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‘On what?’
‘On whether your answer will still be yes.’
Her senses screamed at her to be circumspect, to take a moment to reconsider what she’d readily surrendered moments ago. But she knew she was only fooling herself. She could only fight this powerful chemistry with Rocco for so long. At least on the physical side they were both equally bound by this spell. She wasn’t fooling herself into thinking there were emotions involved. For as long as this chemistry raged between them, why not indulge?
‘Contrary to what you accused me of last night, I’m not indifferent to the physical side of our relationship.’
An expression crossed his face, part triumph, part bewilderment. He didn’t answer immediately, just continued to toy with her hair for another minute before he nodded. ‘Then we are in agreement.’
She should’ve done the sensible thing then, just enjoyed the tension-free moment. Or, even better, encouraged him to sleep, thereby granting her some thinking room.
But Mia found questions crowding her brain and she let the first one slip out before she could stop herself. ‘Is that what your parents did? Hurt you with their indifference?’
He stiffened beneath her, his face locking in a formidable rejection of her attempt to probe. ‘What does it matter?’
‘You seem hung up on it, that’s why.’
His lips twisted. ‘Aren’t we all hung up on something?’
‘I want to know, Rocco.’
His eyes narrowed into icy slits. ‘Why? So you can tick a little feasibility box about me in your head?’
Her heart squeezed, mocking every intention to stay neutral. There was nothing neutral about what she felt about Rocco. Never had been. ‘Don’t do that.’
His nostrils flared, but he didn’t respond. Not for the longest time.
When he looked down from the ceiling, his eyes were bleak pools of bruised hurt she’d never witnessed before. Her breath caught but she forced herself to remain still, not to offer comfort yet in case he withdrew.
‘My grandfather left a sizeable inheritance when he died. With careful planning, my grandmother could’ve lived comfortably for the rest of her life. But my father coerced her into handing it over, with promises that he could double it. Within a year, he’d driven Nonna to the poverty line.
‘Then he became obsessed with chasing what he had lost. He played the same game with my mother, frittered away her inheritance as well. The cycle just kept on repeating itself. Unfortunately for them, I came along.’ His voice throbbed with bitterness but he clenched his jaw and continued. ‘An inconvenience they tolerated up until the burden of having a child grew too much for them. They dumped me with Nonna and I hardly saw them more than a few times a month. When I saw them, my father would regale me with how busy he was. How he was taking over the world and how he would get back everything he had lost. Nowhere in that narrative did I feature. I remember wondering why he was bothering with me when clearly he didn’t give a damn about me. Why he was torturing us with visits when it was clear he always wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else but wherever I was.’
‘Rocco...’
He shrugged away her sympathy. ‘They died when I was seven. I remember that day clearly. The authorities arrived at Nonna’s doorstep and I immediately knew. I told myself I didn’t care.’
‘But you did.’
He stiffened again, his gaze shifting away from hers to rest on the ceiling, but his fingers didn’t stop playing with her hair. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Of course it does. Your feelings matter. You expected them to care for you.’
‘Nonna provided me with everything I needed. More than.’
‘But Nonna wasn’t your parents. They brought you into this world. It’s different, I’m sure, if you didn’t know your parent at all, but to have them there right in front of you and still feel alone, unwanted or irrelevant hurts. Believe me, I know.’
His gaze dropped, latching onto her, compelling her own pain from where she had buried it deep.
‘I don’t know which is worse—having a full-time parent right in front of you who blames you for their every misfortune or having one who is occasionally present but distant.’
‘Your mother.’
She gave a painful nod.
‘Tell me.’
She shrugged. ‘She got pregnant with me when she was starting out in her career. She wanted to be a nurse. But she was a young, single mother with no income to speak of. So she settled for...less. And she...hated me for it.’
