me along toward the apartment, footsteps quick as her heels tapped loudly against the floor.

Rolly rushed around us—sixty-one—and opened the door. And I couldn’t be sure if he bothered looking at me again once I was inside.

Inside, where everything had changed.