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As I walk along the fence that lines his property, I stare down at the other villas at the bottom of the hill. Vineyards weave between them and I can see people walking through the rows. The sun shines down and I don’t think I’ve seen anything as beautiful as the villas down below.
“What are you doing out here?” Tyson asks as I turn a corner on his property, coming across a little garden with herbs growing. He is collecting some of them and dropping them into a small woven basket.
“Looking at the vineyards.”
“I told you to stay inside,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose before looking at me. “Why can’t you just listen to me for once?”
“Because I’m not going to be kept prisoner. I spent the last twenty-one years of my life in a golden prison. It’s not going to happen again. If you want to be on the run with me, then you and I are equals.”
“I didn’t ask to go on the run with you. I need you to trust that I am making the best decisions at the moment about how to keep us safe.”
“And I need you to realize that I grew up in the mafia. I’m a better shot than you and we can test that if you don’t believe me. I know what danger is and I’m not scared of it.”
Except that’s a lie. Now that I know there’s a baby, I’m worried. I’ll do anything I can to protect our baby but that seems impossible when my own father wants to kill me.
My hand drifts down to my stomach.I’ll do everything I can to keep you safe, little one.
Tyson scowls, his gaze dropping to my stomach. “What are you going to do about that?”
“I’m going to have the baby.”
His frown deepens and he turns his back to me, picking more herbs while his shoulders tense. “I think that’s a bad idea.”
“Well, it’s a good thing that you’re welcome to your own opinion. However, since it’s my uterus, I’m the one getting the final decision. If you want nothing to do with the baby, you are more than welcome to sign your rights away.”
“I’m not going to do that,” Tyson says, his voice tight as he runs a hand down his face and looks at me over his shoulder. “I just don’t know what I want.”
I bite down on the wave of sadness that rolls over me. This isn’t what I want to hear. I want him to say thatwewill raise the baby – even if it is just as co-parents.
As he looks away from me, I push the sadness away. If he wants to give up his rights to the baby, he can. If he wants to help raise our child, then that’s even better.
However, I’m not going to beg him to be in our child’s life. I grew up with a father who, to this day, still keeps a level of distance between us.
I won’t doom my baby to the same life.
18
TYSON
Istand in the doorway of Aria’s bedroom, looking down at her. Other than taking her into town to meet with a doctor – one who didn’t keep in contact with her father – we had barely spoken to each other since yesterday.
As I watch her roll over in her sleep, I sigh. I could have reacted to the news about her pregnancy better. There are a thousand different ways that I could have handled it. I could have told her that I would support her through it. Maybe I should have told her that I would do anything it took to keep them both safe.
With the current state of our lives, I’m not sure that I can do that.
I don’t know how to keep Aria and our baby safe in a world where her father is still walking around.
She sighs in her sleep and rolls over again, her eyes opening slightly. Moonlight streams in the window and the breeze blows the curtains slightly.
“What are you doing in here?” she asks, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes as she sits up.
“House felt cold,” I say as I walk into the room and close the window, locking it and pulling her curtains into place. “You shouldn’t sleep with your window open when you have people looking for you.”
I can nearly hear her eye roll as I keep my back to her. After taking a deep breath, I turn around and look at her. Aria settles back into the pillows, draping an arm over her face.
“The last few days have been long,” she says. “Are you going to keep staring at me or can I get some sleep?”
“Get some sleep,” I say, crossing the room to her door. “I’m going to go read before I go to bed.”
