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“You stop that, right now,” Emelia shouted and silenced everyone at the table. “We need to talk.” She stomped out of the room and obviously expected him to follow.
“Little sis has spoken or rather shouted. Please, go before she picks on one of us.” Kasey shoved more potatoes into his mouth, and smirked around a mouthful.
He reluctantly followed, and caught his breath when her fist landed in his stomach as he walked into the living room.
“What the fuck was that for?”
“For being a total dick and giving up on her. If she means so little to you then perhaps she is better off without you.”
“I didn’t leave,” he shouted.
“No, you didn’t. You told her to leave, you ass. What the hell did you expect her to do? Sit around and wait until you wanted her around.” Emelia was well and truly steamed. She paced the living room like a cougar caged and a few times, it looked like she was going to punch him again.
“Look, you know what happened.”
“You asked her to leave regardless of how you look at it,” she pointed out. “Sylvia is amazing and deserves someone who respects her and doesn’t treat her like a washcloth—easy to put aside—and I hope she finds it with someone else because you don’t deserve her.”
“Ouch.” He sat his butt down on the sofa and stared into space. “That hurt.”
“And so it should.” Emelia sat beside him. “She loves you, and you totally crushed her heart today with your callous words.” She held her hand up when he opened his mouth to speak. “I know you had a shock, eavesdropping, but that really was no excuse to speak to the woman who I think you love. Now, what are you going to do about it?”
“Fuck knows.” He sighed.
He had no idea what to do because he had no excuse. His sister was right, not that he’d ever admit that to her. But fuck!
“I’m going to catch the flight back to Lexington as planned in two days, and hopefully that will be enough time for her to have cooled her h
eels.”
“You better hope so. Now let’s go and finish dinner. I’m hungry.”
“You’re always hungry.”
“I’m a growing girl.”
Eric snorted.
Growing girl his ass.
“At some point you need to talk to your mom. You realize that, right? The sooner, the better because I hate seeing Dante so torn up with how he feels. He thinks it’s wrong to feel what he does, and although it isn’t ideal, it isn’t as wrong as he thinks it is, either.”
“I know.” She pulled him off the sofa. “I’m frightened, Eric.”
With how she spoke the words, he knew she spoke the truth, and he wished he could ease her worries, but he couldn’t. The truth was, he had no idea how Lucia, or the others would react to the news.
Back when his mother had died, it would have been a lot easier for them all to deal with his father’s immediate remarriage if they’d known something was going on. They were only kids though, so why should they have been told?
He tried to shove it to the back of his mind while they joined the rest of their family for what was left of dinner. As they took their seats again, he didn’t miss the look Dante threw at him and Emelia. The others ignored them and continued to eat. Out of all of them, it would be Diego in an hour who complained about a stomach ache as he sprawled out on the sofa watching something on the old movie channel. Diego loved the old movies.
“Everything will work out,” Lucia offered comfort, and patted his hand.
He loved his stepmom, and as time went on, he wished that he’d grown up calling her ‘mom’. She’d raised him since he’d been nine, but he’d been grieving for his mom, and by the time he saw Lucia as a mother figure he was too old to change. The others called her mom, apart from him, Aiden and Dante. He knew it hurt her as much as she’d tried to understand their need to hold on to the mom they remembered. The others had been younger and had found it easier to adapt, especially when Diego and Emelia had arrived.
“I need to think before I speak sometimes,” he admitted to Lucia who he sat beside.
“All men need to think before they speak. I think it’s in the penis gene.”
He didn’t think he’d smile today, let alone laugh, but with Lucia’s not so quiet comment, everyone around the table erupted in laughter, him included.
