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Her lips are still set in that stubborn line, but I can see her eyes watering as she looks away. The desire has evaporated, replaced by a heavy cloud, and if I came out here to try and cheer her up, it’s clear that this has gone in the exact opposite direction.
The day is as sunny and bright as it was when I joined her out here, but it feels as if the temperature has dropped. It feels foolish standing there in the pool across from her, having this conversation. I turn to go up the stairs, forcing myself to ignore the way she wraps her arms around herself in my periphery, her expression turning so deeply unhappy that I want to go to her and gather her in mine.
Instead, I force myself to walk away, telling myself that comforting her will only make this harder on us both. That pushing her away is the only way to ensure her happiness in the end—or as much of it as I can manage for her, anyway.
I’m not sure who I’m lying to more—myself, or her.
Gianna
I’ve never felt so embarrassed in my entire life. I’ve never hadreasonto be so embarrassed. More than that—I feel hurt and rejected and more than a little stupid for trying at all.He made it so clear that he wasn’t going to marry you. That he wasn’t interested in being with you. And you threw yourself at him anyway.
Nothing and no one can be crueler to me than my own mind. The thoughts beat inside my head as I wait for Alessio to disappear inside, clutching my arms around myself as I shiver in the water despite the heat of the day. The spiked lemonade had given me a pleasant warmth in my blood and a little extra courage before, but now my head just aches, my eyes burning with tears.
I wish desperately that I could take the last hour back entirely.
I’d planned all of it, of course, with as much calculation as I could manage despite my inexperience. I’d “run” into him in my bikini, teased him into coming outside—although the slip of the tongue that had made him feel guilty enough to agree had been entirely unplanned. I’d asked for the lunch and the alcoholic lemonade to try to make it seem a bit more celebratory. I had done everything I could to set up the afternoon to go the way I’d hoped it would. I’d tease him, get him in a playful mood with his guard down, and then—
I close my eyes, feeling humiliated all over again.My first kiss. That’s always going to be my first kiss.I want to tell myself that he rejected me because I was so bad at it, but I know that’s not true. I know, because even as innocent as I am, Iknowwhat I was feeling for that brief moment when he was pressed up against me while I kissed him. He was turned on—sohard from touching me, kissing me, and there had been that one brief second where he kissed me in return.
He rejected me because he thinks it’s wrong for us to be together. That I shouldn’t want him, as if I’m not capable of deciding who and what it is that I want. That some stupid piece of paper making us legally step-siblings means more than the fact that I only ever saw him a few times before this. That his age means anything at all, that I’m not capable of knowing how old he is and still wanting him—in some ways because of it.
I don’t want to marry some spoiled mafia son my own age. I don’t want to marry someone so enamored with my wealth and the title he’ll get that he’s willing to sacrifice his own family’s name to take mine. I don’t want someone who I don’t know.
I want Alessio. Handsome, old enough to guide me and still young enough to keep up with me, intelligent and capable, and most importantly—the person that my father trusted with his empire, with his legacy, withme. Even with all his explanations, I still don’t understand how Alessio can want to throw that away, how he doesn’t see the immensity of what my father entrusted him with.
It takes a while for me to pry myself out of the pool, but I finally do, wrapping a towel around myself and retreating back into the mansion with my things. I know it’s cowardly of me and a little childish, but I don’t come down again for the rest of the day, staying up in my room. I ring for the staff to bring dinner up, unable to face sitting across from Alessio at the dinner table, the incident in the pool still fresh in my mind—and I’m sure in his, too.
All of it—the confusion and emotions and rejection—leaves me feeling drained and exhausted, and I pick at my dinner, leaving most of it untouched, and going to take a long, hot bath. Afterward, I slip on the t-shirt I stole from him, knowing it’s not going to make me feel better, but it’s hard not to wallow in the emotions. The shirt might not smell of him any longer, but being swathed in the oversized material makes me feel oddly comforted, clinging on to the last bit of hope that I didn’t even really know I had until it was already being taken away from me.
The nightmare that swallows me up almost as soon as I fall asleep isn’t the first one I’ve had since my father’s death, but it is the worst. I’m in his study again, looking down at the body, but this time, he’s facing up instead of down on the floor, his throat opened wide in the bloody gash that the murderer left—and in this nightmare, he’s stillalive. Still choking on his blood, gushing and bubbling out of the wound, choking out my name as he pleads for my help, but I can’tmove. I can’t do anything, and when the dream wavers, I’m in my own bathroom, dousing my bloodied hands under the stream of water from the faucet, but it won’t wash off. It clings to my hands like glue, and I’m sobbing, scrubbing them again and again until the skin reddens and peels and starts to slough off, my own blood mixing with what’s left of my father’s, and then—
Something is shaking me in the dream, and I jolt awake, feeling tears hot on my cheeks—and a hand on my shoulder. I gasp, jerking upwards in the bed, and through the fog of grief and confusion, I hear Alessio’s low, deep voice.
“Easy. You were just having a nightmare. Just a bad dream.” His voice is soothing, and I feel his hand still resting on my arm. It takes me a moment to realize that he must have been trying to wake me up—that the gentle shaking in my dream was from him. “Gianna, I’m right here. You’re okay. Do you want me to turn on a light?”
I shake my head wordlessly, hoping he can see it. The idea of light feels like too much right now—too bright, too overwhelming—and I don’t want him to see what a mess I must look like right now either, tear-stained with swollen eyes and an exhausted expression on my face. He’s seen me like that before, but it feels worse somehow right now, with him here in my bed—
In my bed.A flush of heat tangles up with the awful emotions churning through me, more confusion to add to what I’m already feeling. It’s not desire, not exactly—I’m too upset for that—but there’s something intimate about his presence here that makes my stomach churn and my heart flip in my chest. It feels new, uncertain—and I don’t want him to leave.
“Why are you here?” I whisper as his hand rubs along my arm, still trying to soothe. There’s distance between us—he’s keeping me quite literally at arm’s length, sitting further down the bed, his fingers against my arm the only contact. Itissoothing; I can feel the tears slowing, my breathing a little more even.
“I heard you crying,” Alessio says gently. “I wasn’t sure if you were awake or not, but I wanted to make sure you were alright. That it wasn’t—”
He hesitates, but I think I know what he’s not saying—that he wanted to make sure that it wasn’t because ofhim, that I wasn’t up here crying myself to sleep because of what happened in the pool today. I feel my face flush with embarrassment that he would think that at all—and that I’m wearing his shirt, but I tell myself that he won’t be able to see in the dark, and anyway, after so many years, he’s not likely to even recognize that it’s his.
“You didn’t have to,” I whisper. “I’m sorry I bothered you—”
“It’s not abother, Gianna.” Alessio lets out a slow breath. “I care about you, you know. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. I don’twantto be don. I’ve worked under the New York don for years now, in varying capacities, and I see the weight of it, the responsibility—the toll that it takes. It’s not something I’ve ever wanted for myself. But what I do want is to make sure you’re safe. Which means not continuing on down the hall when I hear you crying in the night.” He says the last wryly, as if it ought to be obvious, and I feel a small hesitant smile at the edges of my lips that I know he can’t see.”
His hand rubs along my arm again. “Do you want to talk about it? The nightmare?”
I shake my head. “No,” I whisper. “I really don’t.” I know I’m probably supposed to, that talking about it would supposedly exorcise it all somehow, but to me, it just feels as if saying it aloud will make it all more real somehow, bring it out of the shadowy world of terrible dreams and turn it into something tangible.
“Then you don’t have to.” Alessio’s voice is still gentle, soothing. “What do you need, Gianna? What can I do to help?”
I hesitate, unsure if I want to say the first thing that comes to my mind. “I want you to stay,” I whisper softly, before I can think better of it, and I feel the way he stiffens momentarily, as if his first instinct is to turn me down. “Just for a little while,” I add, my teeth sinking into my lower lip. “Just until I can fall asleep again.”
I can still feel him hesitating. I know he’s thinking of the kiss this afternoon, of the conversation we had, and wondering if giving in will make it all so much worse. I can feel, too, the moment that he relents.
