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Lorenzo stilled, and I looked up at him. His dark eyes turned to mine, and a smile spread across his face, lighting it up like the sun had broken through the clouds.
He kissed me, and I got lost in the feel of him. We were stuck in the middle of the forest, and our future was uncertain, but right here, right now with him, I was happier than I’d ever been. I wouldn’t want to be any other place in the world.
“You have no idea what you mean to me,” Lorenzo answered, and warmth washed over me.
I wasn’t one to admit out loud how I felt. Hell, I fought against it tooth and nail as much as I could, but out here, suddenly none of the shit I usually worried about bothered me. Fuck my dad and what he wanted for me, fuck my rebellion to go against it. Lorenzo was someone he would approve of, but hell, so did I.
That was saying something. I could see myself being with Lorenzo, and if my dad was on board with the idea, I guess we finally agreed on one thing.
As soon as we got back home—and I was determined that we would now that Lorenzo had managed to take away my panic—I would do things differently.
Lorenzo was worth it. He was everything, and it had taken me far too long to figure that out.
20
LORENZO
Iwasintrouble.Celine had been everything—not just the girl I’d fallen for ages ago, the hot mess I was intrigued by now and the anomaly I wanted to crack. She’d become so much more than that. I wanted to take care of her, protect her, let her be herself. Celine could be so vulnerable underneath her hard exterior. She was always so out there, so big and tough, and she had so many thorns it chased most people away, but behind that carefully curated mask was a woman who just wanted to be loved.
I’d wanted to get to that part so badly.
Now that I was there, I’d fucked up.
I wanted her. I wanted her more than ever. These few days together, stuck in the wilderness, had shown me a different side of her, and I couldn’t help but fall for her harder and harder.
The problem was, being with her would mean giving everything else up. Once upon a time, when I’d been sure I’d wanted nothing to do with the life my parents and uncle and aunt wanted for me, that wouldn’t have mattered. I’d have given it all up for Celine in a heartbeat.
Now?
Family had become everything to me. My parents had worked their asses off to give me and Gino the best life they could. My aunt and uncle were serious about letting us take over the family vineyard here in the States so that we could continue our life here rather than go back to Italy, where we hadn’t been happy.
The only prerequisite they had ever given us was that we kept it Italian.
That had been fine. I’d never given a shit about that because love, marriage, kids and the rest of it had all been a far-off dream. It hadn’t been something we needed to worry about because it had been a bridge I’d always told myself I would cross when I got there.
Suddenly, I was there. I had to cross that bridge.
The problem was that my family was on the one side, and Celine was on the other, and no matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t do both.
A part of me had always thought Celine would be unreachable. She would turn me down, push me away—nothing would come of my endeavors to break through.
When she’d told me yesterday she was in love with me, it had torn me up inside. It was the one thing I’d always wanted to hear from her, the one thing I’d never believed I would.
I’d thought she would never say that to me and because of it, I’d never considered what would happen when we finally got here.
Fuck, I didn’t know how to deal with this. I was in love with her, too. I’d always been in love with her since the moment I first saw her when the Forgers housed me.
Would love be enough? It almost never was. Love was an important foundation, but we would need so much more to make a relationship work.
Trust.
Understanding.
Acceptance.
That last part tripped me up.
If it was about sacrificing something, I could do that if I didn’t want what I was giving up. The problem was how much I wanted my family, how much they’d come to mean to me the older I’d become. As kids, we didn’t get it, but now, everything had changed.
